Table visualization (new)

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This article applies to the following Customer Insights roles: Developer


It probably goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: the new table visualization is an update to the legacy table visualization . (The original visualization is still available, and is now referred to as the Table (Legacy) visualization.) As with the original, the new visualization (which, among other things, adds a number of cool new formatting options) is most useful when you need to present a large number of data points, and when the actual value of those data points is important. That’s what tables are for.

When working with Customer Insights, keep in mind that tables are also good at reporting large quantities of data, but are not so good at reporting data trends: it can be difficult to look at a table of numbers of immediately grasp whether registrations have generally been increasing or decreasing.

In this article:

  • Customizing the Visualization
  • The Plot Tab
  • The Series Tab
  • The Formatting Tab

Customizing the visualization

To customize the table visualization (change colors, hide or show row numbers, change the column headers, etc.), click Edit to display the parameters menu:

Each of the tabs on this menu, and each configuration option found on those tabs, is detailed in the next few sections of this documentation.


The Plot tab

Configuration options for the entire visualization include the following:

Table Theme

Defines the color scheme used when displaying a table. For example, here’s a table that uses the White table theme:

And here’s that same table rendered using the Classic theme:

Show Row Numbers

When set to On, row numbers are displayed in the first column of the table. When set to Off, row numbers are hidden:

Show Totals

When set to On, totals for each column containing numeric data are shown in the bottom row of the visualization:

When set to Off, totals aren’t shown.

Note that, regardless of whether or not you select Show Totals, totals are displayed only if you’ve clicked the Totals checkbox in the Data pane:

Otherwise there won’t be any totals to display.

Show Row Totals

Toggles the display of row totals between the beginning of the row and the end of the row. Note that this option is not available if your dataset doesn’t include row totals.

Transpose

When working with data that contains only one dimension, selecting Transpose switches rows to columns and columns to rows. For 

Limit Displayed Rows

Enables you to limit the number of rows displayed in the visualization. For example, the following table has been configured to display only the first 3 rows:


The Series tab

Configuration options for individual data series’ include the following:

Truncate Text

When set to On, text too long to fit in a column is truncated (i.e., the text is cut off, with three dots used to indicate that there is additional text that couldn't be displayed):

When set to Off, header text is wrapped in order to display the complete name:

Show Full Field Names

When set to On the entire field name, including the name of the Explore (e.g., Profile Fact), is shown in the visualization:

When set to Off, the Explore name isn’t included in the column header:

Size Columns to Fit

When set to On, table columns are automatically sized to fit the available viewing space:

Note, however, that this setting can be overridden by manually resizing column widths.

Customizations Label

Enables you to specify a custom label (for example, Total Number of User Profiles) for a column. For example:

To revert to the default label, simply delete any text you entered in the Label field.

Width

Enables you to set a relative width for a column: valid values range from 1 (the narrowest column width) to 1000 (the widest column width).

Format

Enables you to format numeric data in different ways: as percentages, as decimals, as US dollars, etc. For example, in the following visualization data in the User Profiles column is formatted as British pounds:

Admittedly, in this example British pounds don't make a lot of sense, but at least this does show you what the Format option can do.

Row Formatting Options

The following options are used to format rows (not including the header row) in the table:

  • Font Color. Sets the color of the font .
  • Fill Color. Sets the background color.
  • Bold. Boldfaces all the text .
  • Italic. Italicizes all the text.
  • Underline. Underlines all the text.
  • Left Align. Left-aligns the text.
  • Center Align. Centers the text.
  • Right Align. Right-aligns the text.

For example, the Profile Fact Count Profiles column in the following visualization has been configured to use red, bold, italic text on a light brown background:

Cell Visualization

When set to On, and when working with a column that displays numeric data, each cell contains a small bar graph showing the relative size of the value in that column:

When set to Off, the bar graph is not displayed:

Value Labels

If cell visualization is enabled but set to Off, bar graphs are displayed in the relevant cells without any accompanying values:

When set to On, both the bar graph and the data value are displayed:


The Formatting tab

Colors

Determines the color palettes available when using conditional formatting or cell visualizations. Note that selecting a different color collection doesn’t change the basic look of the table itself. For that, use the Theme setting.

Rows

Determines the font size for table rows. For example, in the following table the font size for the header has been left at the default value (12 point) while the row font size has been set to 20:

Header

Determines the font size for the table header. For example, in the following table the font size for the rows has been left at the default value (12 point) while the header font size has been set to 20:

Header Options

The following options are used to format the header row, and the text contained within that row:

  • Font Color. Sets the color of the header text.
  • Fill Color. Sets the fill color of the header row.
  • Left Align. Left-aligns header text within a column.
  • Center Align. Centers header text within a column.
  • Right Align. Right-aligns header text within a column.

For example, the following table uses a right-aligned header with dark green text on a yellow background:

Note that header options apply to the entire header: that means that, for example, you can’t use different fill colors in different columns.

Enable Conditional Formatting

Applies conditional formatting to the visualization: individual table cells are colored based on their value (for example, high values are shown with a green background).

To apply conditional formatting, click Add a Rule to display the rule configuration options:

These options include:

  • Apply to. Enables you to apply conditional formatting to all the numeric fields in the visualization, or only to selected fields.

  • Format. Indicates whether you want to apply conditional formatting to the entire column, or if you only want to format cells that meet a specified criteria. For example, the following visualization applies a conditional format (white text on a green background) only to cells where the total number of user profiles is greater than 5,000:

By comparison, the following example shows conditional formatting applied to the entire column, something you do by clicking Format and then selecting along a scale:

  • Palette. If Format has been set to along a scale, then you can click Palette to select the color palette to be used by the rule:

  • Reverse colors. Enables you to swap the colors used at the left end of the palette with the colors used at the right end of the palette. For example, the following visualization starts with green and ends with red:

    However, if we select Reverse colors, the visualization is redrawn to look like this:

  • Use X color steps. Enables you to specify the number of discrete colors (between 1 and 99) used when creating the gradient that applies to an entire column: the more color steps the more pronounced the gradient. For example, this visualization uses 2 steps:

    Compare that to the same visualization, this time using 10 steps:

  • Mirror range around center value. Enables you to make equal “color shifts” around a specified value: when you do this, values on either side of the specified value will be the same  color distance from the color assigned to the specified. This doesn’t mean that the actual colors will be the same; they won’t. But they will be the same color distance.

    For example, this version of a visualization uses color mirroring:

    And this version does not:

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Before you ask, an explanation of what color distance is, and how it’s measured, goes way, way beyond the scope of this documentation.

  • Range. The Range option enables you to specify values (or percentiles) where your color gradient begins and ends. For example, suppose you set the start of the range (Start) to 0 and the end of the range (End) to 100000. In that case, our sample visualization looks like this:

    Now, compare that to the same visualization. this one with the starting end set to 0 and the end set to 500000:

Include Totals

When set to On, total columns are conditionally-colored the same as other columns. If set to Off, totals columns are not affected by conditional formatting.

Include Null Values as Zero

When set to On, null values that appear in a field are replaced by zeroes. When set to Off, fields with null values are simply left blank.