Tag: Connect Lines

Playing with Stacks

Donna ColesLeave a comment

For this week’s challenge, Sean Miller introduced multiple ways to get insight from a stacked bar chart. I managed this using 5 sheets and 1 dashboard.

Preparing the data

As the requirement stated only 2024 was to be considered, I chose to add a data source filter (right click data source -> Add Data Source Filter) where the Order Date Year = 2024.

Option 1 : The Analytics Pane

On a new sheet, add Order Date to Columns as a discrete month (blue pill) and Sales to Rows. Format Sales to $ with 0 dp. Change the mark type to bar and add Ship Mode to the Colour shelf.

Format MONTH(Order Date) to display the dates as Abbreviation. Manually move Ship Mode = Same Day in the colour legend so it is listed first. Hide the Order Date heading (right click -> hide field labels for columns).

Add a reference line (right click Sales axis -> add reference line) that sets a reference line per cell to the sum of Sales and displays the Value on the label.

Format the reference line (right click on one of the lines) and align the label top centre. Adjust the Tooltip if required. Add a white border around the bars (via the colour shelf).

Right click on the Ship Mode pill on the Colour shelf and check the Show Highlighter option to display the highlight input box. Test that selecting an option in the highlight box shows a recalculated reference line.

Name this sheet Option 1 or similar.

Option 2 – Dual Axis

Duplicate the Option 1 sheet and rename to Option 2 or similar.

We will capture the selected ship mode in a parameter.

pShipModeSelected

string parameter defaulted to empty string.

Show the parameter and then enter the text ‘First Class’

Create a new calculated field

Selected Ship Mode Sales

IF [Ship Mode] = [pShipModeSelected] THEN [Sales] END

format this to $ with 0dp.

Add Selected Ship Mode Sales to Rows. Change the mark type on the associated marks card to line and remove Ship Mode from the Colour shelf. Adjust the colour of the line to a dark grey/black and show mark labels.

Make the chart dual axis and synchronise the axis. Hide the right hand axis (uncheck show header) and remove column and row dividers.

Change the text in the parameter to Same Day. You should now get a broken line. Right click on the Selected Ship Mode Sales pill and format. Set the marks for special values to Hide (Connect Lines).

Option 3 – Dynamic Stacks

Duplicate the Option1 sheet again and rename to Option3. Show the pShipModeSelected parameter and enter text ‘Same Day’.

Create a new calculated field

Sort

IIF([Ship Mode]=[pShipModeSelected],1,0)

and drag it into the ‘dimension’ section of the data pane (above the line).

Right click on the Ship Mode pill on the Colour shelf and select Sort.. Change the Sort By option to Field ascending and Field Name = Sort. This will push the bars related to Same Day to the bottom of the stacked bar.

Building the Ship Mode Selector

On a new sheet, add Ship Mode to Columns and then double click into Columns and manually type MIN(1). Change the mark type to bar and edit the MIN(1) axis to fix it from 0 to 1.

Add Ship Mode to Colour and to Label (you may have to widen the bars to make the label visible). Align the label middle centre and bold the font. Adjust the size to the largest possible.

Hide the axis and the Ship Mode headings (uncheck show header). Remove all column/row dividers. Hide the Tooltip from displaying. Name the sheet accordingly.

Building the Navigation selector

I chose to add all the sheets onto a single dashboard (rather than separate dashboards), so created a navigation sheet.

To help with this, I basically utilised the Segment field that wasn’t being used, and essentially translated the values to repurpose them for the navigation options.

Navigation

CASE [Segment]
WHEN ‘Consumer’ THEN ‘Option 1: The Analytics Pane’
WHEN ‘Corporate’ THEN ‘Option 2: Dual Axis’
ELSE ‘Option 3: Dynamic Stacks’
END

Add this field to Columns and type in a MIN(1) in Columns too. Change mark type to bar, fix the axis from 0-1. Make the Size as large as possible. Add Navigation to Label and align middle centre and set the font to white. Adjust the column divider to be a thick white line and remove row divider. Hide the axis and the Navigation headings.

