Creating visuals

Quick reference

• 00:04 Now normally the second step in the process would be to go and relate tables.
• 00:10 We dont' really have tables to relate here because we've only got a single table.
• 00:13 So we'll skip that for now.
• 00:15 The third step would be to go and create measures, but for
• 00:18 right now we're gonna use implicit measures.
• 00:20 And we'll get into dealing with explicit measures a little bit later on
• 00:23 in the course.
• 00:25 So the fourth step now is to create some visuals.
• 00:28 Again, you'll notice that our data is already prepped and loaded, so
• 00:31 we can go back into our report canvas to create our visuals.
• 00:35 You'll notice that on the right hand side, we have a fields list that shows every
• 00:38 field that came from our original data table.
• 00:41 And we have this visualizations gallery.
• 00:44 What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on the first visual that I like,
• 00:47 a clustered column chart.
• 00:48 And that's gonna put a nice little frame here
• 00:51 which gives me a list of different fields that I can actually use.
• 00:55 So what I'm going to do with this one is I'm going to go and say, you know what,
• 00:58 let's go and put category and drag it and drop it into the axis area.
• 01:03 And it changes the visual a little bit, it doesn't really do a whole heck of a lot.
• 01:07 Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to come across and I'm going to say,
• 01:09 you know what, let's take the total sale.
• 01:11 And I'm just going to check the box next to it and see what happens.
• 01:14 Look, it adds it to the values are immediately and
• 01:17 it gives me a nice little chart that I can resize, so that I can see what's going on.
• 01:22 You'll notice that the y-axis here is automatically calculated.
• 01:26 Which is just fine, thanks very much.
• 01:28 And we have a nice little chart that shows us the sales, by category.
• 01:33 I'd like to add another visual as well.
• 01:34 I'm just gonna put this down a little bit here.
• 01:36 I'm gonna add another visual.
• 01:38 We're gonna go with a clustered, let's try a clustered bar chart this time.
• 01:42 So we'll grab one of those and maybe I wanna put it up over in this area here.
• 01:47 This time I'm going to build my sales by location name.
• 01:50 So I'm gonna grab the Location Name, I'll check the box.
• 01:53 It immediately goes into access.
• 01:55 And I'm gonna check Total Sale and
• 01:57 you'll notice that we've got something that looks quite nice here as well.
• 02:01 It even gives me a nice little title that says total sales by location name.
• 02:05 Maybe I don't want this called location name here.
• 02:07 I could right click and I could say you know what let's rename this to Location.
• 02:14 And even thought it doesn't rename the field name here, it does in the title.
• 02:20 So that's kind of neat.
• 02:21 Let's see what else can I tell about this data.
• 02:23 I know, let's grab a card.
• 02:25 This little thing with the one two three on it and I'm going to go and
• 02:30 throw on the date.
• 02:31 And you'll notice that it comes back and it says,
• 02:34 the earliest data is Friday, January 2nd, 2015.
• 02:37 So that tells me something interesting, but if I'm building this dashboard,
• 02:41 I'm really more interested in what the last date is in this particular area.
• 02:44 So if I select my card, I can actually go over to where it says Earliest Date and
• 02:48 I can click this little drop down arrow, and I can say, don't give me earliest,
• 02:52 give me latest.
• 02:53 Or, I could ask for a distinct count of dates, or a count.
• 02:55 But in this case we're gonna go with the latest date.
• 02:57 And that tells me that my sales only run to December 3, 2016.
• 03:02 So that's kind of an interesting thing to know.
• 03:05 How much is the total sales?
• 03:07 Well, I'm gonna go click, and again, this time I'm just gonna point out here,
• 03:10 I'm clicking in the canvas to make sure the visual is not selected.
• 03:14 Because if I don't, let's try this one here.
• 03:17 And I'm gonna change it to a card.
• 03:20 And it breaks it.
• 03:21 It gives me a 5.24, which actually is really what I want, but
• 03:25 it got rid of my old chart.
• 03:26 So I'm just gonna press Ctrl+Z to undo that and get my chart back.
• 03:29 That's what happens if you choose a new visual type when you're on
• 03:32 an existing one.
• 03:33 So let's go click over here for a second.
• 03:35 Now, we'll click on a card again.
• 03:37 And I'll grab total sale.
• 03:39 There we go, so total sales are 5.24 million.
• 03:42 And maybe we'll grab one more card here and say unit sold and
• 03:47 we can see that we sold 1 million individual sales unit as well.
• 03:51 So here we go, we've got a few different visuals on here that
• 03:54 allow us to very quickly go, and slice and dice, and drop different things on here.
• 03:59 What else do we wanna know about this?
• 04:01 Well, I wanna show you how these things work because this is really, really cool.
• 04:07 Let's go click on Wine for a second.
• 04:11 And notice that everything cross-filters.
• 04:13 The last sale was December 3rd, we only sold $1.4 million of wine,
• 04:18 and 230,000 units.
• 04:20 And you can see, across our three locations,
• 04:22 where these individual items were sold.
• 04:24 If I go and click on draft beer we can see that we have got $1.4 million,
• 04:28 if we click on that, indeed, that is what ends up showing up here.
• 04:31 Right click on draft beer again, it unfilters all these visuals, so
• 04:34 now we have an interactive and engaging visual canvas.
• 04:38 There is one more thing that is really important to any report though, and
• 04:41 that is giving your report a good title.
• 04:44 So, to do that, we use a text box.
• 04:46 So, I'm gonna click on Text box, and you'll notice that it actually gives me
• 04:49 a little text box here that I can play around with.
• 04:52 The data set that I'm working with is for
• 04:54 a fictitious restaurant chain called The Loaded Pencil.
• 04:57 So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna say this is gonna be The Loaded,
• 05:03 let's try and capitalize that correctly, The Loaded Pencil Sales report.
• 05:11 We'll just call it something like that.
• 05:12 And we can resize this.
• 05:15 And we can change the font size and
• 05:16 things like this in here if we don't wanna use, whoop.
• 05:19 We don't want to use the Segoe UI 14.
• 05:22 I want to change this up to a 32 points and make it nice and bold.
• 05:27 And then I could go and slide this guy across the top of my visual piece here, so
• 05:32 I could give something nice like this.
• 05:34 If I wanted to insert an image, I would need something saved on my desktop
• 05:38 that I could then click Image and actually bring that in as well.
• 05:41 But at this point I've got a new little report that I've built up,
• 05:44 it was very easy drag and drop.
• 05:46 Very similar to a pivot table and it cross filters quite nicely by going and
• 05:49 clicking on the individual items.
• 05:51 If you click on Ethical Development and see how much is sold on that location or
• 05:54 in tax evader.
• 05:55 And if I click again on one of those bars, it will unfilter everything
• 05:59 to give me a nice, engaging, interactive canvas to work with.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.