Slope Graph

#1

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With all the data visualizations in DBI, leave it to our users to pick one which does not seem to be included. Is there a way to replicate this?

#2

I am going to ask it... What is this trying to tell us?
Have you showed them other ways to show them what they are wanting to see with this (reminds me of History Test match the event to the Year).

My best guess at what this is saying is a trend of the list on the right beginning value to the right end value?

Some type of trend graph?

Plot the values and add a trend line maybe?

Wait,

Ok now I see it’s a previous year comparison. see I had to look real close to see what it is telling me.

So a bar chart with period over period then in Properties Main- click the data point series for current year and go to layout to change custom side by side position to 1 and change the Gap Width. Decide what one should be wider and on top. then you get a bar over another bar.

That will give them a good comparison.

A trend line might be useful here but that is for the given time frame on the graph not from previous year.

I still think that the period over period shows the trend form the last year in a more understandable way.

Let us know if they liked it or not.

#3


The period over period with a bar graph is hpw it has been done in the past - for some reason they think the slope graph is better.

#4

Yes there is - funny enough we are just creating a blog on how to do so - basically it's just a line chart with a few configurations so there is no need for a dedicated chart type for that. Here is an example of what we created so far - this is based on a visual from the recent BARC BI 2017 survey where Dundas ranked #1 in performance satisfaction. Here is the slope chart as it shows in the report:

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sZJXgCQ4SuSrAwYfs5gB_SlopeChart.png286×535

To showcase the steps - I took 3 companies data structured like this:

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And then created the following in Dundas BI:

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tf6w6jTWTGTryHGvzUqO_SlopeChartDBI.PNG805×827



And here is how we did it:

  1. Place one dimension on the Rows (in my example it's the years, in yours it's the month or YTD).
  2. Place the second dimension on the Columns (in my example it's the company, in yours I think it's the category).
  3. Place the measure on the Measures.
  4. To show the right axis, you will need to duplicate the measure so you can create add a measure using a formula that is just the same measure: Image title
  5. Within the formula series properties use the option to use a new right axis.
  6. in the right axis properties, share the scale with the left axis.
  7. You may need to modify the series label text property to show the exact value you want to show (i.e. just the category).
  8. You may need to use the Can Overlap Data property to always show your label for the series


it would be cool if you can share your version :)

#5

Thanks so much! I was pretty sure you would come up with a way to do it :)

#6

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Here is my version. Have not done Month to Date yet. Numbers are different because I used a more recent dataset. Close but not quite as elegant as the Excel version.

#7

Nice - check out our new blog for more tips on how to improve the look of this visualization: http://www.dundas.com/support/blog/identify-rank-changes-in-your-data-using-a-slope-graph