Discussion
Pegasystems Inc.
GB
Last activity: 28 May 2025 11:01 EDT
Some insights into Insights (and Explore Data)
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Why
Explore Data and Insights is a powerful Constellation feature. If I am being honest, one of my favourite Constellation features, unlocking value for Business Users who can create rich Insights and Dashboards in a very intuitive UX.
It introduces are new rule type and configurations for the Pega community, and as such I often get questions on this capability. In this post, I'll cover more comprehensive details to help advance your knowledge of this feature further.
Prerequisites
Documentation and training can be found on our documentation and academy. It is assumed the reader already has this level of knowledge and looking to advance further.
- Pega Documentation: https://docs.pega.com/bundle/platform/page/platform/reporting/reporting…
- Including troubleshooting: https://docs.pega.com/bundle/platform/page/platform/reporting/addressin…
- Including the ability to use Explore Data in UI Kit apps: https://docs.pega.com/bundle/platform/page/platform/reporting/enabling-…
- Pega Academy: https://academy.pega.com/module/exploring-application-data-insights/v5
- Including the challenge: https://academy.pega.com/challenge/creating-insight/v8
Understanding Insights further
URLs for Insights
I love the fact Constellation allow you to open links direct to cases or landing pages. This is a great Out of the Box feature for our Single Page Application architecture, it was always an overhead to implement in UI Kit Apps.
Something that is little known, you can copy the URL's for Insights as well.
- Using an Insight in a Case, Landing Page or Dashboards is the preferred consumption method but it does open up use cases where these might not apply. E.g. Please email a daily "start my day" email with a the list of hotel reservations for today and a link to the live information.
Open the Object in a Table or Drill to underlying records
When creating Insights, as table, OR a graph that drills through to the data (table), its a common request that we can configure which column opens the Case or Data Object in the Insight.
In 24.2, this is current not possible to configure the column to open, nor the fields that show in drilling to underlying records. There is enhancements to add this in future releases.
- However, this can be configured if you use a List View - see the "Using Class Joins" section later on with an example.
Security
Explore Data
The privilege for Explore Data landing page is Data-Portal_pzDataExplorer. Access to this should be handled Out of the Box if you use App Studio to create and manage the basic RBAC for your Persona. However, I have seen instances where apps that predate this feature, have not had this added to users when they start using this feature.
- Resolves issue: The Explore data page is not visible for a user, despite the landing page being added to their portal.
Class
Insights are saved to Rule-UI-Insight. Like above, access should be handled in new applications. However, older Access Groups might not have access to create rules into this class
- Resolves issue: this can block that user from saving new Insights. User gets a "Insights failed to save. Check console for more details".
[Update/Clarification]
When I say Pega OOTB handles this in newer applications, I'm referring to Persona creation (from App Studio). This creates your Persona, mapped to an Access Group, that inherits from the right roles and is managed in App Studio.
If you go it alone in Dev Studio, creating an Access Group from the ground up (not recommended), you may not have this setup correctly to both work in App Studio and inherit the right roles/privileges.
Rules & Production Rulesets
Creating an Insight Rule
When you create an Insight via Explore Data, you are creating rules to Rule-UI-Insight.
Application Authors (Developers)
If Application Authors are trying to do this, this means it will be saved to a Workspace, Branch or Open Ruleset, just like any other rule using the same "next best ruleset" algorithm.
Business Users
If business users are trying to do this in Production, this means you need a Production Ruleset. So the general configuration of a Production Ruleset applies.
- Create a Production Ruleset
- Add it to your application
- Ensure the business user's Access Group has explicit access to the Production Ruleset
- Ensure the Operator Record has "Allow rule check out" so they can save the Insights.
- Resolves issue: this can block that user from saving new Insights. User gets a "Insights failed to save. Check console for more details".
Hiding or Removing the Out of the Box provided Insights
As an Insight is a rule, you can withdraw the provide insights if they aren't required for your application.
