SPLK-1001 Practice Question: Creating Reports, Dashboards and Visualizations
You are a Splunk analyst for a financial services firm. You need to create a weekly report for management showing the total transaction value and number of transactions per day, broken down by transaction type (credit, debit, transfer). The data is in index=transactions with fields: trans_date, trans_type, amount. The report should be sent via email every Monday morning at 8 AM. You have created a report with the search: `index=transactions | timechart sum(amount) by trans_type`. However, the timechart shows only one series because the trans_type field has multiple values. You need to fix the search so that it correctly separates by trans_type. Additionally, you need to schedule the report. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Splunk often tests the distinction between `makemv` (which works on space-delimited or newline-delimited multivalue fields) and `split`/`mvexpand` (which handles custom delimiters like commas), leading candidates to incorrectly choose `makemv` for comma-separated data.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use `| eval trans_type=split(trans_type, ",") | mvexpand trans_type | timechart sum(amount) by trans_type`.
The trans_type field contains multiple values in a single field (e.g., 'credit,debit,transfer'), so you must first split the values using `split()` and then expand them with `mvexpand` before using `timechart` to correctly separate the series. This ensures each transaction type is treated as an individual event for the aggregation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add `| stats sum(amount) by _time, trans_type` before timechart.
Why it's wrong here
Timechart already groups by time; this would cause double grouping.
- ✓
Use `| eval trans_type=split(trans_type, ",") | mvexpand trans_type | timechart sum(amount) by trans_type`.
Why this is correct
Handles multivalue fields.
- ✗
Use `| chart sum(amount) by trans_type` instead of timechart.
Why it's wrong here
Loses daily breakdown.
- ✗
Use `| makemv trans_type | timechart sum(amount) by trans_type`.
Why it's wrong here
Makemv may not split correctly if delimiter is not space.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SPLK-1001 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Splunk certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SPLK-1001 exam.