---
title: Universal exploration overview
slug: analytics/docs/VDVT-universal-exploration-overview
docTags: 
createdAt: 2026-07-20T15:45:27.652Z
---

In Analytics, you can create visual explorations with analytic building blocks. The universal exploration template lets you do free-form analytics, so you can slice and dice multiple measures using attributes, filters, and segments like you do with other Analytics exploration templates. But instead of a specific product analytics style analysis, you can combine Business Intelligence (BI) and event analytics. Additional capabilities include segmentation by cohorts, configuring the number of top 'N' segments, and period-over-period comparison.

The following screenshot shows a universal exploration template that calculates the sum of campaign revenue, the number of unique actors that performed an event, and the revenue made during each user session.

![opti-univ-1.png](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/BrbvVORKJ5iIeSMZye5kI/To7LC27yxreyUSflVsg5F-20260720-144856.png)

## Prerequisites[​](http://localhost:3000/documentation/docs/Explore%20Data/universal_explore#pre-requisites)

Before you create explorations inside Analytics, you must [create datasets](docId\:ceeHwVegmTgp3ZecBx86k) and [connect to your data sources](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/33903147727885-Connect-to-Data-Sources).