An overview of creating metrics

IBM® watsonx™ BI uses metrics and the underlying enriched metadata that is used to create metrics, to answer your questions and provide insights. Metrics are calculations that are used to measure and monitor key areas of a business.

If you're an Analytics consumer, you can create metrics for yourself or a Data analyst can create them for you.

The process to create metrics is the same for both Analytics consumers and Data analysts, except that Data analysts can publish the metrics that they've created to the Metrics catalog, govern access to metrics, and assign them to other users in the organization.

Creating metrics

  1. On the Data and Metrics tab, select a project or create a new one by clicking the '+' button next to the project list.

  2. Click Create metrics.

  3. A new semantic data model is created for you. Enter a unique name for the semantic data model.

  4. On the Select data page, select the data that you want to work with. You can connect to your remote data with an existing connection or create a new connection. You can also choose an existing data source such as an uploaded file.

  5. Click Next to continue to Metadata enrichment.

    During metadata data enrichment, business context-based metadata is added to your data to prepare it for use in conversations and metrics.

    No changes are made to your original data during enrichment.

  6. If your account is using watsonx.data intelligence for metadata enrichment, an option to review the enriched data is available on the Metadata enrichment page. You can review the results and make necessary changes. The option to review enrichment does not display if you are using watsonx BI enrichment.

    The enriched data results open in a separate tab and any changes you make save automatically to the semantic data model.

    You don't need to re-run enrichment after making changes to the enrichment results.

    Make sure that the labels and descriptions that are assigned to every column for all enriched data, are accurate and meaningful. AI uses labels and descriptions during conversations to find data to answer your questions. During enrichment, AI-generated labels and descriptions might have also been assigned to your data. You must accept or edit the AI-generated labels and descriptions in order to use them during the metric creation process.

  7. Close the tab after reviewing the results and return to the watsonx BI enrichment page and click Next to continue.

  8. You are now on the Metrics overview page. You can now generate metrics automatically or build them manually.

    For more accurate responses in Conversations, you must create metrics. Whether you generate metrics or build them manually, ensure that meaningful names, descriptions, and identifiers are assigned to each column. You can do this in the Advanced mode. For more information, see Optimizing data for AI.

After you finish creating metrics, you can navigate back to the Metrics overview page and do the following:

You can also go to the Conversations page and start asking questions.