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Comments > Author

Tom Williams avatar
Written by Tom Williams
Updated this week

Dataset: Comments

Entity: Comments

Field ID: author_username

Type: Text

Description: The username of the person who created the comment. Note that usernames are app-specific.

Source: App

Transformation logic: N/A

From:

Github (Comments)

author

Gitlab (Comments)

author

Bitbucket (Comments)

user

Azure DevOps (Comments)

author

JIRA (Comments)

author

ClickUp (Comments)

user

Trello (Comments)

idMemberCreator

Reporting Use Cases

The Author field from the Comments dataset is essential for understanding who is participating in discussions, identifying your team's most active communicators, and analyzing the flow of feedback. As a text field, it is primarily used for filtering and as a dimension for grouping.

  • Filtering for Specific Contributors: You can easily scope your reports to focus on comments from specific individuals or to exclude noise.

    • Track Individual Activity: Create a report showing all comments made by a specific person, with a filter like Author = "jane.doe".

    • Exclude Bots: A common use case is to filter out automated comments from bots to focus on human interaction, using a filter like Author !~ "bot".

    • Personal View: Use the is me operator to create a widget that shows all the comments you have made.

  • Reporting on Engagement and Workload: Using this field as a dimension allows you to see who is most active in discussions.

    • Top Commenters: A bar chart with Author as the dimension and COUNT() as the metric will instantly show you who your most active commenters are.

    • Comment Distribution: By adding a second dimension like Parent Type, you can analyze who tends to comment more on "issues" versus "pull requests."

  • Custom Formulas for Advanced Analysis: You can use this field to create more nuanced metrics about your communication patterns.

    • Peer vs. Self-Comments: You can distinguish between an author commenting on their own pull request and a peer providing feedback. The formula COUNT_IF(author_username != parent_author_username) will count only the comments made by someone other than the PR author.

    • Number of Unique Commenters: A KPI with the formula COUNT_DISTINCT(author_username) can measure the breadth of participation in discussions over a given period.

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