Insights
Insights is a dashboard for our third-party partners that shares stats and analytics allowing them to track how their apps, embeds, and our partnerships with them are going. All Insights data includes Jetpack and WordPress.com blogs, so it provides an overall view of the application.
Music Credit: Anthony Vitale
Below is a quick walkthrough of all the features available.
Overview Tab
The overview tab is like a dashboard for the dashboard. We wanted to provide a quick look at everything going on so that it’s easy for our partners to get a snapshot of activity today. The overview tab includes a combined chart showing API reads, writes, and error rates. If an app doesn’t use one of these, the chart will detect that and leave it off.
Below the chart, on the left side, is a quick view of today’s numbers:
The numbers displayed here depend on what the app does. Looking at our example app, we show API numbers and posting numbers (including reach). On the right side is a list of tools relating to the app including “share,” which we will cover later.
Tabs & Charts
Each application created from our application manager has access to a standard set of tabs and data through Insights: an API tab, a posts tab, and a connections tab.
The API tab is a combined chart for all of the API calls that the app is making. Below it, reads and writes are broken down into a separate charts. The API tab also shows how many errors are being returned.
The posts tab shows how many posts are being generated by the application. Below the posts chart are statistics on how many likes and comments those posts are getting. These are not likes and comments generated by the application, but rather the popularity of the posts across WordPress.com and Jetpack blogs.
The connections tab shows data for authorizations to the app and app logins if the WordPress.com Connect feature is used.
All tabs and charts include an export button that generates a CSV file of the chart data being displayed. All tabs also include a date picker so data can be viewed for a specific range. Tabs also include the ability to toggle between daily, weekly, and monthly plot points. There is also a cumulative mode for viewing growth over time.
Below every chart are counts for the last 24 hours, 7 days, 31 days, and 365 days, as well as their percent change since the previous time period.
Data can also be exported using the REST API using new /insights/ endpoints.
Custom Tabs
If we support an embed or a specific partner is a part of publicize, we also surface custom tabs. In the example, we have an “Embeds” tab. These custom tabs also get all of the same options the API, posts, and connections tab gets.
Sharing
One of the benefits of the new insights system is sharing access to other people in an organization. Other WordPress.com members can be added to an application as admins, managers, or Insights users. Any of these levels will allow other people in an organization access to these stats.
If temporary access is needed for someone without a WordPress.com account, we can generate a special hashed URL that provides view access to the Insights dashboard. The URL can be expired and regenerated at anytime.
Last updated: February 21, 2024
