- Overview
- Building a Waterfall Chart
- Series Menu Options
- Values Menu Options
- X Menu Options
- Y Menu Options
Overview
Waterfall charts help you visualize how a sequence of positive and negative values adds up to a total. These charts are often used for financial data, to show how various profits and losses make up a total, but waterfalls can also be used more generally to illustrate how different categories contribute to a total, especially if the data contains positive and negative values.
The waterfall chart below shows how the revenues from orders in each status contribute to the total sales. Color indicates whether a status is profitable or not. Sales values that are positive (profitable) are purple; values that are negative (losses) are beige; the column indicating total sales is orange.
Building a Waterfall Chart
You can choose to use a waterfall chart by clicking the ellipsis (…) in the Visualization bar and choosing Waterfall.
Ignoring any fields that are hidden from the visualization, waterfall visualizations require one of two options in the Data section:
Option 1:
- One dimension
- One measure
Option 2:
- No dimensions
- One or more measures
Other configurations will prevent a waterfall visualization from rendering.
A waterfall chart automatically calculates a total based on your data values, and adds a Total column to the chart. Totals in your data table are not necessary.
Once your chart is created, you can use the visualization options menu, accessed by clicking the gear in the upper right corner of the visualization tab, to edit your chart. The visualization options are described on the rest of this page.
Series Menu Options
Color Configuration
You can define the color palette for a chart in the Color Configuration section.
Collection
Choose a color collection from the Collection drop-down menu. A collection allows you to create themed visualizations and dashboards that look good together.
Once you select the color collection, the Palette section will update with a palette from that collection.
Palette
Once you've selected a color collection, you can choose a different palette from the collection, or customize your palette, by clicking the color palette itself. This opens the palette picker and displays all the palettes from the collection.
For a categorical palette, the first three colors in the palette apply to the Up Color, Down Color, and Total Color. If your palette contains fewer than three colors, first a lighter and then a darker version of your palette colors will be used. For a sequential or diverging palette, the color at the left end of the palette applies to the Up Color, and the colors for the Down Color and Total Color move to the right on the palette.
Creating a Custom Color Palette
To create a custom color palette, first select the Custom tab on the palette picker. You can edit your palette in several ways:
- Click on one of the colors present to edit it.
- Click the + or - buttons below the color palette to add a color to the end of the palette or remove a selected color.
- Click EDIT ALL at the bottom right of the menu to use a comma-separated list of color values.
To change a selected color, or edit all colors at once, you can input hex strings (such as #2ca6cd) or CSS color names (such as mediumblue) into the color value box at the bottom of the picker.
You can also click the color wheel to the right of the color value box to bring up a color picker, which can be used to select a color. The corresponding hex value for that color appears in the color value box:
If you click EDIT ALL, you'll see that the color value box is populated with the hex codes of the color palette you've chosen or customized. Copying and pasting this list is the best way to copy custom color palettes from one chart to another.
Reverse Colors
Select Reverse colors to reverse the palette. For a categorical palette, this would apply the last three colors in the palette to the Up Color, Down Color, and Total Color. For a sequential or diverging palette, this would apply the color at the right end of the palette to the Up Color and move left on the palette for the Down Color and Total Color.
Up Color, Down Color, and Total Color
The Up Color, Down Color, and Total Color options allow you to configure the color of the chart’s bars, based on whether the underlying data is positive or negative. Click on a color swatch to reveal the palette picker and select a new color from an existing palette or choose a custom color.
- Up Color determines the color of positive values in the chart.
- Down Color determines the color of negative values in the chart.
- Total Color determines the color of the Total bar in the chart.
Values Menu Options
Value Labels
Value Labels toggles the appearance of value labels for each data point on a chart.
Value Colors
Value Colors defines the colors of the value labels. This field takes a color value formatted as a RGB hex string (such as #2ca6cd) or as a CSS color name (such as mediumblue).
If no color value is provided, Analytics assigns the first color in the palette to the value labels.
X Menu Options
Scale Type
Scale Type specifies how the x-axis scale is calculated and displayed. The following options are available.
Automatic Based on Data: The scale will be inferred from the underlying data. This is the default setting.
Ordinal: The data is plotted along the x-axis as evenly-spaced, discrete entries, regardless of relative distance between data points.
Time: The data is plotted as time values. The x-axis is labeled with appropriate time increments.
Show Axis Name
Show Axis Name toggles the appearance of the x-axis name label.
Axis Value Labels
Axis Value Labels toggles the appearance of value labels on the x-axis.
Y Menu Options
Show Axis Names
Show Axis Names toggles the appearance of y-axis name labels.
Axis Value Labels
Axis Value Labels toggles the appearance of value labels on the y-axis.
Gridlines
Gridlines toggles the appearance of gridlines extending from the y-axis. Gridlines are spaced based on the scaling of the y-axis.