Dashboards are collections of questions or visualizations of data. Designing great questions is critical to building compelling dashboards that inspire insight and highlight opportunities.
Your dashboard uses your dimension hierarchy and structure to locate data for building visualizations. When selecting your data to create or edit a question, you’ll see your top-level dimensions listed with a number to indicate depth in the hierarchy. After selecting the top-level dimension, you’ll select from a list of parent or child dimensions at that level. Learn more about how dashboards use dimension levels.
In this article, learn about all the components that make up a question.
Filters
Filters help pinpoint the Cube data you want to use to inform your query. Stack multiple filters to create more precise charts. You can filter your data by dimension, time, relative date, specific values, whether or not the data is calculated, or a custom expression.
When referencing your dimensions, you’ll notice your dimension hierarchy is numbered. Learn more about how your Cube data appears in dashboards.
Dimension
When building a question, you will select your dimensions to choose which data to use.
You can preview the filtered data as you apply new filters to confirm this question includes the data you’re seeking by clicking the arrow icon preview button.
Time
Use the time filter and choose the periods to narrow your chart to that specific period. For example, you could use the time filter to compare last year against the current year.
Date
Use the date filter to narrow into specific dates or use relative dates to build charts with rolling 1, 3, or 12 months. For example, use Date to filter to the previous 12 months when looking at Revenue Actuals.
Note: At this time, time and date options are set to the calendar year by default, and dashboards cannot use your fiscal year structure in Cube.
Value
Add a filter to include or exclude data with specific values. This is great for suppressing zeros or filtering out outliers in your datasets.
Source
This data isn’t currently integrated with Cube.
Calculated
There are two types of values in Cube:
- Input values
- Calculated values
Input values are data that you explicitly loaded into Cube, either through an import process or a publish operation from your spreadsheets.
Calculated values are data that Cube generated on your behalf through the computation of a formula or tag.
To ensure your Dashboard only uses data directly loaded into Cube and avoid double-counting data from formulas or tags in your visualization, add the filter Calculated and set it to False:
Learn more about considerations for building questions that involve data from formulas and tags.
Custom expression
For more complex data analysis, you can create a custom expression to select the data for your visualization. Learn more about writing custom expressions.
Summarize by
Use Summarize to determine how you’d like your data calculated for the question you’re asking. Click on the tooltip icon next to a metric in the list to see a description of how that metric is calculated.
After you select your calculation method, select # Value.
Group By
Group your queried data by specific properties (Date, Time, Dimension, Tag, etc.) to ensure your visualization properly represents the answer to your question.
For example, group by month to see how revenue changes monthly.
To group your data, click the Pick a column to group by button and select your grouping. Open a preview of the data grouping using the arrow icon preview button to ensure it matches your expectations.
Note: At this time, time and date options are set to the calendar year by default, and dashboards cannot use your fiscal year structure in Cube.
To see how this looks, select Visualize at the bottom of your screen and see a plot of Revenue Actuals.
You can make any necessary adjustments to the chart before you save it to your dashboard. Use the buttons at the top right to change the filters or how your data is summarized to make changes to the question.
Visualization
Each question can be customized by color and by chart type. Try out various chart types to determine which works best to tell the story of your data.
While building your question, you can change the visualization of your data by selecting the Visualization button in the window's lower left. You’ll be presented with various options to select from.
After an option is selected, the visualization will automatically update. Click done or the gear icon to open the visualization settings to customize your chart further.
In the settings, you can adjust how your data is displayed, including changing the colors, labels, trend lines, axes, etc.
If you have summarized or grouped by multiple selections, they will appear in the visualization settings as multiple series allowing you to edit how they appear.
Name and description
When you Save to add it to your dashboard. Add a descriptive name and a description if you wish.
This name will display on the dashboard and in your bank of questions associated with this dashboard.
Cube Admins can edit all components of a question from a published or draft dashboard. Learn more about editing dashboards.