Explore your Flow

Create a Flow from a Flow Model to begin your analysis and gain access to Filter Sets and Notifications. You can create multiple Flows from the same Flow Model. Creating a Flow enables users who do not have knowledge of SPL to interact with and explore the data.

Tutorial

This tutorial walks through how to Explore your Flow using data from the fictitious Buttercup Games Store. The Buttercup Games Store data set contains three data sources: web-6.txt, order.txt, and call-center.txt.

Suppose you are a business analyst at the fictitious Buttercup Games Store. In this tutorial, you want to analyze coupon usage by geographical region, assess the impact on the call center during a flash sale, and discover roadblocks in the purchase process.

Prerequisite
If you did not complete the Splunk Business Flow Getting Started Tutorial, download the Game_store.zip file. Do not uncompress the file. To upload the Game Store data into your Splunk platform, see Upload the tutorial data in the the Getting Started Tutorial.

Create a Flow Model

The process you are interested in spans three data sources. The following search uses a multisearch command to combine data sources. The multisearch command runs multiple streaming searches at the same time. For more information, see Write a search for a Flow Model.

1. In SBF, click the gear icon.
2. Click New Flow Model.
3. Type Buttercup Games Store in the name box.
4. Type the following search:

   index = tutorial | multisearch [search sourcetype = "order"] [search sourcetype = "web-6"] [search sourcetype = "order" ] | eval oneStep=coalesce(action, queue, status)

5. Click Save.
6. Select the following field names under Correlation IDs:
   customer_id, order_id
7. Select the following field name under Step:
   oneStep
8. Select the following field names under Attributes: agent_id, country, product
9. Select a sample size of 10,000.
10. Select a Max Duration of 5 minutes.
11. Click Save.

Save your Flow

After you validate your Flow Model, save your analyses and filters as a Flow so that you can share your work with the sales, marketing, and support teams at Buttercup Games.

1. Click the house icon.
2. Click New Flow.
3. Select Buttercup Games Store from the Flow Model list.
4. Type Buttercup Games Store Flow in the Name box.
5. (Optional) Add a description.
6. Click Create Flow.

Visualize your data in the Flowchart

As a business analyst at Buttercup Games, it is your job to determine the success of the coupon campaign, and the impact of the flash sale on the call center. Use the Flowchart to visualize customer Journeys. The Flowchart feature groups a collection of Journeys into a single, ordered sequence of steps. For more on how SBF groups Journeys into the Flowchart, see Terminology and concepts in Splunk Business Flow.

1. In the time range picker, select All time.
2. Select Complete Mode to view all Journeys.
3. Click Circuit under Layout.
   There are two views in the Flowchart: the Circuit and the Lanes.
4. (Optional) Drag and drop the steps in the flowchart to rearrange the Flowchart.
5. (Optional) To revert the layout to the default, click Reset Layout.
6. Click Path Count under Properties.
   Select Path Count to view the number of times a step occurs after the proceeding step. In this example, the Apply Coupon step occurs 1,395 times before the Submit step.
7. Click Journey Step Count under Properties.
   Select Journey Step Count to view the number of Journeys that contain a particular step. In this example, 1,749 Journeys contained the step Apply Coupon.

Perform AB comparison

Enable AB compare to investigate how Journeys vary by country. You can enable the AB comparison View on the List, Flowchart, Attribute, Conversion, and Metrics tabs.

1. Click the AB comparison symbol .
2. Click panel A.
3. Check UK under Country in the Filters panel.
4. Click panel B.
5. Check US under Country in the Filters panel.

The results in the Flowchart shows that panel B which represents the USA contains twice as many Journeys as panel A which represents the UK.

Calculate conversion rates

From the results shown in the Flowchart, it appears that many customers place a call to support after completing the Add To Cart step.
First, calculate the conversion rate to see what percentage of calls are dropped.

1. Click Conversion in the feature tab.
2. Under the A panel, select Inbound Call, Call Queued, then Call Dropped.
   For both the USA and the UK approximately 22% of calls placed to the call center are dropped! The support team at Buttercup Games can use this insight to investigate why calls are dropped, and determine how to improve before the next flash sale.

Compare conversion rates by country

Next, assess the success of the coupon campaign by country.

1. Click the x next to each step in the conversion funnel to clear the steps.
2. Under the A panel, select Apply Coupon, Submit, then Purchase Game.
   Panel B which represents the USA, has a higher conversion rate for purchases using a coupon. The marketing team at Buttercup Games can use this information to assess how the flash sale was advertised in the USA versus the UK.

View Attribute breakdown

Use the Attribute feature to assess the success of the coupon campaign by product. The Attribute view shows the breakdown of your Journeys by Attribute field value. Click on a field value to apply a filter to your Journeys.

1. Click Attributes in the feature panel.
2. Scroll down to view the breakdown of purchases based on product type by country.
   The sales team at Buttercup Games will be interested to see that the number of t-shirt sales eclipses the number of "World of Cheese" video game sales.
   

Save your work as a Flow

After you validate your Flow Model, save your analyses and filters as a Flow so that you can share your work with the sales, marketing, and support teams at Buttercup Games.

A Flow is a saved view of the analyses and filter settings you applied to the Flow Model in the Explorer. These filter settings include step filters, Journey duration, conversion funnels, and metric summaries. You can create multiple Flows from the same Flow Model. All changes to Flow Models propagate to related Flows. Saving your work as a Flow enables users who do not have knowledge of SPL to interact with and Explore the data.

To save a Flow, set the Flow Model to Shared.

1. Click Save as Flow.
2. Enter a Name for your Flow.
3. (Optional) Enter a description for your Flow.
4. Click Submit.

Enable Projector Mode

If you want to present your Flowchart, turn on Projector Mode in the Setup page. Projector mode increases the contrast and saturation of colors displayed in the Flowchart to account for projectors or monitors with poor color resolution.

1. Click the gear icon to open the Setup page.
2. Under Splunk Business Flow, toggle the Projector Mode to on.