Hi @Bryantworks,
Great question! Datasets are tricky, especially if you don’t use them often. This may not be 100% accurate, but I tend to think of datasets as a way to organize and manipulate data before building a report…almost like creating a pivot table in a spreadsheet and then from my pivot sheet data creating further formulas to extract the information I actually need. Datasets will allow me to do that without continually building the pivot table time after time and it will allow me to use it in multiple reports.
To get back to your specific example, here’s an example from a test portal I have with some dummy data. I created a report to show the % of contacts with the name of Josh, but only for contacts created in the last 2 years.
In this first screenshot I am creating a field to pull the count of people named Josh in the system and I’m also telling it to only use contacts created in the last 2 years. This field can be used on my reporting KPIs. In your scenario you could tell your dataset to count the number of contacts with X value or the number of contacts without X value.
In this second screenshot I am doing the same thing, but in this scenario I am counting the contacts NOT named Josh, but also only those created in the last 2 years.
You mentioned having some hiccups when it comes to things like dates. You also have the option to apply date filters on the filters settings vs the way that I incorporated them on my specific formulas, as shown in this next screenshot.
The last screenshot shows how I would utilize this particular dataset in a reporting format to show the % of contacts in my system that are named Josh, but only in the last couple of years.
There are so many use cases for datasets, especially if you’re using the reporting tools and can’t quite get the exact output you were looking for. Using datasets and formulas can help step it up a notch and help you get the desired outcome for the report needed. Another use case is creating datasets for team members that utilize the reporting tools but aren’t quite as fluent with the HubSpot tools overall. You can create the datasets in advance for them to use in later reports so they won’t have to worry about pulling in the correct properties or creating formulas on their own.
One last piece of advice…use the AI assistant when building your formulas. It’s an incredible time-saver!
Thanks for a great question to kick us off!
Josh