Creating a Report in Visualizer

Tip: Review the basic screen components at Getting Started with Visualizer.

Visualizer gives you flexibility in how you get started creating a report. First, you:

Then you can either:

Also consider:

To create tabular view of your data, see Working with Tabular Reports.

To create a chart view of your data, see Working with Chart Reports.

To access Subject Areas in Visualizer

Visualizer supports multiple Subject Areas including custom ones set up by the Space Administrator. See Creating a Custom Subject Area.

You can select attributes and measures from multiple subject areas for use in a report.

  1. In the top menu bar, click Subject Area.

    Tip: If you know the name or partial name of an attribute or measure, click the Search button to locate it. The search function returns the fully-qualified names in the Search results, allowing you to pick between objects from multiple subject areas.
    Visualizer displays a list of the available subject areas.
  2. Select a Subject Area to access its attributes and measures.
    • Note: The Subject Area Translation Settings and the Import Data buttons have moved, as shown in the following image:
  3. Navigate up and down the subject area lists to add attributes and measures to a report.

Note: The Expression Editor Basic mode now displays attributes and measures from multiple subject areas to build your expressions.

Starting with Data

When you are familiar with your data, use Search to quickly find the columns to build your report. When you are not familiar with the columns available in your data, browse the measures and attributes in the Subject Area to see them.

Note: You can rest your cursor over a column with a long name to fully display the column name. If a column name is longer than two line paths, the column name is cut off with "..." and is not fully displayed.

To create a report starting with data

Best Practice: Start with a measure.

  1. In Visualizer, locate a measure by either:
  • In Search, start typing the name of a measure.  Visualizer searches all of the measures, attributes, and folders in the subject areas of the space.

    Or:
  • In the Subject Area, click Measures to browse the list of measures.

    Tip: When the name of the attribute or measure includes an underscore (_) or period (.), those characters are omitted from the name in the Subject Area and other parts of the Visualizer interface.
  1. Select a measure by either:
  • Clicking the name of the measure. (no longer need to double-click)
    Or:
  • Dragging and dropping it onto the Canvas.
    Visualizer adds the column to the appropriate bucket in the Chart Builder and builds a visualization on the Canvas. By default, it creates a column chart as indicated by the column icon on the tab next to the measure. Note: The Visualizer Chart Builder menu can disappear in a web browser (Chrome, Firefox etc.) if you change the browser font size in the browser settings menu, from medium (recommended) to large or extra-large. If you revert the font size back to Medium, it will restore the staging menu.
  1. To see important details about the measure, hover over it in the Chart Builder.
  2. To change the properties of a measure, in the Chart Builder click the measure and select from the list of options.

    You can change:
  • Aggregation: Count distinct, count, average, maximum, minimum, or sum.
  • Date type: By Order_Date, Ship_Date, or other date types that exist in the underlying data model.
  • Time series type: Current, trailing 12 months (TTM), trailing 3 months, month ago (MAGO), quarter ago (QAGO), year ago (YAGO), quarter to-date (QTD), year to-date (YTD).
    Tip: If you change the time series type, you also need to add a Time attribute such as Time.Month, Time.Quarter, Time.Year to the report.
  • Chart types: Shows the current chart type and lets you change to another type of chart.
  • Data formatting: See Formatting the Data in a Visualizer Chart and Formatting Visualizer Tabular Reports.
  • Calculations: This option appears after you add an attribute along with the measure. See Changing Measure Calculations.
  1. To change the label of an attribute or measure, first double-click on its name in Chart Builder, to show its properties list. Then double-click the property name to open the edit box, type the new name, and click Apply (the check box).
  2. Click Subject Area to go back and find the attributes.
  3. Add an attribute.
    Chart Builder adds the attribute to Category and plots a bar chart.

Tips:

  • At any time if you want to clear the current report and start over, click Create a New Chart.

  • You can drag a column from one section (also called a "bucket") in Chart Builder to another, such as when you want to filter or sort on a column.
  • To delete a measure or attribute, drag the name of the measure or attribute from the Chart Builder to the Subject Area and drop it on the Trash.
  • Click on items in the legend to hide or show objects in the visualization. Click the legend icon if you want to show only the selected item (and hide everything else in the visualization). Click the name in the legend to show everything except the selected item.  
  • Visualizer has a 50,000 row limit for tabular data and 2,000 points/rows for chart data.
  1. Add any other attributes and measures. Some chart types require columns to be added as colors, shapes or sizes. You can also create trellis charts.
  2. Add filters or change the way the data is sorted as needed.
  3. Optionally, change the style of the chart by changing its chart type.
  4. If needed, you can create an expression and add it to your visualization.
  5. You can change the axis labels.
  6. Click Save .

