A table is designed to show all of its data in the classic arrangement of rows and columns, like a spreadsheet. This arrangement on a report can be helpful and informative, but at times you might want to present the data in a more stimulating way. For example, you could add Filters to your report's data tables or provide the ability for other users to filter the data themselves using on screen controls. With a Virtuous BI report you can filter the data in different ways.
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Control Elements as Filters
To make your report more dynamic, by giving users the ability to filter the data after you publish it, then consider adding Elements. They can range from basic text and button style UI Elements to Control Elements like sliders and date pickers.
UI and Control Elements are used to filter and enhance Data Elements such as Tables, Pivot Tables and Visualizations. Data elements are used to display your data. This article will not discuss these. Instead we'll focus on elements that are used to filter the tables.
UI Elements add additional context, styling and navigation to your BI report. While not directly providing filtering capabilities, UI Elements function as visual aids to enhance the experience for viewers of your report. Learn more about UI Elements.
Control Elements are used to manipulate that data by filtering it based on parameters of your choice. Before going any further though, here's a quick tip, first consider using a table's built-in filters located in menu in the top right corner of the table. This menu has classic filter options for the table that you control as the one building the report. Below we'll discuss how you can add Control Elements that will allow you AND other users to filter the tables in a published report.
The depth and breadth of controls available is immense, so let's summarize some basic functionality. If a table displays the data and UI elements add styling to your report, Control Elements give users knobs and switches that can be dynamically adjusted to filter the data on display.
A Text Input element is a type of control that could be added to give users the ability to filter your table based on a specific data field. You specify what the field is but give the user the ability to choose an operator and a space to write in custom text used to filter the data. For example, a Text Input control with Gift Type as the target (from a Gift Table). The user would be able to choose an operator like "Contains" or "Equal To" and then write out a specific gift type to filter the list of gifts in the table above.
Another might be a Range Slider where you can specify a target like Gift Amount, that would give users the ability to choose a minimum and maximum range of gift amounts they want to see in the table.
Consider the Date picker control. This element needs a specified target as well, like Gift Date or Gift Create Date, and then users can filter the table of gifts by choosing a specific date in this control element. That will cause the table to only display gifts that fit the date they chose in the Date picker control.
These are only a handful of Control Elements available to be added to a Virtuous BI report. Below is the full list of available controls:
- Text Input: Allows the user to search for full and partial matches between your input text and your data's values.
- List: List of selectable values like Text, Numbers, or Dates. When a user selects an item from your List, their selection will filter the table it's applied to.
- Number and Number Range: Number is a single number value. When the Select range option is checked in SETTINGS, only values within the selected range are included in the results. The range is min/max inclusive.
- Date: A single date to use as a parameter value. Both fixed and relative date types are supported.
- Date Range: Only values within the specified range are included in the data. The range is min/max inclusive. Both fixed and relative date types are supported.
- Segmented Control: A segmented control is a linear strip of two or more named segments; each of the segments acts exactly like a radio button, selecting the matches and excluding other data records.
- Slider and Range Slider: Similar to Date and Date Range except applied to non-date fields. With the click and grab of the cursor, a user can filter the table based on a specified target field or set a minimum and maximum range.
- Top N: Also known as "Top Number". This control ranks and limits data in the column based on the number you choose. When applied to a bar chart with 10 groups of data (bars), for example, setting the Top N control to "5" will give you the "Top 5" bars of data based on your choice of parameters.
- Drill Down: Allows the user to view pre-defined layers of data.
- Switch: Allows the user to switch between True and False values.
As you can see, there are a LOT of ways to filter your table using Control Elements. The purpose of the controls is to provide a way for other users to filter the data in a report themselves. Start by adding your Elements, navigating the tables built-in filters, and then adding Controls.
Adding Elements to a Report
Now that we've discussed what Control and UI Elements are and how they can be used to filter Data Elements, let's discuss how to add these Elements to your report. Event though Data and UI Elements are not used to filter data like Controls, we'll discuss the basic steps on how to add them to your report anyways.
Data Elements
To add a data element, locate the lefthand menu and click the plus + icon in the top left corner to Add New Element. Choose either a Table, Pivot Table or a Visualization. After making your selection, options will appear depending on which element you chose.
Tables and Pivot Tables
For table and pivot table selections, you will be asked to select a dataset used to feed into your selection. You can choose New or In Use datasets, or Page Elements already built into your report. New includes single sets of data, tables that are combined via a Join, and tables that are combined via a Union. Learn more about Joins and Unions here.
For tables, this selection is all that is needed to add and display the table to the right in your report workspace. On the other hand, a pivot table selection will ask for more details before being added to the workspace.
Pivot tables allow for the ability to expand or collapse both columns and rows. So you will be asked to choose a column (a specific field) for your pivot row(s) and pivot column(s). Start by choosing a field (column) in a pivot row and then choose one 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". |
Once these selections are made, your table will appear to the right of the menu in the report workspace. Remember, you can always edit your selections for both tables and pivot tables later if needed.
Visualizations
Adding a visualization starts off the same way as tables and pivot tables asking you to choose a dataset that your Visualization will be based off of. After selecting your dataset, the Visualization menu of settings and styling options will appear on the left. By default, a bar chart will be selected but you can change that to another type of graph.
For classic graphs like bar, line and scatter types, you will need to set the X and Y axis's using data fields from your dataset. Multiple columns from your table (fields) can be added to both the X and Y axis's. The final step is setting styling options such as colors, adding tooltips and Trellis options. To learn more details about these Visualization options this will help.
As you adjust the various settings and styling options, your Visualization will appear and adjust in the workspace to the right in real time.
UI Elements
Adding UI Elements to your report is very easy. Click the plus + icon in the top left corner of the lefthand menu and scroll down to the list UI elements. Select the element you wish to add and it will appear in the workspace on the right. Since UI elements are simple styling features, there will not be much complexity to navigate when adding one to your report. For the Embed URL element, all you need is to add a URL address in to the space provided. Learn more about UI Elements here.
Control Elements
Adding Control Elements to your report starts off like Data and UI elements. Click the plus + icon and scroll down to the Control elements section. Since these controls are all very different from each other, each one has a different set of options to navigate when adding it to your report.
As explained earlier, each control has Settings and a Target. Settings will change depending on which control you select. The Target is the dataset or Visualization you want the control to act as a filter for.
Moving Elements
After adding a Data, UI or Control 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, let's wrap up by looking at the Page Overview. To locate the Page Overview, locate the this icon on the far left side of the menu. 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.
Additionally, next to each element in the list is a dropdown menu with some quick options for each element. Options such as duplicate, copy/paste, and move. This is also where you can rename and delete your elements as well.