Create a new parameter to capture the navigation selection.

pSelectedDisplay

string parameter defaulted to : Option 1: The Analytics Pane

Show the parameter. Create a new field

Is Selected Display

[Navigation] = [pSelectedDisplay]

and add to the Colour shelf. Adjust to suit. Adjust Tooltip as required and rename the sheet.

Building the Dashboard

Create a dashboard and arrange all the objects on the dashboard, with the different options placed above each other. Use containers if need be. You’ll have something like this – it’ll look a little messy but don’t worry.

We’ll be using Dynamic Zone Visibility to control which object displays based on which option from the Navigation sheet is selected.

First, let’s set the interactivity to control the navigation selection. Add a parameter action

Select Display

on select of the Navigation sheet, set the pSelectedDisplay parameter, passing in the value from the Navigation field. Keep current value when deselected.

Clicking on the different options in the Navigation control will now change the parameter value, but this won’t do anything yet. We need several calculated fields

Option 1 Selected

[pSelectedDisplay] = ‘Option 1: The Analytics Pane’

Option 2 Selected

[pSelectedDisplay] = ‘Option 2: Dual Axis’

Option 3 Selected

[pSelectedDisplay] = ‘Option 3: Dynamic Stacks’

Option 2 or 3 Selected

[pSelectedDisplay] <> ‘Option 1: The Analytics Pane’

All of these fields will return True if the condition is met, so we can use these to control which objects display.

Back on the dashboard, select the Highlight Ship Mode object, and from the Layout pane, check the Control visibility using value and choose the Option 1 Selected field.

Select the Option1 bar chart and apply the same settings.

Now select the Ship Mode Selection sheet, but this time, choose the Option 2 or 3 Selected field to control visibility. It’s likely this field will now disappear.

Select the Option2 bar chart and choose Option 2 Selected field. This will disappear.

Select the Option3 bar chart and choose Option 3 Selected field. This will disappear.

Now click on the different options in the Navigation control and the different charts should display.

(Note – I actually chose to contain the highlight selector and the option1 bar chart within their own layout container, which meant I could then just apply the setting to control visibility of the layout container rather than the individual objects).

Ensure either Option2 or 3 on the navigation bar is selected so the Ship Mode selector is displayed. Create another parameter action

Set Ship Mode

On select of the Option 2 & 3 Selector sheet, set the pShipModeSelected parameter, passing in the value from the Ship Mode field. When clearing the selection, set the value to <empty string>.

Clicking on a ship mode should now display the line or reorder the stack depending what Option you were on.

In clicking the nav or the ship mode selector, you will probably have noticed that the other options become ‘greyed out’ or ‘faded’ To stop this from happening, use a highlight dashboard action.

Create a new field, mine happened to be

True

TRUE

but it could just as easily be named anything containing any string. Add this field to the Detail shelf of the Navigation sheet and the Ship Mode Selection sheet.

Back on the dashboard create a new highlight dashboard action

Deselect Ship Mode Selector

On select of the Option 2&3 Selector sheet, target itself but using the selected field of True.

Create another highlight dashboard action apply the same principals for the Navigation sheet (for more information and worked examples on ‘deselecting marks’, see this blog.

And hopefully you should now have a working solution. My published workbook is here.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna

Can you calculate a percent difference between a range of dates?

Donna Coles1 Comment

This week’s challenge, set by Lorna, made use of the newly released ‘dotted line’ format in v2023.2, so you’ll need that version in order to achieve the dotted line that spans the 2 marks being compared. If you don’t have this version, you can still recreate the challenge, but you’ll just have a continuous line.

Building the calculations

This challenge involves table calculations, so my preferred startig point is to build out all the fields I need in a tabular format.

So start by adding Category to Columns and Order Date at the discrete (blue) week level to Rows. Add Sales to Text (I formatted Sales to $ with 0 dp, just for completeness).

Apply a Moving Average Quick Table Calculation to the Sales pill, then edit the table calculation to it is averaging over the previous 5 values (including the current value – ie 6 weeks in total), and it is computing by Order Date only.

Add another instance of Sales back into the table, so you can check the values.

