Many people like to "wing it" when learning a new software platform. If that's you, that's absolutely your prerogative, and we won't try to stop you! 

But when you're learning a new platform for business purposes (especially when you're paying for that platform), wasted time equates to wasted money, and it often makes more sense to "read the manual" before you dive in. 

You'll find 3 articles in our "Getting Started" series, that are geared toward users of different experience levels. 

Part 1 (The article that you're reading now) is aimed at absolute beginners looking to learn their way around our platform and understand what each component is and what it does.

Part 2 contains tips and tricks for Intermediate level users.

Part 3 provides advanced tips and best practices for users who want to really "level up" their usage of the AgencyAnalytics platform.

In this article, we'll provide definitions and walk-throughs of the following core platform sections and components. We also recommend checking out our onboarding webinar to see some of the components in action.

All settings related to YOUR account (as an individual user) or YOUR AGENCY'S account (as opposed to any of your clients) is found by clicking your user icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen.

From there, click "Profile" to configure your user or company information. Need particular information to appear on your invoice? Add it here. Billing and white label settings are found here as well. 

Learn more about account settings in our Knowledgebase.

Our entire platform is built around the idea of campaigns. What is a campaign, exactly? Read more here.

All of your "campaigns" (customer accounts) are found in the root of your AgencyAnalytics account. Each campaign holds all of the marketing channel data, reports, and dashboards for that particular customer.

Here's how to create a campaign.

Learn more about campaigns in our Knowledgebase.

"Integration" is our word for a marketing channel. Our integrations include SERP rankings, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Facebook Social, various email, Local reviews, and call tracking platforms, and much more. You'll find a complete list here (with detailed setup instructions for each). 

Each campaign can host one of each integration type. So you create a campaign with the customer's URL and company name. Then you connect the customer's marketing channel data (Integrations) inside of that campaign. 

From the main campaigns control panel, you can click any campaign to enter it and work with it's integrations. 

Integrations are found in the left-hand side navigation menu after you open a campaign. You can click any integration/marketing channel in this list to begin setting it up and importing your customer's data.

Once you connect an integration, that integration's data will be available to add to your client dashboards and scheduled reports (more on those shortly).

Learn more about Integrations in our Knowledgebase.

Each campaign contains integrations. And each integration contains metrics. A metric is basically a KPI or a data point. 

For example, in the SERP tracking integration, you have metrics like Google Ranking, Google Change, Google Local Ranking, Volume, and more. Enable or disable metrics in the rank tracking integration by clicking the "settings slider" and then ticking/unticking the box for each metric. While that article covers the SERP tracking integration specifically, metrics function the same way in all integrations.

These check boxes only control the metrics that are shown for your own personal view of the integration. We'll talk about configuring metrics within a report, choosing which metrics a client user can see, and more later in this guide.

The word "dashboard" can be confusing, because some customers (and even some staff - oops!) use it to refer to our entire platform. 

When we use the word "dashboard" in this guide, or elsewhere in our written documentation or within the platform itself, we're referring very specifically to our live, web-based user marketing dashboards.

Dashboards serve as an "at a glance" control panel for each campaign, where you, your staff and (if you choose to allow them access) your customers can view all of your most important metrics, from all of your connected integrations at once, in a single screen.

It's a great "value add" to let customers log in and review their live, up to the minute marketing data 24/7. 

When you first click on a campaign, you'll see a blank campaign dashboard, with a button to click saying "Set up Dashboard Section" or "Create Dashboard Section".

Even if you've already connected multiple integrations, that does NOT mean that you'll see data in the client marketing dashboard yet. The dashboard has to be configured separately. 

Start by adding and configuring your widgets. Hit the "easy" button by applying a pre-configured dashboard template.

Learn more about client marketing dashboards in our Knowledgebase. Here's a great video walk through as well. 

Automated reporting is one of the core features of our platform. 

Basically, you design the report once... Set the schedule for the report... Then the report is sent via email on your schedule using fresh data (from the integrations/marketing channels that you've connected) each and every time.

Campaigns hold reports for each customer, just like they hold integrations.

Navigate to the "Reports" section for any given customer by opening their campaign (as described in the "Campaigns" section above), then clicking "Reports" at the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu.

Here are a few steps to get you started:

Create a scheduled report
​Create a one-off report for instant download
​Add sections to a report
​Add widgets to a report

Similar to the client marketing dashboards, you can hit the "easy button" by applying a pre-configured report template.

There are quite a few settings available when setting up reports. Learn more about reports in our Knowledgebase. And check out this video walk through of our new and improved report editor.

Widgets are another crucial part of our platform. We use widgets within our client marketing dashboards, and within our report design editor. 

Widgets give you granular control over the exact look, feel, and KPIs displayed for the dashboards and reports. 

You can choose from a wide variety of widget types, from simple widgets displaying a single KPI, to complex bar graphs, pie charts, and more. There are literally unlimited possibilities as far as designing a dashboard using widgets.

Start by adding and customizing widgets:
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​How to add a widget to a report
​How to add a widget to a dashboard
​How to customize a report widget
​How to customize a dashboard widget

You can also drag and drop widgets to re-arrange them, and dynamically re-size them to meet your dashboard needs (articles refer to the dashboards, but the functionality is the same in the report editor). 

Learn more about report editor widgets in the "Reports" section of the Knowledgebase, and about client marketing dashboard widgets in the "Client Marketing Dashboard" section of the Knowledgebase. 

There are three different types of user in our system. 

Customers are often confused about the difference between campaigns, dashboards and client user accounts.

If you've already set up a campaign, imported their data using integrations, and designed a client marketing dashboard, why do you have to go through the extra step of creating a client user account?

Think of it this way: Campaigns are used to house marketing channel (integration) data, and dashboards, as well as to organize the scheduled reports for each customer. 

But as the original account owner, you have the choice as to who can login and view that data. You don't ever NEED to create any staff or client user accounts if you don't want staff/clients to login and work within the platform. 

Clients don't need an account to view scheduled reports that you send to them via email.

We highly encourage you to create staff accounts if multiple people will have access to your AgencyAnalytics account so that you can control who has access to what.

And we encourage you to utilize client user accounts so that you can offer your customers the "value added" benefit of logging in to view their live data.

But the choice is yours.
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​Learn more about creating users, setting their permissions, and restricting their access in our Knowledgebase, or in this video tutorial.

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Ready to dive deeper and learn some tips and tricks to get more out of your AgencyAnalytics membership? Check out Part 2 of our Getting Started Guide to get your account set up properly and streamline your processes using our recommended best practices.