Time Tracking app - Metrics you need to be measuring

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<p class="p">The Zendesk <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/apps/support/35111/time-tracking/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Time Tracking app</a> helps support managers gain visibility into the actual time spent across all your customer service interactions within a ticket. The app tracks the time spent on each ticket update and stores this with the ticket.</p>
<p class="p">This time spent can be measured per ticket or per update. Time spent per ticket is called ticket handling time. Time spent per update is called update handling time. With Explore, you can create calculated metrics for these different handling times and create time tracking reports in Explore.</p>
<p class="p">This article describes the difference between ticket handling time and update handling time. It also links to Explore recipes that show you how to create custom time tracking metrics and reports.</p>
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<span class="notetitle"> Note:</span> The Time Tracking app must be installed and configured before the metrics and reports described in this article will work. See <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828227098">Setting up the Time Tracking app</a>.</div>
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<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Ticket handling time vs. Update handling time</h2>
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<p class="p">As with any other Support ticket data, there are two approaches for analyzing time tracking app data:</p>
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<li class="undefined">Ticket handling time</li>
<li class="undefined">Update handling time</li>
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<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title4">Ticket handling time</h3>
<p class="p">The first approach is to look at the handling time per <em>ticket</em>. You can use this information to report on individual agent performance, or to report on complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.</p>
<p class="p">If you choose to go with this approach, the best place to create your reports is the <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408827693594#topic_zlf_slp_4y">Support: Tickets</a> dataset. To do so, you can create a standard calculated metric based on the <strong>Total time spent (sec)</strong> metric (which is available in Explore only after you <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828227098">install the Time Tracking app</a>) and use it to report on the handling time per ticket.</p>
<p class="p">To learn how to create a custom <strong>Ticket handling time</strong> metric and use it to produce two example time tracking reports, see <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6756291938330">Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring ticket handling time</a>.</p>
<h3 id="h_01HPSH7G0N0DZR721WGJDCCKQG">Update handling time</h3>
<p class="p">The second approach is to look at the handling time per <em>update</em>. You can use this information to report on individual agent performance, or to report on complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.</p>
<p class="p">For this approach, the calculated metric and reports should be created in the <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408827693594#topic_as3_slp_4y">Support: Updates history</a> dataset based on the data stored in the<strong> Changes - Previous value</strong> and<strong> Changes - New value</strong> attributes.</p>
<p class="p">To learn how to create a custom <strong>Update handling time</strong> metric and use it to produce an example time tracking report, see <a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6756578945690">Explore recipe: Time Tracking app - Measuring update handling time</a>.</p>
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