The ‘moving average’ Sales pill is what will be used to plot the main line chart.

But we need to identify 2 points on the chart to compare – the values associated to a start date determined by the user clicking on the chart, and the values associated to an end date determined by the user hovering on the chart. We’ll make use of parameters to store these dates

pDateClick

date parameter defaulted to 27th Dec 2020

pDateHover

date parameter defaulted to 28 Nov 2011

We can then determine what the moving average Sales values were at these two dates

Sales to Compare

IF DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateClick] OR DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateHover] THEN
WINDOW_AVG(SUM([Sales]), -5, 0)
END

Add this to the table, and the values for the moving average will only be populated for the two dates stored in the parameters

This is the field we will use to plot the points to draw the lines with.

But we also need to work out the difference between these values so we can display the labels.

Sales to Compare Start

WINDOW_MAX(IF DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateClick] THEN WINDOW_AVG(SUM([Sales]), -5, 0) END)

If the date matches the pDateClick (start) date then return the moving average and then spread that value over every row.

Sales to Compare End

WINDOW_MAX(IF DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateHover] THEN WINDOW_AVG(SUM([Sales]), -5, 0) END)

If the date matches the pDateHover (end) date then return the moving average and then spread that value over every row.

Add these into the table, and you can see how the table calculations are working

The moving avg value for the start date is displayed in every row against the Sales to Compare Start column, while the moving avg for the end date is displayed in every row for the Sales to Compare End column.

With these values now displayed on the same row, we can calculate

Difference

[Sales to Compare End]-[Sales to Compare Start]

formatted to $ with 0 dp

and

% Difference

[Difference]/[Sales to Compare Start]

formatted to a custom number format of ▲0.0%;▼0.0%;0.0%

Popping these into the tables, the values populate over every row, but when it comes to the label, we only want to show data against the comparison date, so I created

Label Difference

IF DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateHover] THEN [Difference] END

formatted to $ with 0 dp, and

Label Difference %

IF DATETRUNC(‘week’, MIN([Order Date])) = [pDateHover] THEN [% Difference] END

formatted to a custom number format of ▲0.0%;▼0.0%;0.0%

With all these fields, we can now build the chart

Building the viz

On a new sheet, add Order Date set to the continuous (green) week level to Columns and Category to Rows. Add Sales to Rows and apply the moving average quick table calculation discussed above, adjusting so it is computing over 5 previous weeks and by Order Date only

Add Category to Colour and adjust accordingly, then reduce the opacity to around 40%

Add pDateClick to Detail then add a reference line to the Order Date axis the references this field. Adjust the Label and Tooltip fields, and set the line format to be a thick grey line.

Format the reference line text so it is aligned top right.

Then add pDateHover to Detail and add another reference line, but this time set the line so it is formatted as a dashed line.

Next, add Sales to Compare to Rows. Adjust the colour of the associated marks cards so it is 100% opacity.

Right click on the Sales to Compare pill and Format. On the Pane tab on the left hand side, set the Marks property of the Special Values section to Hide (Connect Lines). Click on the Path shelf and choose the dashed display option.

Set the chart to be Dual axis and synchronise the axis. Remove Measure Names from the All marks card. Hide the right hand axis.

Add Label Difference and Label Difference % to the Label shelf. Set the font to match mark colour and adjust font size and positioning. I left aligned the font but added a couple of spaces so it wasn’t as close to the line. I also added a couple of extra carriage returns so the text shifted up too.

Finally adjust tooltips, remove column dividers and hide the Category column title. Adjust the axis titles.

Adding the interactivity

Add the sheet onto a dashboard, then add 2 parameter actions

Set Start on Click

On select of the Viz sheet, pass the Order Date (week) into the pDateClick parameter. Leave the current value when selection is cleared (ie when user clicks elsewhere in viz, but not on another mark).

and

Set Comparison on Hover

On select of the Viz sheet, pass the Order Date (week) into the pDateHover parameter. Leave the current value when selection is cleared (ie when user clicks elsewhere in viz, but not on another mark).

And that should be it.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna