Before working with Zoho Analytics, it helps to understand the core building blocks the platform is structured around. This article explains the key concepts and terminology you will encounter throughout the product.
An Organisation is a dedicated management space where all your data, reports, and dashboards are housed. Each Zoho Analytics account can own one Organisation, which can contain an unlimited number of workspaces. Settings configured at the Organisation level apply to everything within it.
A Workspace is a logical container that groups related data tables together along with all the reports and dashboards built from them. You can create multiple workspaces within an account, and workspaces can be owned individually or shared among users. Think of each workspace as a distinct analytics project or business domain.
Tables are where your data is stored within a workspace. They work similarly to spreadsheets, with named columns and defined data types for each column. A workspace typically contains one or more tables holding logically related data. You can link tables to one another using lookup columns to model relational data.
Query Tables are custom data views created using SQL. They support union operations, data transformations, and standard SQL syntax compatible with Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and similar databases. Query Tables are useful when you need to shape or combine data before building reports on top of it.
Formulas allow you to derive calculated metrics from your existing data. There are two types:
Reports are the visual output of your data analysis. Zoho Analytics supports more than 25 report types, including the following:
Reports can draw data from a single table or combine multiple tables for more comprehensive analysis.
A Dashboard brings multiple reports together on a single page, giving stakeholders a consolidated view of key metrics at a glance. Dashboards can include KPI Widgets, which highlight individual metrics and display comparison indicators to show performance against a target or a previous period.
Zoho Analytics uses a layered permission model with the following roles:
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Account Administrator | Single owner of the account with full authority over all settings and data |
| Organisation Administrators | Manage the organisation and all workspaces within it |
| Workspace Administrators | Manage a specific workspace, its data, and its shared users |
| Custom Roles | Account-level roles with tailored permission sets defined by administrators |
| Users | Access views that have been shared with them, with permissions defined by the sharing settings |
| Viewers | Read-only access to shared reports and dashboards |