Erica set this challenge this week, an extension of the classic actual vs target visual that is very common in business dashboards. She provided a customised data set based on Superstore Sales which included some target values.

Building the basic viz

Add Order Date to Filter shelf and restrict to the Year 2023 only. Then add Order Date to Columns and set to the discrete (blue) month level. Add Profit to Rows. Change the mark type to bar.

Add Target Profit to Rows. Change the mark type on the Target Profit marks card to Gantt Bar. Make the chart dual axis and synchronise the axis. Remove Measure Names from the All marks card. Adjust the colour of the gantt bar to grey.

Note – it is possible to add the Target Profit as a reference line. However the width of the line will span the whole width of the ‘space’ allowed for a single month, and can’t be adjusted. Putting Target Profit on its own axis means the width of the bars can differ from the width of the gantt bar which in turn differs from the profit tolerance area we’ll add next.

Adding the tolerance bands

Create a new parameter

pTolerance

Float value defaulted to 0.05 that is displayed as % to 0 dp. Set the range from 0 to 1 with 0.01 increments.

Then create

Target Tolerance Min

SUM([Target Profit]) * (1-[pTolerance])

and

Target Tolerance Max

SUM([Target Profit]) * (1+[pTolerance])

Add both these fields to the Detail shelf on the All marks card. Right click on the Profit axis and Add Reference Line. Add a reference band per cell, which gors from the Target Tolerance Min to the Target Tolerance Max field. Set all Labels & Tooltips to None. Fill the band with a light grey.

Colouring the bars

Create a calculated field

Colour – Bar

IF SUM([Profit]) < [Target Tolerance Min] THEN ‘red’ ELSEIF SUM([Profit]) > [Target Tolerance Max] THEN ‘blue’
ELSE ‘grey’
END

Add this the Colour shelf of the Profit marks card, and adjust the colours to suit. Reduce the opacity of the colour to 85%.

Reduce the Size of the bars slightly, so they are narrower than the Gantt lines.

Finalising the chart

Create a new field

Profit Diff From Target

(SUM([Profit])-SUM([Target Profit]))/SUM([Target Profit])

format to % with 0 dp, and add this field to the Detail shelf of the All marks card.

In addition, format Profit and Profit Target to be $ with 0 dp.

Add Profit, Profit Target, Order Date as a discrete (blue) pill set to the Year level, to Detail too.

Adjust the Tooltip accordingly.

The right click on the right hand Target Profit axis and uncheck show header to hide the axis. Remove all column and row dividers. Remove the title from the Profit axis, and hide the Order Date header label (right click > hide field labels for columns).

Show the pTolerance parameter and test the functionality.

Building the legend

This is a sneaky way to build a legend using the data source available. It relies on using a field that isn’t in use, that has at least 3 dimensions. In this case I chose Region.

Add Region to Columns and exclude West. Right click on the Region field in the data pane and select Aliases. Add an alias for each of the other values to marry up to the legend names.

Manually resort the Regions on the sheet so they are listed in the correct order.

Double click into the Rows shelf and type MIN(1). Edit the axis to fix it to run from 0-1. Add Region to colour and adjust colours accordingly. Reduce opacity to 85% to.

Adjust the height and width of the display and you can see how it starts to look like the required legend.

Hide the axis and remove all gridlines. Adjust the font of the header labels. Hide the Region label heading and stop tooltips from displaying.

The final step is just the then add the two sheets onto a dashboard with the pTolerance parameter displayed too.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna