New Customization Enhancements for Reports in MTM 8.1.2 – A Q&A with Product Manager, Eric Matson

New year, New MTM enhancements. The MTM 8.1.2 release focuses on two key areas: reporting and dashboard user experience. We sat down with Product Manager, Eric Matson to once again get an inside view on what went into this release and how customers of the MTM L&D effectiveness solution will benefit from it.

Q: What are the main themes of the MTM 8.1.2 release?

The main theme is increased customization of the MTM reporting experience. From setting custom color thresholds in Ready Reports to additional trend scale configurations in Dashboards, we wanted to ensure that clients can easily leverage MTM reporting to meet their business needs and goals.

Q: What was behind the making of MTM 8.1.2? What were the key drivers behind the selection of its themes and features?

All of the items in this release were sourced through feature suggestions from clients. Some, like including N-Count on dashboard card widgets, make it easier to monitor performance. Others, like the custom color thresholds, help strengthen the value of the Ready Report suite by creating parity with legacy reports in a more intuitive way.

The feature I am most excited about is Adjusted Trend Scale in Dashboards. Users have told us that their data tends to cluster together, making it difficult to tell trend lines apart and detect subtle variations over time. What made this an interesting use case was that blowing up the scale opens the possibility for misinterpretations because a subtle increase looks a lot more significant when you’re zoomed in. Therefore, whatever enhancement we introduced needed to not only solve the pain point but also make it clear to the user that they are looking at a truncated range. Through collaboration with DevOps and the Consulting team, our solution – the Adjusted Scale – dynamically “zooms in” to focus on the client’s data, but also adds visual indicators to the widget calling out that it has been adjusted.

Q: From a customer standpoint, what’s in it for them?

8.1.2 gives users more options to customize and adapt MTM’s best practices to their own business needs. For example, clients who use the Course Summary Report’s excel heatmap now are able to set their own color-coding thresholds, selecting a value that aligns with their organizational goals vs our recommended ± 4%. This is especially useful for clients who consistently perform above the benchmark or for those who are focused on incremental improvement.

Similarly, users can further customize their Class Based Report emails by including Start and End date tags, ensuring report recipients know exactly which learning event is covered in the attachment.

Lastly, channel organizations with Dashboards are now able to share dashboards they create with other users and groups, making it easier to distribute reporting standards at scale across an entire organization.

Q: Can you provide a couple of highlights around the MTM 8.1.2 working experience?

Every release is the result of great teamwork and collaboration from Product Management, UX, DevOps, our client facing teams, and more. MTM 8.1.2 was certainly no exception – to give the story of Adjusted Trend Scale as an example. I would like to thank the following for making this release possible:

• UX Design – Arnaud Friedel
• MTM DevOps – Abdul Rahman, Balaji Kothandapani, Kesavan Rajendran, Ravishankar Rajappa, Satheesh Ramani, Raphael Gera
• Consulting & Client Success: Christopher Lebrun, Justin Taylor, Steve Lange, John Heffernon, Rahsaan Guyon, Bethany Remely, Dave Gamblin.

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