Compare

Compare puts two cohorts side by side and tells you what separates them — in numbers, in behaviour through the process, and in a short plain-English summary written from those numbers. It answers the question every filter eventually raises: "these are different, but how?"

What Compare answers

A filter tells you what a group looks like. Compare tells you what makes it different from something else: which attributes are more or less common in it, whether it ends in different places, takes different routes, waits in different spots, and by how much.

Open it from Compare in the project sidebar. You can also arrive with a cohort already chosen: a copilot answer can link here with its filter carried, and Explain this group on Explore does the same whenever a filter is active.

Choosing the two cohorts

Across the top are two pickers, Cohort A (green) and Cohort B (purple). Each can be:

• Current filters — whatever is active in the project right now, with the number of filters in brackets. Under the picker, each active filter is listed on its own line, so you can see exactly what this side means
• All objects — every object of the lens type
• Previous period — the current filters with their timeframe slid back by its own length. This needs an active timeframe filter; without one the option is disabled and a link opens the Active Filters panel so you can add one
• A saved filter — every saved filter in the project is listed under Saved filters

Under each picker is a one-line reading of what it resolved to — the filter's name and how many objects of the lens type it holds. Swap A/B in the top-right swaps the two sides. Below the pickers, one plain line states the comparison: "Comparing A (n orders) with B (m orders)".

Your choices are remembered for the project while your browser session lasts, so leaving Compare and coming back keeps both sides. The defaults are Current filters against All objects, so the quickest way in is to apply a filter anywhere in the project and open Compare. If both sides resolve to the same objects — no filter active, say — the page says so in a banner rather than showing you a page of zeroes.

When Cohort A is Current filters, project admins also get Save current filters… under it, which saves the active stack as a named filter without leaving the page.

How the two cohorts overlap

To the right of the pickers, a small diagram shows how the two cohorts relate, with a sentence saying exactly which objects are being measured against which:

• A inside B — the common case, such as a filtered group against All objects. Comparing a group with a superset that contains it only dilutes the difference, so the page compares A against the rest of B, and the labels say so ("All other objects", "Others in …").
• The two overlap — you choose. Count them on both sides compares the two sets exactly as defined; Set the shared ones aside compares only the objects unique to each.
• B inside A — there is nothing outside A to contrast against, so the page offers to swap the sides.

That sentence is worth reading every time. It is the difference between "blocked orders against everything" and "blocked orders against the orders that were never blocked".

Reading the page

The headline tiles

Three tiles compare the basics: the number of objects in each cohort, the median duration and the mean duration (both cycle time: completed objects to their finish, open ones to the latest activity in the data), each with the percentage difference.

In plain English

Below the tiles, Compare writes a short summary of the difference, usually four short paragraphs: what the group is and what it is being measured against, what marks it out, how it moves through the process differently, and what to look at next.

• Every number in the summary is checked against the page's own figures before it appears. If a number cannot be matched, it is dropped rather than shown.
• Underlined phrases are links: click one to jump to the card it came from.
• Copy takes the summary as text; Rewrite asks for it to be written again.
• It says, underneath, that it was written from the numbers below and that it describes associations, not causes. Treat it as a reading of the page, not a verdict on it.

What makes this group different

A ranked list of the conditions that best distinguish Cohort A from the objects it is being compared with. Each row reads like "Had 'Unblock Sales Order' at least once" and shows how much more common the condition is in A. Rows marked only here never appear on the other side.

• Click a row to filter to the objects matching that condition; click again to remove it
• Details on a row shows the evidence, and notes when a finding largely overlaps another or only stands out in combination
• Show more, Less common here and Part of this group's definition open the rest of the list — the last keeps the conditions that are true by construction out of your way
• The footer says how many conditions were tested, and repeats that these are associations, not causes

Behavioural differences

How the two cohorts move through the process, as paired bars with the gap in percentage points (pts):

• Final activity — where objects end up
• Activity mix — the share of events each activity accounts for
• Transition mix — which step-to-step moves are more common
• Variant mix — which whole paths are more common
• Waits — the transitions where one cohort waits notably longer, or a note that there are no meaningful wait differences

Attributes

Then every attribute, ranked by how much the two cohorts differ on it. Categorical attributes show paired bars per value with the pts gap. Numeric attributes show the two distributions overlaid, with a Lin / Log scale switch, each side's mean and the difference between them. Attributes from related objects appear too, labelled with their object type — and so do enrichments, since they are attributes like any other.

Saved charts, compared

At the bottom, charts pinned to the project's Board can be re-run once per cohort and shown side by side. Pick which ones from the chips; only the selected charts run.

Filters and the lens

Compare counts and measures in the lens object type — the header of every tile says "Sales Order", "Invoice", or whichever object the project is centred on. Change the lens and both cohorts are re-resolved for the new object.

Cohort A's default, Current filters, follows the Active Filters panel, including any pinned filter. The other options are fixed: a saved filter means exactly what it meant when it was saved, and All objects means all of them.

Walkthrough: blocked orders in Order to Cash

In the Examples workspace, open Order to Cash and go to Compare.

1. Set Cohort A to the saved filter blocked at some point and leave Cohort B as All objects.
2. The picker shows the saved filter's name and how many sales orders it holds — about a quarter of them. The overlap diagram shows A sitting inside B and says the blocked orders are measured against the other orders in All objects — the rest, not the whole.
3. The tiles show blocked orders taking markedly longer at the median, roughly three days against one, while the means are much closer — a sign that a few slow orders outside the blocked group pull the average up.
4. The plain-English summary opens by restating that comparison, then notes that an unblock event appears only in this group, and ends with what to look at next.
5. What makes this group different leads with Had 'Unblock Sales Order' at least once, marked only here. Click it and you have filtered the project to the blocked orders that were later released — ready to compare again, against the ones that never were.

Working with the rest of the product

• From a filter — apply one anywhere, open Compare, and it is already Cohort A
• From Explore — when a filter is active, Explain this group on Explore opens Compare with that cohort as Cohort A
• From the copilot — a comparison answer can end in a link card ("Compare · 1 filter carried · Sales Order view") that opens this page with the cohort set
• From variants — use the With toggle on the Variants page to filter to a set of paths, then compare those objects with the rest
• Back into filters — every row in What makes this group different is one click from becoming a filter

Next steps

• Filters & Exploration — build the cohorts worth comparing
• Saved Filters — keep a cohort so it appears in the pickers
• Explore — the distributions of a single cohort
• Co-Pilot — ask why the difference exists