Creating Metrics

Metrics are the core of how Athenic turns questions into consistent, repeatable answers. They are defined aggregations that can be used on their own or combined to provide answers in your data.

Athenic supports two metric levels:

• Simple metrics are created automatically from your Semantic Models. When you mark a column as a Metric (or enable supported aggregations on Time/Category fields), Athenic promotes it into a metric that can be queried immediately.

• Advanced metrics are created in the Governed Metrics panel. They are built from existing metrics (simple or advanced) and support more complex logic (e.g., ratios, derived formulas, offsets, and component-level filtering).

Common Fields

The following fields apply to all metrics: simple, ratio, cumulative, and derived metrics.

Label (Required)

A unique name for the metric across your project. This is the name users will select in questions, charts, and AI prompts.

Description (Required)

A human-readable explanation of what the metric represents. Use this to capture intent and business meaning so both the AI and users can interpret the metric correctly (including any important assumptions like inclusions/exclusions).

• Make sure the description covers synonyms or acronyms your users may use to refer to this metric

Type (Required for Advanced Metrics)

Select the metric type you want to create (Cumulative, Ratio, Derived). The type determines which configuration fields appear next.