Digging-in to the new Radian6 Dashboard Improvements

Last week, Radian6 announced a whole raft of improvements to their platform and to their engagement console. Our team uses Radian6 for many clients, and I’ve used the tool for several years now, so I thought I’d take some time to dig into the updates and distill the key improvements for you.

This time around: changes to the Radian6 dashboard.

Key Changes

• Refresh button
• Keyword proximity searches
• Enhanced query support
• Better special character support
• Percentage change analysis
• Quick search function
• Super user functionality
• Google Analytics integration
• Enhanced security

Here’s what they mean to you…

Refresh Button

This feature – a really simple one – is one I’ve been asking for for months now. Nothing flashy; just the ability to refresh widgets by hitting a button instead of waiting for the next refresh or going into the widget settings, toggling a setting then coming back out. Yes, it should have been there already. Yes, I’m happy that it’s there now.

Keyword Proximity Searches

Proximity searching is a logical addition to solve the problem of irrelevant and spam search results. A “proximity slider” lets you choose the maximum distance that can separate your keywords, up to a maximum of 20 words.

Enhanced Queries

Radian6’s lack of boolean or boolean-esque support has been a pain point for me over the last few years. As a result, creating queries has been a time-consuming beast. The latest update simplifies things – instead of creating:

• Term A AND Term B; or
• Term A AND Term C; or
• Term A AND Term D

you can instead easily create the equivalent of:

• Term A AND (Term B OR Term C OR Term D)

Better Character Support

47 additional special characters are now recognized. The main implication: you can specifically identify @replies and hashtags; especially useful when searching for a hashtag that may double as a regular word.

Percentage Change Analysis

In a nod to people using Radian6 to produce regular reports, you can now include a comparison of time periods within your topic analysis widgets.

Quick Search Function

Radian6’s new ‘quick search’ functionality lets you both filter your existing River of News widgets quickly, and quickly create new widgets from the left-hand sidebar. Useful for following a hunch around emerging conversation trends.

Other changes:

• Super Users – power users who can set other users’ permissions (from read-only accounts to folks with full) and create new accounts.
• Google Analytics – adding Google Analytics to the suite of integrations that Radian6 enables. Given the number of sites that use Google Analytics, this could be helpful for many companies.
• Enhanced Security – SSL-enabled login.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an excellent set of new features from Radian6. There’s nothing ground-breaking in here, but for regular users of the dashboard, there are a host of features that should make their lives incrementally easier.

In particular, the query improvements and user administration enhancements should make those overseeing monitoring accounts happy. Meanwhile, the special character recognition, refresh button, percentage change analysis and quick searches will help those using the system on a day-to-basis.

(Coming soon: a look at the changes to the Radian6 engagement console)