I am using Dashboard Design 4.0… I have a dashboard where I have 4 levels of data with some charts… and 4 tabs or say 4 label based menus…
The charts will change on each tab. but the hierarchy will remain same. I am using label based menu for this.
Say the 4 levels are
Country, state, city, zipcode. when the user opens the dashboard he will see the top level means all the countries aggregated data.
If he selects a country… the state combo box is filled and the charts shows country data…
Similarly if the user selects a state, city combo is filled and the chart shows state data.
and same for city also…
I am trying to figure out a best way to design and represent this data.
Any idea guys how can i design this… I have tried combo box, list box… but they are not working the way I wanted. I am not able to clear the last selection from the user.
Say I selected a country USA and then Atlanta… and then I selected country Canada… and when the user is coming back to USA the Atlanta is already selected…
Hope i am clear. Is there a better way to design this
I tried everything, but could not come up with the solution… The missing piece was the formula in I3 cell…
My requirement is for 4 combo boxes… and it is working… but I am still missing a small piece for “All” value. I am not able to make it work properly.
enclosing what I tried…
Once again, thanks for the help. Also I liked the way you have designed some of your dashboards(in your blog). I am a big Fan of your designs… Specially the one with column chart and some small pie charts in a circle(my guess…)… If it is ok… could you please let me know how did you build those small circles…
From the example you attached, there are just 2 things to change. On the Country combo box, change the Selected Item/Item to Label 1 or bind it to the cell which says “All Countries”, which is B6 in your example, so that it will default to “All Countries” on open.
Next, on the Apts combo box, change the Desgination (on the General tab) to some other cell other than K4. What was happening is that you were overriding the selection from the “Insert Selected Item” on the Behavior tab. Once you change that, it should work as you planned.
Regarding the dashboards on our website, I am not sure which one you are referring to, but if you can give me the name or more detail, I will be glad to give you more details on how it was designed.
Thanks for the reply… Enclosing the picture of the chart. It is the one on the right top corner. I think it is a column chart inside a circle and some pie charts… Thats my guess…
Edit : Now the combo boxes are working the way i wanted… Appreciated your help… Also could you please let me know the reason for using the formula column for Country ( B column)… when we can use the C column…
Ah yes! This was developed by my colleague Rich Harvey. And yes, they are pie charts with circles and text on top. If you are interested in learning more about how Rich created some very interesting visualizations, he is presenting a workshop on this at IBIS 2014,
Regarding your question on why I had the formulas for Country in Column B, I’m glad you asked. In the sample you gave, it would not be necessary, as your column header was “All Countries”. However, if I happened to pull the data from a universe or sql db query, then it would likely have a column name, such as “Country” and there would be no value for “All Countries”. That is why I added the formulas in column B, so that I would have an “All Countries” value.
You are correct the circles (Donuts) are created by using a Pie Chart and then blanking out the center of the pie with a white circle component. This gives the donut effect.
In the visualization (top right of the picture you attached) there are 5 donuts, with simple label components in the center to show the percentages.
The bar chart is then place behind them with an image component (of the white grid) placed on top of the chart.
What service pack of Dashboard Design 4.0 are you using? I can try and send you the XLF if our versions match.
Thanks for the info. I really loved the way you present the information on charts. Really innovative then the simple charts. we are using Sp5 on BO 4.0. But i think I should be able to make this up.
RoxanneP : I was able to make my combo work. .but I have a question… Based on selection I have to bring back the data using BIWS… the only thing I am not able to figure out is to pass the parameters to my queries…
As the destination of all the four combo changes, everytime I make a selection… is there a way to actually figure out, which combo value changed and then fire the query based on that…
So 4 combo and 4 queries… based on selection I am showing the data on charts… If i only select country, the county query should fire and my charts should show data for country only… Similarly If i select a State… county and state should pass to the state query… and bring back the data by state…
(BOB member since 2006-08-07)
