Editing sparklines

To edit a sparkline, display the report in Design mode and double-click the cell that contains the sparkline.

The Sparkline Properties dialog has these buttons and options:

Sparkline Data

The Sparkline Data field shows the basis of the sparkline. That is, it displays Children, Descendants or, for spreadsheet based sparklines, the references of the cells which contain the source data.

Sparkline button

The Edit button is displayed for Children and Descendants sparklines. Click it to open the Sparkline Wizard. You can change any of the parameters on which the sparkline is based but you cannot change the basis of the sparkline from Children to Descendants or from Descendant to Children.

Type

You can select these types of sparkline:

  • Line
  • Column
  • Benchmark
  • Win/Loss
  • Bar

Click the current sparkline type and select a type from the menu.

Colors

For all types of sparkline you can specify the color of the line or bars of the sparkline and whether to highight any or all of these values:

  • First Value
  • Last Value
  • Highest Value
  • Lowest Value
  • Negative

You can specify the color used to highlight each value.

For line, column and bar sparklines, you can specify the color used to indicate negative values.

For Benchmark and Win/Loss sparklines, you can specify the color used to indicate losing values.

To specify a color, select the appropriate value-type check box and select a color from the Color Picker.

Options

For Line and Benchmark sparklines, the Options button is enabled.

For Line sparklines, you can specify whether markers are displayed for each data point which is not the first, last, highest or lowest value.

If markers are displayed, you can specify their color.

To specify the width of the sparkline, select a value in the Line Width list.

For Benchmark sparklines, you can specify the height of the benchmark and the color of the line which divides values above the benchmark from those below. The height of the benchmark can be a numerical value or it can be derived from, for example, a variable.

To specify the height of the benchmark, specify a numerical value in the Benchmark value field. Or, click the browse button and specify a formula which specifies the height of the benchmark. For example, if the height of the benchmark is specified in a report variable, specify ="ReportVariables.[variable_name].Text" in the Benchmark value field.

Empty cells

You can specify how empty values are represented by a sparkline. The options are:

  • Gap: Leave a gap in the sparkline
  • Span: Interpolate the value from the previous and subsequent values (Line sparklines only)
  • Zero: Represent the empty value as a zero value

Grouping and Axis options

If you define a sparkline in a value cell of a hyperblock, the sparkline is generated once for every element of the list and displayed in View mode.

For example, if you create a sparkline in the shared value cell of overlapping horizontal and vertical hyperblocks, View mode displays sparklines in the cells of each column and row of the report.

By default, the sparklines in the columns and rows are grouped and all share the same scaling. But if, for example, there is a large variance between the high and low values in the data, the sparklines in the group might not show sufficient detail. Depending on the range of values, and on which features of the data are important to highlight, it can be useful to scale each sparkline individually. Or, you exclude unusually high or low values by specifying the minimum and maximum values.

To specify how sparklines are scaled, click Axis and select options in the Y-Axis Minimum and Y-Axis Maximum fields. The options are:

  • For whole group: All sparklines in the group share the same scaling
  • For each sparkline: Each sparkline has its own scale
  • User defined: The sparklines will represent only values between the minimum and maximum values which you specify

You might also want to ungroup the sparklines or specify that only the sparklines in the rows or columns of the report share the same scaling.

To specify how sparklines are grouped:

  1. Click the icon at the top right of the Sparkline Properties dialog. The icon indicates the current grouping option.
  2. Click a grouping option.

The grouping options are:

  • Group All
  • Group Horizontally
  • Group Vertically
  • Ungroup

If you have specified colors to highlight the highest and lowest values, you can specify whether highlighting applies to the group or to the individual sparklines. By default, the highest and lowest value in each sparkline are highlighted. To highlight only the highest and lowest values in the group, click Axis > Highest and Lowest values for all group. .

Use the Normalize Y-Axis option to specify whether a sparkline represents actual values or the difference between them. By default, the Y-axis is normalized. That is, the difference between the values is represented.

For example, if you create a column sparkline from the spreadsheet values 10000, 10001 and 10002, the columns of the sparkline look like three steps. But if you clear the Normalize Y-Axis check box, the three columns are of the same height. That is, the difference in the actual values is too small to be represented. It is only when the values differ by approximately 500 that the differences become apparent in a non-normalized column sparkline.

If required, you can display the X-axis in sparklines and specify its color. Click Axis > Show X-Axis. and pick a color.