What is a metric?

Overview

A metric in TheyDo is a quantitative measurement — a number — used to track performance, progress, or impact across your customer experience. Metrics let teams connect real data to the journeys they're working on, so you can see how experience changes translate into measurable outcomes.

Common examples include NPS, CSAT, and CES, but you can also create custom metrics like conversion rate, % task success, or time-to-complete.

In TheyDo, metrics work in two layers: metric sources and metric cards.

Metric sources and metric cards

A metric source is the underlying definition of a metric — the data connection, metric type, owner, and any dimensions configured on it. Think of it as the single source of truth for a dataset.

A metric card is a specific filtered view derived from a metric source — a particular combination of dimension values, time interval, and timeframe. For example, "CSAT · Monthly · Last 12 months · Country = France" is a metric card based on a CSAT metric source.

This separation means you only need to set up the data connection once. From a single metric source, you can create multiple metric cards for different segments, time ranges, or intervals — and reuse them across any journey without duplicating data.

What a metric source includes

Each metric source has a set of core properties:

• Type — NPS, CSAT, CES, or Other (custom numeric)
• Source — how data gets in: manually entered, via CSV, or synced automatically from a connected integration
• Dimensions — categorical attributes from your data (like region, channel, or brand) that can be used to filter metric cards
• Owner — the person responsible for keeping the metric up to date
• Target — an optional numeric goal with a comparison direction (lower is better / equal / higher is better)
• Personas, tags, and groups — for categorization and filtering

Metric sources are made up of data points — individual numeric values tied to specific dates. These data points are what get charted over time when a metric card is placed on a journey.

Where data comes from

There are two ways to get data into a metric source:

• Manual — you or the metric owner add data points by hand on a regular cadence (weekly, monthly, etc.)
• Integration — data points sync automatically from a connected third-party source. TheyDo integrates with Qualtrics, Medallia, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and Amazon S3.

Once you've added data points or connected an integration, the metric type, source, and connection fields become locked to protect data integrity — so it's worth setting those up carefully from the start.

What a metric card looks like

When a metric card is placed on a journey, it shows:

• The metric card name (e.g., "CSAT — France")
• The metric source it's derived from, shown in the side panel header so you can navigate back to it
• The current value — the latest complete period's number, not the period currently in progress. For example, if the interval is Monthly and you're in February, the card shows January's value.
• A trend indicator — showing whether the number is moving in the right direction relative to the target
• A line chart — a visual of the metric's data points over time
• Solution markers — if solutions are linked to the metric, they appear along the x-axis of the chart so you can see when work was shipped relative to how the number moved

Clicking a metric card opens it in a side panel where you can see the full chart, data points, and linked building blocks.

Where metrics live

Metrics have two main places in TheyDo:

• Metrics library — the workspace-level inventory where you can browse, create, import, filter, and export all metric sources. Each source can have multiple metric cards nested beneath it.
• Journey canvas — metric cards are placed in the Metrics lane on specific journey steps, or added at the journey level to represent headline KPIs for the journey overall.

Metrics can also be embedded in docs and collections, and they appear in Pulse — TheyDo's executive summary view of a journey.

What metrics connect to

Metrics can be linked to journeys, solutions, docs, collections, and Pulse. See How to link metrics to other building blocks for the full guide.

Tips

• One metric source can power many metric cards — no need to create duplicate metrics for different segments, time ranges, or intervals.
• For custom (Other) metrics, always set the unit (%, €, seconds, #) and aggregation method (average vs. sum) so the number is unambiguous to everyone reading it.
• You need metric edit permission to create, update, or delete metrics. Viewers can browse and open metrics but can't make changes.