Visualizations turn complex data into actionable insights. By leveraging dimensions, measures, and calculations, you can quickly spot trends and outliers. Also, visualizations of reports are sent out in subscription emails, so it's worthwhile to optimize their impact.

Visualization aesthetics are subjective. Explore different visualization types to find which ones best illustrate your desired patterns.

Table visualization

Table visualization is important because you can see which data is being included in your reports.

Hide columns that you don't need by hovering over any column title in the report builder. You'll see the options to pivot, remove, or hide from visualization.

This way, you can focus specifically on the numbers that you wish to measure. You will get an eye icon on columns that are hidden from visualization.

Break out the types of measures.

The types of measures

Sometimes graphs need to look at multiple sets of measures to be fully meaningful. Some important measures for visualizations include Qty, GMROI, a Dollar amount, or a Turn.

For example, you may have sold 1,000 products on Saturday for a total of $50,000, but if you measure them on the same graph, you won't be able to read the quantity.

Using the gear icon on the right-hand side of the Visualization bar, you can navigate to the Y axis.

Then, drag Quantity Sold down to the Right Axes.

This way, you can measure the dollar amounts on the left-hand side of your graph, and measure the quantity amounts on the right-hand side.

Hide rows

A good way to gather sales data from different time frames is to sum their respective totals and then show only the first line of totals in the visualization.

For example,

1. if your raw data looks like the following image, you can hide columns you don't need.

   

2. After hiding columns you don't need, you can navigate to the gear icon on the Visualization bar.

   

3. Select Limit Displayed Rows

   

4. You can opt to only Show the first row

   

Your data will display in a more meaningful, visually accessible way as a graph.

Changing colors

On the Series tab, you can access the colors displayed on your graphs.

Here you can choose a color from the palette, or copy and paste the color code to harmonize your data.

This makes your graphs more readable.

Give tables conditional formatting

If you're using a table to compare last month to this month, you can use Conditional Formatting to respond to numeric values to highlight negative and positive change.

1. Under Formatting, toggle on Enable Conditional Formatting.

   

2. Start by selecting If the Value is less than... 0

   

3. Now you can set the visual rules. In this case, if the change is less than zero, make the font red and bold.

   

4. Now, add a new rule for if the values are greater than zero.

   

The table follows the rules that you have set.