Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Salesforce Analytics Explained - Standard Deviation

While working with aggregation in Analytics, sum usually takes a staring role. You might have not known, but there are many other aggregate functions that produce interesting results.

For example, min, max, first, last, average and stddev are available to help slice and dice your data.  The full list of aggregate functions is available in the help documents.

The trick to access these other options in the user interface is scrolling down in the Measure selection box.  Once you scroll, a world of other features become available.

For our example, we will use the average and standard deviation (stddev) operations. First, these aggregate functions will be used in a compare table to build a chart of averages with lines breaking down the values for one and two standard deviation from the average.

As a bonus, a binding statement will enable switching the chart between one and two standard deviations.  All of this can be done without writing a single SAQL statement.