In Virtuous Analytics, Elements are the building blocks of a Workbook or Dashboard. Each Element is a visual or functional component—like a Chart, Table, Control, or even a text box—that helps you display data, provide context, or enable interactivity. Virtuous Analytics allows you to go beyond just rows and columns of data to tell a story with your Report. Let’s walk through the different Element options you have to build your Reports.
Table of Contents
Element Types
To get starting building your Report, add an Element from the Element bar to your Workbook:
Data
To add a Data Element, locate the Data icon in the Element Bar. Choose either a Table or a Pivot Table.
Tables and Pivot Tables
For both Table and Pivot Table selections, you will be asked to select a Data source to build your Table. You can search for a Dataset, use Page Elements already built into your Report, browse Tables and Datasets in different folders, or build a Join or Union.
Learn more about Joins and Unions here.
For Tables, this quickly inserts the Dataset to the right in your Report Workspace.
On the other hand, a Pivot Table selection will require configuration in the right-hand menu. Pivot tables allow for the ability to expand or collapse both columns and rows. Start by choosing a field (column) for the pivot row. Drag the column to the Pivot Row or select the + icon to find your column. Then choose another column and repeat for your pivot column.
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NOTE: You can choose more than one field to be a pivot row or pivot column. |
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Additional pivot rows and pivot columns simply add more ways to group the data in your pivot table. For example, you might make "Gift Type" and "Contact Type" pivot rows and "Gift Date" a pivot column truncated (grouped) by "Year". Lastly, you'll choose a value that determines how the data is displayed in the table. So if we select "Count of Gift Date" as a value, then the pivot table will display the number of gifts for each year, grouped by "Contact Type" within their "Gift Type". |
Remember, you can always edit your selections for both tables and pivot tables later if needed.
Learn more about working with Tables here.
Charts
Add a Chart by selecting the Charts icon from the Elements Bar. After selecting your Chart type, you’ll select the Dataset used to build the chart.
For classic graphs like Bar, Line and Scatter types, you will need to set the X and Y axes using data fields from your Dataset. Again, drag and drop fields from the Column list under Properties on the right side menu to the corresponding axes or field. Multiple columns from your table (fields) can be added to both the X and Y axes.
The final step is setting styling options such as colors, adding tooltips and Trellis options. As you adjust the various settings and styling options, your Chart will appear and adjust in the workspace to the right in real time.
To learn more details about building Charts and the different Chart options, check out this article.
Control Elements
Control Elements manipulate the data in a Workbook based on the parameters you choose and include dropdowns, sliders, checkboxes, date pickers, etc. Each Control will have different interactivity options once added to your Report which are configured by the Settings and Target in the right-hand menu. The different Controls include:
- List Values: Include or exclude selected values in a list.
- Text Input: Allows the user to search for full and partial matches between your input text and your data's values.
- Text Area: Search for full and partial matches between the inputted text and the targeted data values
- Segmented Control: Provide a single-select limited set of options for users to select from.
- Number Input: Enter a single number to filter a data Element, or use as a parameter in custom SQL or a formula.
- Number Range: Enter a minimum number and/or a maximum number for a range to filter the results in targeted data Elements. The range is inclusive of the entered numbers.
- Slider or Range Slider: Select a number from a specific range using a Slider or Range Slider.
- Date or Date Range: Choose a single date or Date Ranger to filter a targeted data Element.
- Top N: Limit the available data according to a ranking, such as top 15 or bottom 10%.
- Drill Down: drill into a pre-defined layer of data, such as one level higher or lower in data granularity
- Switch: Turn on or turn off a toggle switch to let users choose between True (turned on) or False (turned off) values.
- Checkbox: Select or deselect a checkbox to represent True (selected) or False (deselected) values.
- Legend: Align colors and perform interactive selection across multiple charts with shared values.
UI Elements
UI Elements are styling features to help your data tell a story through titles, text descriptions, branding and icons, button triggers, and dividers to help organize your page.
- Text: Add titles and captions to your workbook pages
- Image: Add an image by uploading a file or referencing a URL
- Button: Add a button to create a one-click action in a workbook
- Divider: Add a horizontal divider to visually partition Elements or groups of Elements on a page
- Embed: Add a webpage, video, or another Workbook to your Workbook page. Any iFrame-enabled URL can be embedded.
- Page Break: Allows greater control over the layout and formatting of PDF files
Layout Elements
Layout Elements are used to structure, arrange, and organize the data in your Workbook or Dashboard. They don’t display data themselves, but they help you design a clean, user-friendly, and responsive display.
- Containers: Groups and align other Elements side by side or top to bottom
- Tabbed Containers: Group other Elements like a standard Container but have the ability to move between multiple tabs
- Modals: Overlays that appear when triggered by a button or action
- Popover: Smaller Layout Elements that are anchored to a trigger button.
Moving Elements
After adding an Element to your report, you can drag it to another space around your workspace or move it to another page in your report. To move an element, find the options dropdown menu in the top right corner of the element. Look for a small box with six dots
grouped together. Grab it with your cursor and then move the element to another place in the workspace.
Then, click that menu again and locate the three dots . Find the "Move to" option is the dropdown list that appears. Available pages within this report will appear for you to select.
This will be helpful if you started by adding all of the elements to a single page in the report but then decide you want to move certain elements to a new page. By the way, in the same dropdown menu to move an element is an option to copy and paste the element as well.
Page Overview
After adding Elements and arranging them on your Report pages, you can view a quick list of everything by looking at the Page Overview. To view the Page Overview, locate the 3 lines icon in the bottom left corner. Click it and the Page Overview menu will display all of the Elements in a list. The Elements will be ordered based on their location in the report Workspace. When you select an Element from the list, it will highlight it in the workspace and reopen the same settings you navigated when you first created it.