Your First Ten Minutes
A guided run through eConnect that ends with a saved query, a dashboard and an investigation you can come back to. Nothing here is destructive, and everything can be undone.
You will need an account and at least one module. If Home is empty, see Assigning Groups to Users.
1. Get your bearings
Sign in and look at Home. There is one tile per module you have access to, and the small icons on each tile jump straight to a view inside it — two levels deep in one click.
The bar down the left is the navigation drawer; expand a module to see its views. Pin the drawer open if you prefer it always visible.
2. Ask a question the easy way
Open Ace from the title bar and ask something about your own data in plain English — "how many detections yesterday", "which register had the most voids last week". You will get an answer drawn from your live system, often as a chart.
This is the fastest way to find out what your data can tell you before you know how to query it. The assistant only ever reads what you are allowed to read.
3. Build the same question as a query
Now do it deliberately. Open any module and go to its data view.
- Set a date range using the range picker — see Date and Time Ranges.
- Add a filter or two in the simple query builder.
- Run it and read the grid.
Sort a column, hide one you do not need, and notice the row count change as you filter. This is the foundation everything else sits on — see Working With Data.
4. Turn rows into an answer
A grid of rows rarely answers a question on its own. Open the aggregation panel, group by a field and pick a measure — count, sum, average.
Switch to the chart view, then click a slice. You go back to the rows behind that slice, which is the single most useful move in eConnect: from a total, to the records that made it, in one click.
5. Save it
Save the query from the Query Manager and give it a name you would recognise in a fortnight. Saved queries are reusable, shareable and are what dashboard widgets draw on.
6. Put it on a dashboard
Create a dashboard, add a Graph widget and point it at the query you just saved. See Creating a Dashboard and Adding and Arranging Widgets.
You now have a question that answers itself every time you open it.
7. Notice your workspace filled itself in
Open the Workspace panel. Everything you drilled into during this walkthrough is there as a tree, without you saving anything.
Pin the two or three steps worth keeping, then close eConnect and open it again — they are still there. That is the point: an investigation survives the end of your shift. See The Investigation Workspace.
Where to go next
| If you want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Get good at querying | Working With Data |
| Search by description | Semantic Search |
| Handle alerts | Alerts |
| Administer eConnect | Administration |
| Know what is recorded | What eConnect Audits |