Print Settings

After saving, you can use the Print option to configure the print settings of your report. Note: The Print option is only available to users with the Enable Download ACL. The following chart types do not support Print: Spline, Areaspline, Points, Semi-donut, and Geomap.

Note: The following chart types do not support Print Report: Spline, Areaspline, Points, Semi-donut, Benchmark/Treadline, and Geomap.

  1. Select Print.

  2. From the Print Preview screen, you can set the print parameters for the report include page size, page orientation, page width, page height, and margin size. As you make changes to the settings, you will see the changes reflected on the preview image.
  3. Users can Save Configuration to a Visualizer report. When this is checked, the print settings on the Visualizer report will be used as the default print settings when that report is embedded as a dashlet on the dashboard. Note: The report must have been saved before this option is available.
  4. Select Print. A PDF of the report will download to your computer. If you checked Save Configuration, the configuration for your report will save.

Starting with a Chart Type

If you have in mind the type of chart you'd like to create, you can start creating your report by selecting a chart type. Visualizer provides guidance on how to create the chart.

To create a report by selecting the type of chart

  1. In Visualizer, click Change Visualization. It shows you the types of available charts.
  2. Select the visualization type you want to use.  
    Visualizer indicates what attributes and measures are needed to create the report type. Many charts need only one measure and one attribute. Others, such as bubble charts, need more data in order to create a highly useful visualization.

    The Chart Builder shows only the sections that are applicable to the chart type. The sections that display (such as Color and Size) differ depending on the chart type you select.
  3. Add measures and attributes and save the report as described in the previous section.

Undo and Redo

You can undo and redo most operations from the Visualizer menu bar or by pressing Cntrl-Z/Cntrl-Shift-Z or Command-Z/Command-Shift-Z.

Undo/redo can apply to the last 20 actions. When you save or save-as a report, Visualizer resets the undo/redo history.

Important: Undo/redo is not available when using the Explore in Visualizer feature.

Undo/redo applies to most report-building activities including chart formatting.

Tip: In the Chart Formatting pane, use the keyboard commands. See Keyboard Shortcuts.

The following operations cannot be undone/redone:

  • Toggling Delay Charting mode
  • Uploading custom maps
  • Saved expressions
  • Saving and renaming files
  • Editing Column Selectors
  • Color palette creation
  • Advanced conditional formatting
  • Clicking a legend to hide columns
  • Creating and saving expressions in the Expression Editor
  • End User Data Blending

Delay Charting Mode for Improved Productivity

By default Visualizer builds your charts and tables as you drag-and-drop attributes, measures, etc. When you build a more complicated report and you are familiar with its objects, you may want to avoid the time spent re-rendering the reports. The Delay Charting option caused the report to be rendered when you want it.

To delay rendering

  1. From the Settings menu toggle Delay Charting. It is available for both tabular and chart style reports.


    The work area displays the Render button.
  2. Drag-and-drop your measures and attributes. The Chart Builder shows what is in the report but the work area does not show the report yet.
  3. Click the Render button.

    Visualizer renders the chart or table, and resets the mode.

  4. To delay rendering again, click Settings - Delay Charting.

The Result Set Limit for Authoring Mode

When you are creating a report, by default Visualizer limits the number of rows in a query result to 100. This is indicated in the Visualizer toolbar.

While creating a report, If the total number of data points in the report are 100 or more, you see a message "Top 100 data points being visualized. Please change the limit to visualize more data points."

Tip: The default top 100 results are the first rows returned by the query. This is not exactly the same as "Top N" which requires that a sort be applied. See Visualize Top N Results.

Important: Before saving a report, check to make sure the Top N provides what you want for your business users. For example, "All" may be too many rows and may affect performance. Alternatively, 100 rows may not be enough.

To change the result set limit

  1. Click the icon.
  2. Click the Custom button.
  3. Enter the new number.

  4. Click Apply.

Next Steps