Analyzing Data Through Charts

In the previous article, you analyzed data from a single table. However, it may be challenging to extract meaningful insights from numerical outputs alone. Hence, it is essential to learn about visualization analysis techniques. You are advised to prepare relevant data from tables and then create charts.

Selecting Charts

FineBI provides a variety of chart types to meet different data visualization needs. While charts offer an intuitive way to understand data, selecting the appropriate chart can be challenging. If you are unsure of how to select a chart, see How to Select the Right Chart.

Custom Charts

Custom charts allow you to generate multiple combo charts, thus fulfilling your diverse needs.

Pie Chart

Creating a pie chart requires, at a minimum, one dimension and one indicator field. The fields should be dragged into Graphic Properties.

To avoid errors while creating charts, you are advised to process the data in a table before beginning.

Creating a Custom Chart

If you are unsure which chart type to use, or need to combine multiple chart types into one, you can customize charts, which allows for easy adjustment.

The previous gross profit MoM growth rate table may not be intuitive enough to illustrate changes effectively. To improve visualization, a combination of column and line charts are used in this example.

To create a combo chart:

1. Copy the component.

2. Select Custom Chart as the chart type. Go to Graphic Properties > Gross profit(Sum) and set its shape as line.

3. In the vertical axis, hover your cursor over Gross profit Sum-Chain growth value, click , select Set Value Axis(Left-value Axis) and change Shared Axis from Left-value Axis to Right-value Axis. Click OK to save the change.

Note:

• Under Chart Properties, you can either set properties under All, or specific properties for different indicators.

Setting dual axes:

• Using two indicators together with one right axis could result in poor display effects if the data differences are too great.

• Ensure that the indicator display format is set to Indicator Aggregation before setting dual axes. To check whether the indicators have been set to Indicator Aggregation, click  beside Vertical Axis.

Creating a Pie Chart

In this case, you will be guided to create a pie chart to demonstrate the proportion of sales for different product categories.

1. To create a group table to calculate the proportion of sales for different product categories, drag Category to Dimensions and Sales to Indicators to the Dimensions. Click > Quick Calculation > Percentage.

2. Change the chart type from Group Table to Pie Chart.

Note: Do not drag fields into Horizontal Axis and Vertical Axis when making a pie chart. Instead, drag a dimension field into Color and an indicator field into angle to create the pie chart.

Visual Enhancement of Chats

a. Setting the Legend

If there are fields in Color, Size, Shape, Thermal Color, and Radius under Graphic Properties, the corresponding legend can be generated. By default, TargetName is added to Color to generate a legend.

After setting the value axis, if you find the legend is obscuring the chart and you want to display it below the chart, click Component Style > Legend and set the legend to be displayed below the chart in Location.

b. Setting the Color

If you want to highlight the negative growth of Gross profit, you can set it in Graphic Properties.

1. Go to Graphic Properties > Gross profit(Sum-Chain growth rate). Drag the field Gross profit on the left to Color.

2. Click  to open the settings page of Color. Select Area Gradient as Gradient Type and Custom as Gradient Interval. Adjust number of intervals to 2 and set value under 0 to display in a different color.

If you want to display the line chart in front, simply adjust the order of the indicators.

Add labels by dragging the corresponding fields to Graphic Properties > Label.