Configure a chart

This document describes advanced configuration options for the chart:

  • Chart configuration, including the name, label, documentation, display properties and parameters.

  • [_axes_configuration] to define how axes appear and behave for Column, Bar, Line, Area or Combined charts.

  • Series configuration to configure the display properties of the series in Column, Bar, Line, Area, Combined and Donut charts.

Chart configuration

To configure the chart:

  1. In the chart editor, select the edit Open chart properties toolbar button. The chart properties side nav opens on the Chart tab.

  2. In the sidenav header, use the rename Rename button to change the name and label of the chart.

  3. In the top section:

    • Select a different Query and Chart Type if needed.

    • Select a Required Role to access the chart. This role must be configured in the Semarchy xDM platform.

  4. In the Display properties section, parameterize the chart appearance:

    • For all chart types:

      • Define the position of the chart title using the Label Placement. Select Hidden to mask the title.

      • Select Show Divider to add a thin line between this title and the visualization.

      • Select Enable drilldown to allow users to click on the chart’s shapes or values in order to drill down into the data behind the aggregated measures.

        This behavior may be overridden when the chart is used in a dashboard.
    • For a number chart, configure the target indicator that appears below the metric.

      • Use Show target as to define how this indicator should be computed (as a percentage, difference number, etc).

      • Define a Target goal format for this number, and the colors for a positive or negative variation.

    • For a pivot table chart, define the display properties:

      • Define the rows and columns titles

      • Define the background colors for the row/column headers and the table.

      • Select whether you want to show the row and column totals, and define their background colors.

      • Select whether you want to allow the expand/collapse menu option for this pivot table.

    • For a category chart, that is a sunburst, treemap, column, bar, line, area, Combined, donut or gauge:

      • Select the Palette used for this chart and the Shade/Color for this palette. If not specified, the palette defined at the application level is used.

    • For a sunburst chart, define:

      • The visualization Size and the Hole Size, as a percentage of chart size.

    • For a donut chart, define:

      • The Startup angle for the segments.

      • The visualization Size and the Hole Size, as well as the Spacing between the segment surfaces, as a percentage of chart size.

    • For gauge chart, define:

      • The Minimum value and Maximum values of the gauges.

      • Optionally define a Target goal value.

      • Use the Range maximum values type field to define how the Range 1/2 maximum values are expressed and set these values (as absolute values or percentage of the target goal or maximum value).

      • Define the colors for the three ranges of the gauge.

  5. In the Filters section, optionally create multiple filters to use a subset of the data returned by the query.

    1. Click the Add Filter button.
      The Add filter dialog opens.

    2. Select a query Attribute to filter.

    3. Select an Operator.

    4. Select or enter one or multiple Values depending on the operator.

    5. Click Add

    6. Repeat the previous steps to create multiple filters. These filters are combined with an AND operator.
      You can edit a filter by selecting it in the list and remove a filter using the delete Delete button.

      You can create similar filters on the dashboard charts, to additionally filter the data in the chart when is used in a dashboard. The dashboard chart filters apply on top of the filters defined on the chart itself.
      When filters are applied to the query in a chart, the query appears with a (filtered) suffix in the chart editor.
  6. In the Chart parameters section, select the attributes of the query that may be parameterized to filter the chart content. All the attributes used as dimensions are automatically parameters. When you use this chart, you can pass values to these parameters to filter the chart content.
    For example, if a chart displays the sales for all the brands for all countries, you can pass a brand value to have it display, in a specific context, the sales for that brand for all countries.

  7. In the Documentation section, edit the rich text describing the chart. If the documentation is configured, an information icon appears next to the chart title, to display the documentation text. The Markdown syntax is supported for this text.

Axis configuration

For charts using an axis chart type (Column, Bar, Line, Area or Combined), you can configure the (horizontal) Category Axis and the (vertical) Value Axis.

Combined charts are a specific case. They have two value axes, named Primary Value Axis and Secondary Value Axis. They correspond to the left and right vertical borders of the chart and can be configured separately.

To configure the axes:

  1. In the chart editor, select the edit Open chart properties toolbar button. The chart properties side nav opens.

  2. Select the Axes tab.

  3. In the Categories axis section:

    • Define the Title that appears aside this axis, and unselect Hide title to make it visible.

    • Check Hide label to hide the labels on this axis, and select Show grid to display vertical lines to delimit the categories.

    • Define the Truncation length for large labels.

    • Select Group Labels to merge adjacent categories with the same label.

  4. In the Value axis section (or in the Primary/Secondary Value Axis section for a combined chart):

    • Define the Title of the axis, and whether you want the title, grid, and labels visible. Define the truncation for these labels.

    • Define the Stacking method used for the series on this axis:

      • Clustered: Show data from multiple data series in clusters of shapes (for example, clusters of horizontal or vertical bars).

      • Stacked: Show data from multiple data series in stacked shapes (for example, horizontally or vertically stacked bars).

      • Stacked 100%: Show the relative percentage of multiple data series in stacked bars or areas, where the total (cumulative) of the stacked bar or area always equals 100%.

    • Optionally define explicit axis boundaries with a Min value and a Max value.

    • Optionally define a fixed Interval between labels/grid lines along this axis, or a Minimum interval.

      If you do not define the interval explicitly, it is automatically computed based on the mix/max values, or the data point values. The minimum interval defines the lower limit for the computed interval.
    • Define the Axis scale (Linear or Logarithmic) and Logarithmic base. Note that the logarithmic scale is more suitable when the values are distributed on a large range.

    • Define a fixed Target goal that will be materialized as a dotted line on the axis to indicate the expected goal for the values. This line is drawn in the Target goal color.

Series configuration

For charts supporting series (Column, Bar, Line, Area, Combined, Donut), you can configure how these series appear using the Series tab of the chart properties.
You can configure a default set of properties applied to all the series in the chart as well as exceptions for specific series.

To configure the series:

  1. In the chart editor, select the edit Open chart properties toolbar button. The chart properties side nav opens.

  2. Select the Series tab. In this tab:

    • The Series dropdown lists all the series from the chart. When you select a series in this list, the property values displayed in the tab apply to this series only. A <Default> item in the Series dropdown list allows configuring the values applied by default to the series.

    • When the <Default> dropdown is selected, click the Reset all series button to remove all series-specific configuration and have all series use the <Default> configuration.

    • When a series is selected, click the Reset series button to remove the configuration for this series and have it use the <Default> configuration.

  3. In the Series dropdown list, select a specific series that you want to configure, or <Default>.

  4. If you are using a combined chart, configure the axis for this series in the Axes section:

    • Value Axis defines whether values for this series should be on the primary or secondary axis.

    • Chart type defines the type of chart to use for this series on this axis.

  5. If the selected chart supports it, configure how the Shapes appear:

    • Point shape, Point size and Point filled configure how data points appear for example on a line chart.

    • Line style, Line interpolation configure how lines are drawn for example line and combined charts.

    • Line or border color, Fill color configure the fill and border colors of the shapes and lines in charts.

  6. If the selected chart supports it, configure how Labels appear when you move your mouse over a point or shape representing a data point:

    • Show data labels activates these labels on mouse over and Placement defines where the label appears relative to the data point.

    • Show series as and Show categories as define whether and how the series and categories values should be displayed, that is with or without their labels first.

    • Show value adds the measure value to the label.

    • Show percentage adds the percentage represented by the measure value in the series to the label.

    • Show measure label adds the measure’s label before the value and percentage.