Targets are typically used for Budgets and Forecasts, and tied to specific metrics. You may add more than one target to each metric in your workspace.

Everyone

View targets

Admins

Set up targets

Set up targets

Prepare your targets data

You set up targets by registering a target table from your database. Steep will read targets from this table and match them to the corresponding metric. The target table needs to follow the below format.

Target table format

ColumnExample valueTypeDescriptionRequirement
seriesBudget 2022StringTarget series namerequired
metricregistrationsStringMetric namerequired
time2022-04-01Date or TimestampTarget daterequired
value20000NumericTarget valuerequired
dimensionCountryStringDimension nameoptional
dimension_valueUKStringDimension valueoptional

The series name can be used to set up multiple target per metric, e.g. ”Budget”, ”Budget v2”, ”Stretch budget”, that users can switch between.

The metric name is used to specify the name of the metric. Note that, if you change the name of a metric in Steep, the name needs to be updated in your target table as well.

The time column is used to specify dates that represents the start date of each period depending on the time grain. For example 2022-04-01 for April on a monthly time grain or 2022-04-04 for Week of Apr 4 on a weekly time grain.

Targets can optionally be defined for one or more dimension values. Include dimension and dimension_value in your table to define targets for a specific dimension value. It is possible to define targets for metric total in parallel with multiple dimensions and dimension values for the same target series and metric.

Target table format

seriesmetrictimevaluedimensiondimension_value
Budget 2024registrations2024-01-0110000
Budget 2024registrations2024-04-0112000
Budget 2024registrations2024-07-0115000
Budget 2024registrations2024-10-0120000
Budget 2024registrations2024-01-011500countryUS
Budget 2024registrations2024-04-011500countryUS
Budget 2024registrations2024-07-011500countryUS
Budget 2024registrations2024-10-011400countryUS
Budget 2024registrations2024-01-012000countryDE
Budget 2024registrations2024-04-012000countryDE
Budget 2024registrations2024-07-012500countryDE
Budget 2024registrations2024-10-012500countryDE
Budget 2024registrations2024-01-011000segmentWomen 25-40
Budget 2024registrations2024-04-011100segmentWomen 25-40
Budget 2024registrations2024-07-011200segmentWomen 25-40
Budget 2024registrations2024-10-011300segmentWomen 25-40

Time grain

Steep will automatically interpret the time grain of your target series. This is done by looking at the difference between the first two dates in each series. You can always double check that the correct time grain was interpreted by looking at the target settings page.

Note: Steep does its best to aggregate/average the defined target data between time grains dynamically so that the user always gets a target line on their chart regardless of time grain. However, this is currently not possible for Custom value and Unique count metrics. For those metric types, we recommend defining the target data in the time grain in which the metrics will be most commonly viewed.

Registering the table

To register your targets table in Steep, go to Settings → Targets → select the targets table from your database.

Caching

Target data fetched from your targets table will be cached by Steep for 1 hour. In the rare case that you want to clear the cache after a major change to the source data, you can do that manually by changing your targets table setting eg. by removing it and adding it back.

Add targets to widgets

Once you have your targets table registered you can choose to add your target to a widget on your home screen. Learn how to add a Target to a widget.

Add targets to metrics

Targets automatically show up for all metrics with a matching name

View targets

Once set up everyone can see how your metrics perform against a target while exploring a metric...

Targets over a metric

...and for widgets when the target is toggled on.

Target in a widget