Visualizations¶

Configuring Visualizations¶

Visualizations play a pivotal role in understanding and interpreting data, enabling comprehensive analysis and decision-making. This section provides an overview of the various visualization panels available within Dashboard Designer that empower users to explore, configure, and optimize visual data analysis.

Dashboard Designer provides various ways to customize and refine visualizations by specifying values for anything that appears in or on a visualization, including colors, shapes, lines, data, legends, and labels.

Dashboard Designer loads the Time Series visualization for the IoT data source, by default. Based on your data, the suggestion tab provides assistance in exploring other visualization options.

Insights Hub Automotive Transparency Video

Navigation Pointers¶

The Visualization Panel, located on the right side of the screen, serves as a hub for configuring and customizing different visualization options. Each section contains specific controls with default settings that are automatically applied unless you opt to make changes to fine-tune your visualization.

The Visualization panel is as shown in the below image:

The number of settings configured in each section is displayed next to the heading label.

You can navigate through the various panel features by expanding and collapsing these sections. Each area, described briefly below provides in-depth configuration options to customize a visualization according to analytical requirements and audience.

Panel Options¶

The "Panel options" section allows you to enter a name, describe the panel, add links, and configure other preferences.

To configure the panel options, proceed as follows:

1. Enter a title and description.
2. set the toggle to "on", if you want the panel background to be transparent.
3. Click the "+ Add link" button to enter a link title, the URL, specify whether or not to open the link in a new tab.
4. Click "Save".
   

Tooltip¶

The "Tooltip" section allows you to configure visibility, sort order, and other tooltip-related settings.

Legends¶

The "Legends" section allows you to tailor the display and positioning of the legend, choose list or table format, and select specific values to display in the legend.

To configure the legend options, proceed as follows:

1. Toggle the visibility to "on" to display the legend on your visualization.
2. Choose whether to display the legend as a list or table and decide whether to locate it at the bottom or right of the visualization.
3. Select the values you want to display from the drop-down list, to include them in the legend. Your selections will be displayed in the Values field as you choose them.

Axis Settings¶

The "Axis Settings" section allows you to adjust visual aspects such as placement, color, grid lines, and more, related to the axes.

Graph Styles¶

The "Graph Styles" section allows you to modify graph styles, including lines, bars, points, line characteristics, color, and additional visual options.

Standard Options¶

The "Standard Options" section allows you to customize various fields that impact the appearance of the panel, such as units, color palette, min-max values, decimals, etc. For instance, the initial section pertains to the unit in which graph or chart data will be rendered, followed by the measurement standard, such as degrees, arc minutes, etc. for the selected unit. Other standard selections include color palette, min, max, decimals, and so on.

To configure the standard options, proceed as follows:

1. Choose a unit from the drop-down list, which displays various measurement standards for the unit.
2. Select the required measurement.
3. Proceed by either retaining the default settings or making selections for the remaining fields to customize your visualization.

Data Links¶

The "Data Links section allows you to add and configure links to external resources relevant to the visualization. You can only configure one-at-a-time.

To configure data links, proceed as follows:

1. Click the "+ Add link" button.
   The "Edit link" pop-up window is displayed.
2. Enter a title to display on your panel.
3. Enter the URL for the link.
4. Enable the "Open in new tab" toggle button if you want the URL to open in a new tab.
5. Click "Save".

Value Mapping¶

The "Value Mapping" section allows you to assign specific colors and optional text to values in the data set.

To configure value mappings, proceed as follows:

1. Click the "Add value mapping" button.
   The "Value mapping" pop-up window is displayed.
2. Enter a specific value in the "Condition" field.
3. Click "Set color" if you want the value to display in a specific color.
4. Select a color from the color palette.
5. Proceed by clicking the "+ Add a new mapping" button if you want to add additional mappings.
6. Click "Update".

Threshold Options¶

The "Threshold Options" section allows you to set thresholds for values and define display preferences for them, including absolute or percentage-based, and visualization options.

To configure threshold options, proceed as follows:

1. Click the "+ Add threshold" button. A threshold row appears at the top of the thresholds list with a default value and color.
2. Enter a number to replace the default value, or use the up/down arrows.
3. Click the default color dot and choose a color from the color palette.
4. Click the delete icon to remove any threshold rows that are not required.
5. Set the "Threshold mode" to "Absolute", unless your threshold values are relative to the minimum and maximum values. Otherwise, set the toggle to "Percentage".
6. Select the preferred style to display the thresholds from the "Show thresholds" drop-down list.
   

Overriding Fields¶

The "Overriding Fields" section allows you to specify overrides for specific fields or field types, that enable fine-tuning according to the data properties and queries.

You can override settings for any visualization field. Here is an example that illustrates categories of fields you can search by to locate the kind of field you want to override:

To configure the field override option, proceed as follows:

1. Click "+ Add field override".
   A drop-down of types is displayed.
2. Select "Fields with type". The "Fields with type" label is displayed over a drop-down list of field types.
3. Select "Number" from the list.
4. Click the "+ Add override property" button.
5. Select an option from the "Add override property" drop-down list.
6. Select an option from the additional values that are displayed.

You need to modify the variable settings to override and change the display name of an IoT variable returned from a query.

This shows the variable name being changed on the Time series visualization panel and the corresponding label change on the visualization:

Changing the Variable Name¶

Open the dashboard with the query variable you want to change and follow these steps:

1. Click the "+ Add field override" button as shown in the image above. A drop-down of types is displayed.
2. Select "Fields returned by query". The drop-down list closes and a "Query: A" field displays a list of variables.
3. Select the variable fow which you want to change the name.
4. Select "Standard options > Display name". A field opens for entering the new name for the variable.
5. Enter the new name and move the cursor out of the field. The new name displays on the visualization. (image below)

Configuring Dashboard Designer Time Zone¶

Dashboard Designer displays data according to the browser's time range, by default. However, data from IDL and IoT are stored in the UTC time range. To get optimal results when comparing data between Asset Manager and Dashboard Designer, it is recommended to modify Dashboard Designer's configuration to display data in UTC.

To change the time zone configuration, proceed as follows:

1. Click the icon in the toolbar of the "New dashboard" page.
2. Select Coordinated Universal Time from the Time zone drop-down list and save the dashboard.