Field notes
Preparing extracts for an analytics assessment
A practical checklist for portal owners who want an assessment to start on time and stay grounded in real ticket data.
Assessments stall when access arrives late or extracts omit the fields that explain ticket movement. Two weeks before kickoff, nominate a single data contact who can approve portal logins and run exports without waiting on a committee.
Export tickets for the last full quarter with created time, first response time, resolve time, category, channel, reopen flag, and portal session ID if available. Include a second sheet of closed tickets only if your tool separates live and archive tables.
Add the current metric dictionary—even if it is a messy spreadsheet. Assessors need the definitions your leadership already hears, not a cleaned version invented for the engagement.
Schedule two agent sessions early. Agents translate field names into real handling habits. Without them, findings lean too heavily on configuration screens and miss how categories are chosen under pressure.