This heatmap answers one question: at what hours do new conversations arrive? It counts conversations by the hour they were created, so the tall hours are the hours your seekers reach out. Use it to decide when you need people online.
It is available to admins and to responders whose permission set lets them view reports.
Where to find it
In Reports, the left menu has a Heatmaps group. This report is the first item, Inbound Convs. At the top of the page its title reads Hourly Conversations - All, with the note All conversations by created at time.
Running it
- Click Reports in the main menu.
- In the left menu, open Heatmaps and click Inbound Convs.
- Pick a date range at the top of the page. Seven days gives a clear weekly pattern; a few weeks gives a steadier one.
- Click Sources and tick the conversation sources you want included. A source here is a channel your ministry has connected, such as a website chat, a text number or a social page. Choose a source group to select several at once.
- Click Run Report.
What each cell counts
Each conversation is counted once, in the hour it was created. A conversation that is later claimed, closed, timed out or blocked still counts, because the report does not look at what happened to it afterward. It counts the seekers who arrived, not the seekers who were answered.
Only conversations from the sources you select are counted. Phone calls are not part of this report; they are separate records. For calls, see Missed Calls Report.
The Created At / Closed At switch in the header does not change how this grid is built. Every conversation is placed by the time it was created. Leave the switch on Created At for this report.
Reading the grid
The report is one table. Each row is one day in your date range, labeled with the first two letters of the weekday and the day of the month, such as Mo-05. Each column is one hour of the day, from 12a to 11p. Hours are counted in the time zone chosen next to the date range, which starts as your ministry's time zone.
Each cell is a count. Cells are shaded from pale to deep blue-green in steps, and the shading is relative: the busiest cell on the screen gets the deepest color, and an hour with a count of zero is left unshaded. Two reports side by side will not use the same scale, so read the numbers, not just the color.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Run Report | Builds the grid for the date range, time zone and sources currently selected. After you run it the button stays grayed out until you change one of them. |
| Average (the small network icon, with the tooltip Average) | Collapses the grid to one row per weekday. Each cell becomes the average for that weekday and hour across the days in your range, rounded down to a whole number. Click it, then run the report again. |
| Download (the arrow icon) | Downloads the same data as a file, in your account's download format. |
| Star | Pins this report as a card you can come back to quickly. |
What the measurements mean
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Inbound conversation | A conversation record created on one of your selected sources. Chat, text, email and social conversations count; phone calls do not. |
| Created time | The moment Echo first saved the conversation, which is when the seeker's first message arrived or the chat opened. |
| Source | A channel your ministry connected to Echo, such as a website chat widget, a text number or a Facebook page. |
| Average | For a given weekday and hour, the total across the matching days divided by the number of days, rounded down. A weekday that appears once in your range is shown as is. |
How it differs from the other heatmaps
| Heatmap | Counts |
|---|---|
| Inbound Conversations (this one) | Conversations, by the hour they arrived. |
| Messages | Individual messages, by the hour each was created. |
| Claimed | The moments responders claimed conversations. |
| Missed | The moments conversations timed out or were abandoned. |
What to do with it
Compare the tall hours here with the hours your responders are online (see Users Online Heatmap). An hour that is dark here and pale there is where seekers are most likely to wait.