How Do I Build a Custom Virtuous BI Report?

If you're looking to build your own custom Virtuous BI Report, you're in the right place! 

Note: Only Admin users can create reports.
Before diving in, be sure to check out the Virtuous BI Glossary to familiarize yourself with the terminology.

Now, let's dive in!

Navigating to the BI Report Builder

To get started, go to Reports > Virtuous BI.

On the Virtuous BI screen, select the New Report button.

Give your report a name, determine if you want it to be shared with others, and then select Create.

Adding Data to your Report

Now that you’ve created your Virtuous BI Report, it’s time to start building out what you want in the report. Think of this report like a spreadsheet. You can have several pages in this spreadsheet and lots of different data points to pull from. In this article we’re going to stick to a more basic set-up to get you started.

Our first step to building a report is to add data. You will do this by selecting Table in the toolbar on the left of the screen.

Once you’ve selected Table, you’ll be given the option to choose what table you want to add. You can search for the data source you want to use or scroll through and find the one you want. The tables you can add can be ones already in use in your workbook or a new table.

If you're unsure of the data that lives in the table, if you hover over the dataset, you will see a preview option. This will allow you to view the columns in that table. If you preview the dataset, you can also choose which columns you want to keep and leave out the ones that you don't need.

Once you’ve made any changes to the included data, select Add at the bottom right corner to add the table to your Dashboard. 

Once you’ve added the table to your Dashboard, you have quite a few options. You can resize it and move it around in the workbook to suit your needs.

 Also, when you hover over the table you can:

• Filter the data in your table (which then also filters the data in any visualizations using that table)
• Create a Visualization from the data in this table (this can also be done by selecting the plus sign in the upper left corner)
• Maximize/Minimize the Visualization and associated Visualizations
• Dropdown menu of table options including:
  • Set Alerts
  • Export
  • Refresh the data
  • Duplicate 
  • Copy/Paste
  • Move
  • Element Source
  • Delete Element

Creating a Visualization

Once you’ve added your table, you’re ready to create a Visualization. You can add a visualization either by selecting it from the upper right corner of your table

or by selecting the plus sign in the upper left corner of your workbook.

Once you've decided to use a visualization, you'll need to pick what kind of visualization you want to create.

After choosing your chart type you’ll choose what you want to do with that data (what are you trying to summarize?).

After selecting all the data points (in this case, an X and Y axis), your visualization will be created! Just like the tables, you can resize this and drag it around to set up the page to your specifications.

Additional Details to Consider

There are a few other things to think about when building a custom report:

• In the Marks section, you have several options
  • Color - This allows you to edit the colors of your visualizations
  • Tooltip - This allows you to edit the information that appears when you hover over the visualization
  • Trellis - This is a way you can segment your visualization to see the data broken down several ways (see image below)
• If you're building your Visualizations on something with a lot of data points like a date field, you may want to consider truncating the data for a better experience
• If you want others on your team to be able to access your report, you'll need to save it in the All Team Folder.

Once you've built out your report, be sure to select the Publish button on the lower left corner. You will need to publish each page that you want to make visible.

Page Tabs

You'll notice that what you've started creating is simply a page of this Dashboard. You can have multiple pages here if you'd like as well as other options for customizing them.

To add a brand new page, you'll select the plus sign in the bottom left corner

If you want to have any edits that you want to make on the page level, or if you want to copy that page, you can select the down arrow on any page to see your options.

Deleting 

If you want to delete a Dashboard because it is no longer needed, you can select the three lines in the bottom left corner and then choose delete.

What's Next?

Now that you have basic knowledge of how to build a Virtuous BI report, you’re ready to get started! Check out our other Virtuous BI articles for more support!

Virtuous BI Standard Reports

How to Filter a Standard Report

What is a Join or Union?

Virtuous BI Glossary

Need More Help?

Need more help building Reports or making sense of your data in Virtuous? Virtuous Professional Services can create custom Virtuous BI Reports for your organization. Whether you have a Report or visualization in mind, or need something completely new, our team can scope your needs and build Reports to give you the insights you need. Click here to learn more about our Professional Services offerings, or contact your Customer Success Manager to get started!