What is happening?
Later this year, as part of N-central version 2025.4, we will automatically change the scope for the data N-central sends to the Analytics data warehouse from the ‘full’ data option to the ‘minimal’ data option.
How does this change impact you?
This change has no impact on what you can use Analytics for, or which data you can access through Analytics.
However, it enhances the reliability of data being sent to the Analytics warehouse, improving the data accuracy in Direct Data Access, dashboards, and reports. For on-premise partners, it might also reduce the cost associated with servers sending data to Analytics.
(see ‘Why is this happening?’ below for why that is)
Does this impact the data available through Report Manager?
No. While the N-central database is the source system for both Analytics and Report Manager the two don’t receive exactly the same data points. The setting shown above is only relevant to the data being sent to Analytics, so Report Manager is not affected by this.
What do you need to do?
You don’t need to do anything; the change will be applied automatically as part of 2025.4 but if you want to make sure today that Analytics is setup to be as reliable as possible, you can make the change themselves now.
To do so, you need to log into N-central with a product admin account. Navigate to the Service Organization level > Administration > Analytics Data Export
Select the “Only export minimal…” option under the ‘Scope’ header (see image above)
Why is this happening / What is the difference between the two options?
The two options were introduced when Analytics was first released in Preview. The ‘minimal’ option meant N-central servers would generate and send only the data needed for the Analytics dashboards available at the time, while the ‘full’ option would make a much larger data set available to Analytics, regardless of if it was consumed by the Analytics warehouse (and subsequently visible to partners through DDA and/or dashboards) or not.
As the product has evolved so has the ’minimal’ data option and today everything we make available to partners, either through dashboards and reports in the N-central UI, or via Direct Data Access, is available by selecting that ‘minimal’ data option.
This means the ‘full’ data option is redundant as it provides no additional capabilities or data in Analytics. Instead, as it causes the N-central server to generate more data than required it puts an unnecessary strain on the ‘data pipeline’ which can lead to issues with the accuracy of even the data that is made available to partners.
To reduce the risk of gaps and errors in the data partners see and access, we have decided it is best to make the ‘minimal’ data option the default option.
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