Virtual Sources

Virtual Sources is a new useful functionality of VoC Store that was designed to extend the possibilities of visualizing several different data sources at once.

Virtual Sources allow to aggregate different data sources (VoC Feedback Surveys and VoC Store Uploads) within a new consolidated one. Within a virtual source, you can easily form virtual columns from the columns of initial sources as well as manage their titles and types.

Virtual Sources are also extremely helpful when it comes to aggregating Survey results gathered from different channels. Before there was a need to create several gadgets in VoC Visual to represent results of each separate Survey channel, but now this inconvenience can be avoided by combining all the channels' results into one cumulative virtual source.

For example, there is a Survey and an Upload that both contain NPS values representing your customers’ net promoter score regarding the same product or service. With Virtual Sources you can combine all the answers to the NPS Question of the Survey with the NPS column of your VoC Store Upload. While you will be able to visualize NPS values from these two sources at once as a regular solid source, the original data sources will be left unaffected and can be used for a separate analysis or as a part of another virtual source.

Creating a Virtual Source

To create a new Virtual Source, please go to the VoC Store → Virtual Sources menu and click on the + Create button at the top right side of the page.

A window for creating a virtual source will show up prompting to set a title for the new virtual source and to add columns and sources to the virtual source as well. Please keep in mind, that the title for the virtual source is required.

There is no difference between what to create in the first place: columns for the virtual source or data sources to be aggregated. For this manual, let’s add several data sources first.

Click on the Add source button. You will be displayed a dropdown element, in which you can select a source for being used for the virtual source. You can either choose a VoC Feedback Survey or a VoC Store Upload since Virtual Sources accept both types of sources.

You can filter out the sources to be displayed in the drop-down list by clicking on the filter icon on the left side of the drop-down element. There is a filter for sources in Virtual Sources to have an option to search one by survey ID, the name or type of survey.

When several sources are selected, let’s proceed with adding columns for the virtual source.
Click on the Add column button below the title of the virtual source.

A new column will be added to the right from the title of the virtual source. Enter a title for your new aggregated column and select a data type this column will be assigned to from the drop-down list.

Then, select an available column that corresponds with the type of virtual source column for every chosen data source.

In release 11.14.0, the new data type "VOICE" is added to the drop-down list.

Important: This new data type is available only for the IVR channel. 

Choosing this type of data gives an opportunity to synchronize the virtual source with VOC CI and using VOC CI functionality listen to the audio file from the question. Click on the audio file and in a new window the audio player appears. 

Please note: The drop-down list of available columns will display only those columns that correspond with the column type chosen for a virtual source.

If there is no available column for the data source or you want to replace values of some original source’s column with a fixed value or not to display the value at all - you can select “Fixed value” or "No value" in the drop-down menu and enter a value for it. In case you’ll leave a “Fixed value” field blank - the results from this column will be displayed as “No value” segment in VoC Visual. A fixed value will be displayed instead of actual ones in your virtual source.

Please note: a fixed value needs to be of the same type as the virtual column’s one.

When your Virtual Source is set up, click on the blue Save button at the bottom of the Virtual Sources window and your first virtual source will be created.

You may also reorder the columns in the following way:

Managing Virtual Sources

You can manage your virtual sources by going to the VoC Store → Virtual sources menu. There will be a list of all virtual sources that you’ve created along with the creation date, date of last virtual source’s update, list of sources used for the virtual source and available actions.

Here is a list of available actions that can be performed with a Virtual Source:

	A button Info gives you the information about the description and dashboards.
	Here you can see the Roles - who is an owner of the virtual source and who can view it.
	A button that allows to Share the rights of the vitrual source with other people. You can select the level of the access to grant - viewer, editor, full.
	This action allows you to Download the source.
	You can Recode variables for the chosen Virtual Source by clicking on this icon. More information on recoding is available here.
­	This action allows to Edit a Virtual Source.
	This action allows to Copy a Virtual Source.
­	By clicking on this icon you can Delete a Virtual Source. When pressing the "Delete" button the popup window will show up, showing where this source is currently used (virtual sources, classifiers, records, queries, gadgets).

Visualizing results of a Virtual Source

Data from a Virtual source can be visualized in VoC Visual with Super Gadget. Virtual source is treated in the same way as a regular source (a survey or an upload) and it can be selected from the drop-down list of available sources in the Super Gadget settings.
You can always distinguish a virtual source from the regular one by the blue label “Virtual”.

Other settings and the list of available chart types depend on the column type that was chosen in the Select column form.