Selecting Measures and Dimensions

After you select a chart type, select the measures and dimensions to display in each area of your chart.

When you first create your chart, you are asked to choose a data source or model. The measures and dimensions that you can use are based on the data in that model.

Adding Measures and Dimensions to a Chart
You can add multiple measures and multiple dimensions to your chart. When measures or dimensions are part of a hierarchy, or when a dimension has attributes, you can expand them and select their children, or expand a dimension and select its attributes. You can also apply filters to your measures and dimensions. The chart is updated as you make your choices in the Builder.
Note
When using dimension attributes in your chart, drilling and Display As are not supported. For more information about dimension attributes, see Combine Data with Your Acquired Data.
  1. Select your chart.
  2. In the Designer, open Builder.
  3. Select measures and dimensions.
Tip

Added a date or time dimension to your chart and want to show some comparisons? Follow the guidelines in Adding Time-Based Variances to Charts.

Fine-Tuning the Measures and Dimensions

You can personalize your charts in many ways including adding color or adding values to tooltips for measures that are not in the chart.

Renaming Measures and Dimensions

There are times when you would rather have a customized description for a measure or dimension in your chart rather than using the default value.

  1. Select your chart.
  2. In the Designer, open Builder.
  3. Pick your measure or dimension and then select Start of the navigation path Next navigation step RenameEnd of the navigation path.
  4. Type a new name for the description.

The new description is displayed in your chart.

To change back to the default information, pick the measure or dimension, select and then select (Reset).

Use Color in Charts

To make your chart more visually appealing, add a Color dimension.

For some chart types, you can use the same dimension for both Dimensions and Color sections. This can be useful if you want to hide the legend for a chart, but still want to see the information that the legend would provide. For example, you can display total sales (measure) by employee (dimension), and add employee to the color section as well.

Restriction

You can only have one of the following object types in the Color section: dimensions, measures, or versioning dimensions. Versioning (or category) dimensions include different versions of data such as Actual or Forecast data.

  • Dimensions: you can have several dimensions in the Color section (when the chart type allows it), but you can't add version dimensions.

    If there was a measure in the Color section, dragging a dimension to the section will replace the measure with the dimension. When you remove the dimension from the section, the measure is displayed again.

  • Measures: when you have a measure in the Color section, you can have only one parameter. If you already had dimensions in the color section or a different measure, the new measure will replace those objects.

  • Versioning dimensions: when you have a version or category dimension in the Color section, you can't add a non-version dimension to the section.

You can apply the same dimension to both dimension and color sections in the following chart types:
  • Bar/Column
  • Box Plot
  • Bubble, Scatterplot, and Cluster Bubble
  • Marimekko

When you switch to a chart type that does not support using the same dimension twice, one of the dimension options will be dropped.

Tip

You can either use the Add Dimension/Measure option to add a dimension to the color section, or you can move (drag) dimensions between the Dimensions and Color sections.

Use Trellis Charts for Comparison

A trellis chart is a set of small charts shown in a grid for comparison. Each small chart represents one item in a section. For example, if you create a bar chart that compares revenue by region, and then add the <Country> dimension to the trellis, multiple small charts appear. Each small chart displays the revenue by region for one country.

  1. Select your chart and then do one of the following:

    • From the action menu () select Start of the navigation pathAdd Next navigation step TrellisEnd of the navigation path.

    • In the Designer, open Builder.

      Find Chart Structure and select Start of the navigation path(Add Chart Components) Next navigation step Add TrellisEnd of the navigation path.

  2. Under Trellis, select Add Dimension and choose your dimension.
Include Extra Measures and Dimensions in Tooltips

You can add information to the tooltip for measures and dimensions that are not in your chart.

You may want to limit the number of measures and dimensions used to create your chart, but still be able to see the details of a datapoint from all the measures and dimensions. Select additional measures and dimensions from Tooltip Measures and Tooltip Dimensions.

  1. Select your chart and then do one of the following:

    • From the action menu () select Start of the navigation pathAdd Next navigation step TooltipEnd of the navigation path, and then select either Measure or Dimension.

    • In the Designer, open Builder.

      Find Chart Structure and select Start of the navigation path(Add Chart Components) Next navigation step Add TooltipEnd of the navigation path, and then select either Measure or Dimension.

  2. Under Tooltip Measures, select Add Measure and choose your measures.
  3. Under Tooltip Dimensions, select Add Dimension and choose your dimensions.

When you move the cursor over a datapoint, the tooltip will show information for all the selected measures and dimensions.

Related Information