Making Views and Dashboards More Effective Most views and dashboards you create will be seen by other people. Obviously, you want to call attention to your findings and help others investigate and discover their own findings. While every view is different there are a few things that you can keep in mind when evaluating whether your views and dashboards are the most effective. This is not a complete list but it s a good place to start when publishing or sharing your views. Use Custom Tooltips In versions 5.1 and later you can edit the tooltip for each view. Select Edit > Tooltip to open a rich text editor. The advantage of custom tooltips is that you can remove unnecessary information and use it to highlight key findings in the data. Page 1
Turn on Quick Filters Don t forget to turn on quick filters to allow others to control what data is shown in the view. You can turn on quick filters for any field by right-clicking the field in the Data window and selecting Show Quick Filter. Each quick filter can be customized so that it is the most effective for different types of data. For example, you can show quick filters as multi-select check boxes, single select radio buttons, dropdown lists, sliders, date pickers, and so on. You can also specify whether to include a search button, the All option, null controls, etc. Finally, you can edit the title of the quick filter to give your viewers clear instructions for interacting with the shared views. All of these customizations are available on the dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the quick filter card. Page 2
Use Layout Containers to Group Related Items Layout Containers were added in version 5.1 and can be used to group related content in a dashboard. Objects in a layout container automatically align and flow together when the dashboard is resized. You can add a horizontal layout container, which aligns objects horizontally, or a vertical layout container for objects that are stacked up and down. Layout containers can be nested within each other and formatted to show a border. Add layout containers by dragging them from the Dashboard window to the dashboard. Use the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the layout container to format its border. Page 3
Make Titles Stand Out While the default title formatting work in many cases, you may want to adjust the titles to make them pop. Right-click the title and select Format Title to change the shading and border. Double-click the title to open a rich text editor where you can modify the color, font style, and alignment. The titles should be used to give some context to each view. You can also use titles to add instruction about how to interact with the dashboard. This is especially useful when you are building a guided analytical experience where views are hidden until some selection has been made. Page 4
Don t Distract from the Data Be careful that your axes and labels are not distracting from the data. Try changing the fonts to something a bit smaller and gray color to help them fall back and let the data shine. Also select Format > Lines to modify divider lines and borders in the view. Page 5
Turn on Highlighting Use the Highlight button on the toolbar to set up highlighting between views. When highlighting is turned on a selecting in one view will highlight related data in the other views. You can turn on highlighting for all fields or select specific fields. Page 6
Use Fixed Size Dashboards Automatic sizing on a dashboard means that when the window is resized all of the objects in the dashboard are resized too. While this is usually the behavior you want when you are authoring the dashboard, you may want to change to a fixed size dashboard when you share it with others. Think about who will be viewing the dashboard and where. For example, if you are embedding it into a blog or a webpage you probably know the width and height allowed by your page template. Change the size of the dashboard by clicking the Edit link at the bottom of the Dashboard window. You can select from one of the following types of sizing: + + Automatic - the dashboard automatically resizes to fill the application window. + + Exactly - the dashboard remains a fixed size regardless of the size of the window. + + Range - the dashboard scales between the specified minimum and maximum sizes. + + At Least - the dashboard resizes to fill the window, scroll bars display when it is scaled smaller than the minimum size. At Most + + - the dashboard resizes to fill the window, white space is added when it is scaled larger than the maximum size. Page 7