Additional Configurations on Explore Data Landing Page
In App and Dev Studio, you are able to configure the Explore Data Landing Page, this includes which objects are viewable and Associations included.
- Resolves issue: Objects missing from Explore Data OR Insights have additional rows (additional data access via an Association)
- In addition to troubleshooting steps here https://docs.pega.com/bundle/platform/page/platform/reporting/missing-d…
Insights on Lists (e.g. Embedded Data)
In 24.2, Insights supports multiple levels of Embedded Data.
Say for example I have a Training Course and there is a list of training you must have done before attending (Prerequisites), then you can run insights on these Prerequisites.
Similar to Report Definitions, when you add additional data via say a Join, this will create one row for each of the listed items.
To improve user experience, you can do things like grouping by Case ID by replicating the following table. A great feature of Constellation tables:
Optimize Property
To enable all of the above you must optimize this embedded field for reporting, to unlock this.
Insights on References (e.g. Data Reference, User Reference etc.)
In Insights, the Association Rule, provides a simple way to access additional data to be used in your Insight. When you start creating an Insight, you will see some of the Out of the Box associations provided.
Using Class Joins
You an not use Class Joins in Insights.
However, you can use these in a DataPage that can then be used to source a List View.
- Example: Home page shows the default worklist view with details from assign- class. We want to show some of the properties from work class in this view. How do we approach this requirement?
Steps:
- We can save as the existing Data Page and existing RD to make the changes.
- Ensure Data Page has "Allow querying any column" unchecked
- Add join with work class and add the work class columns to the RD.
- In Constellation we cannot access properties from pxPages (Join class) directly. Instead, we need to flatten the DP using a response DT.
- The dummy property created in Assign- class for each property fetched from work class has to be marked relevant.
- Now use this data page for the “MyWork” landing page for your portal.
- The updated “MyWork” landing page will look like this.
- Note: To enable the link to the key, you need to alter the field as shown below:
Tables: Insights vs List Views
As implied in a few of the topics above, the configuration and display of an Insight as a Table vs a List View as a Table are different. If you can not achieve your use case with one, you may want to look at the other.
Key differences for me are:
- Controlling the column you want to open the object (List View)
- Using any Data Page you like to source the list (List View)
- Insights allow adding more columns than what is seen, including sorting/filtering
- Insights could save row density, merges and freezes for large information
- List View tables only allow you to sort/filter from columns that are visible and they can allow you to build filters for user to use (permittable filters)
- Search bars are different
Share your experience
Got some other tips? Feel free to share in the comments below.
Even more Insights into Insights (and Explore Data)
Some great resources you may want to explore:
Updated: 16 May 2025 17:45 EDT
Capgemini
IN
@MarcCheong - Thanks for sharing the tips and tricks. Quite helpful.
While implementing insights (in Pega Infinity 23) we came across a scenario where I would like to get your views on:
1. We have an insight that shows a pie chart to count the number of work objects (e.g. in "Open" status it shows 20).
2. When we drill down to each region in the pie chart, the detailed view shows the work objects corresponding to the selected status "Open" - so drill down view should show record count as 20.
However, in the drill down view RD, we have an association with a data class to show the number of Products for each work object. So, if each of the work object has 2 products, in the drill down view there are altogether 40 records and the count is displayed as 40, which is misleading for the user.
Can you please suggest how to overcome this?
Updated: 18 May 2025 8:05 EDT
Pegasystems Inc.
GB
@Sudit Sengupta I would need some more details on your scenario. Step 1 and 2 I can follow, this is just Explore Data and Insight is a chart. When you click a section of that chart, you have "drill to underlying records" enabled and then it shows the list.
So at this point, I am assuming it looks like the the below, both with the drill to underlying in configuration, then the click and open records modal (though this is 25.1 so it won't be 100% the same)
Where I am lost is your description the underlying report definition, Insights doesn't source from a report definition that you can edit like the Traditional UI "Report Browser" capability. So I might have missed your configuration - if you associate data in the chart, then its also associated in the drill. Would need a little more background on your configuration.
Solution?
However, that said, Associated/Joined/Embedded Data, is an inherently confusing topic for business users. When you expect 20 cases, and see 40 lines (due to the joined data), it can confuse business users.
In this scenario, I would be looking at making it more accessible.
@Sudit Sengupta I would need some more details on your scenario. Step 1 and 2 I can follow, this is just Explore Data and Insight is a chart. When you click a section of that chart, you have "drill to underlying records" enabled and then it shows the list.
So at this point, I am assuming it looks like the the below, both with the drill to underlying in configuration, then the click and open records modal (though this is 25.1 so it won't be 100% the same)
Where I am lost is your description the underlying report definition, Insights doesn't source from a report definition that you can edit like the Traditional UI "Report Browser" capability. So I might have missed your configuration - if you associate data in the chart, then its also associated in the drill. Would need a little more background on your configuration.
Solution?
However, that said, Associated/Joined/Embedded Data, is an inherently confusing topic for business users. When you expect 20 cases, and see 40 lines (due to the joined data), it can confuse business users.
In this scenario, I would be looking at making it more accessible.
1. Could you create a landing page with the Insight Chart on the top and then a List View or Insight Table below, with the joined data. I would then group this data by the work object, so its clear that each work object has 2 different products.
- Here's an extract from a bootcamp training mission I put together recently. We have a Training Course, that can have multiple Prerequisites (pagelist) and we want an insight on these. Grouping helps visualise the embedded data (pagelist) that has increased the number of records.
2. Could you flatten the data? Create a concatenated field with all the products list. Then its no longer a pagelist and just a text field, then you could show this in a flattened table, there would be 20 records and no confusion on end user part. This isn't the greatest from a data modelling perspective, however, I have seen this approach used successfully to simplify data for consumers of List Views or Insights.
Updated: 28 May 2025 11:00 EDT
Capgemini
IN
@MarcCheong- Thanks for your response.
Yes flattening the data to create a concatenated field is an option, but like you said its not ideal from a data modelling perspective and also has an additional maintenance overhead of managing the concatenated values when user adds or deletes items.
Regarding my point about the drill down RD, what I meant is the following:
1. Insight is configured on a particular data class. The data shown in the insight is based on a D page (API type) which is sourced from an RD.
2. On drill down, we need to have specific fields shown to the user. In such a case, the RD mentioned in point 1 needs to be changed (from Dev studio) to add additional fields (e.g. by using an association). This is where the rows will be duplicated for each embedded data (e.g. Products).
So, we have the following options:
1. Do not display embedded data (list type) in the drill down view of an Insight
2. flatten the data (e.g. use a field to show concatenated data)
3.Do not allow drill down in the chart based Insight. Create a chart Insight and then a separate table Insight down below (like you suggested)
Is this a correct understanding, or am I missing something?
Pegasystems Inc.
GB
@Sudit Sengupta ok, I understand. I wouldn't really recommend playing around with the underlying RD as it may have other consequences. I've seen the same for OOTB created datapages (single, list and saveable) for new cases/data too - its best to create new ones if you need something specific, Constellation features rely so much on these you don't know what else might be utilising it.
Further more, the Product is looking at giving more control over the drill to underlying records, such as what columns we show. So things are coming in this space.
Solutions
Your summary of solutions is accurate. Personally, I would explore option 3 with the business - this kind of complex data, and getting the business to understand it, probably needs more than just an Insight can convey. A dashboard or landing page, might give you some more options such as promoted filters and search capability to make it more understandable. Landing pages give you added benefits of putting other widgets on the screen, like "announcements" that could also provide more instructional guidance.
Capgemini
IN
@MarcCheong - Thanks for your response and Guidance. Good to know that in the future we will have the ability to control the drill down view to present the columns that are needed.