Selecting Accounts, Measures, and Dimensions

Adding Accounts, 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.

Restriction

When you have an account dimension that has multiple hierarchies, you can use different hierarchies for different charts. However, if you change an account hierarchy in a chart, your data may no longer be displayed.

Charts can use only one Account Hierarchy at a time.

For more information on accounts with multiple hierarchies, see Learn About Hierarchies.

You can also apply filters to your accounts, 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.

Select your chart.
In the Designer, open Builder.
Select the accounts, 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 Accounts, 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 Accounts, Measures, and Dimensions

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

Select your chart.
In the Designer, open Builder.
Pick your account, measure, or dimension and then select Rename.
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.

Select your chart and then do one of the following:
- From the action menu () select Add Trellis.
- In the Designer, open Builder.
  
  Find Chart Structure and select (Add Chart Components) Add Trellis.
Under Trellis, select Add Dimension and choose your dimension.

Include Extra Accounts, Measures, and Dimensions in Tooltips

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

You may want to limit the number of accounts, measures, and dimensions used to create your chart, but still be able to see the details of a datapoint from all of them. Select additional accounts, measures, and dimensions from the appropriate section:

Tooltip Accounts
Tooltip Measures
Tooltip Dimensions

Remember

You will see either a Tooltip Accounts or a Tooltip Measures option, but not both.

Select your chart and then do one of the following:
- From the action menu () select Add Tooltip, and then select either Account, Measure, or Dimension.
- In the Designer, open Builder.
  
  Find Chart Structure and select (Add Chart Components) Add Tooltip, and then select either Account, Measure, or Dimension.
Under Tooltip Accounts, select Add Account and choose your accounts.
Under Tooltip Measures, select Add Measure and choose your measures.
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.