KPIs

Quick reference

• 00:05 In this video, we're going to look at the KPI visual.
• 00:08 This is a visual that's specifically dedicated to showing key performance
• 00:11 indicators and there trends overtime.
• 00:14 Now, before we get started, I just wanna call out real quickly here.
• 00:18 I have a couple of visuals already here, ready to go.
• 00:20 I've got a table which holds the end of the month sales and budget values.
• 00:25 So this, if we scroll down, shows the comparison between sales and budget for
• 00:29 every month of the entire data set that we actually have.
• 00:32 I also have a little clustered column chart here that has been drilled down into
• 00:37 the year and month so that we can take a look at what dates we have, and
• 00:41 what our sales are by month.
• 00:42 So of course, I can go and cross-filter anything by clicking on it.
• 00:45 I can hold down my Ctrl key to select multiple data points,
• 00:48 as well, to expand the table and
• 00:50 obviously to control and filter the cards in the top right-hand corner.
• 00:54 What I'm gonna do right now is I'm just gonna unfilter everything, and
• 00:59 now I'm gonna create a KPI visual.
• 01:02 So we'll create the KPI by clicking on the little card with the up down arrows.
• 01:05 And then on my indicator, I'm going to put on a value of Sales.
• 01:10 And at this point, not much happens here.
• 01:12 And if you mouse over that little i, it tells me that we need to have values for
• 01:15 both the Field or for the Value and for the Trend axis as well.
• 01:20 So for the Trend axis, I'm gonna go back and it makes logical sense to go and
• 01:24 pick up something that's based on time like end of month.
• 01:28 And I use end of month because it only shows me the end of month values.
• 01:31 It doesn't show me all the values in the entire data set,
• 01:34 cuz that would be an awful lot.
• 01:37 Now you'll notice that this gives me a value,
• 01:41 16,765 and it gives me this little trend axis behind it as well.
• 01:45 If I go and click on May, you'll notice that we come to $317,367,
• 01:49 which happens to match the card for the total selected sales.
• 01:53 But the trend axis goes away.
• 01:55 If I go and select on April, I get a funny little arrow or line behind it.
• 02:01 You'll notice again, it's 317,367 even though
• 02:06 my sales are now showing at 527.92K.
• 02:10 That's a little bit strange.
• 02:10 So what's actually happening here?
• 02:12 The more I expand this, you'll see that it actually starts to show us the trend of
• 02:16 the individual months that we actually have.
• 02:18 And this probably makes sense because the background should really match what this
• 02:23 pattern is of this column chart that's here.
• 02:26 And if I go and clear it right out, you'll notice again that we're
• 02:31 back down to the 16,765 instead of the 5,242.
• 02:35 So where do these numbers actually come from?
• 02:38 Well, they actually come from here.
• 02:40 What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come over my table and I'm gonna sort it, so
• 02:42 that it's actually showing in descending order.
• 02:45 And you'll notice that we have the $16,765 right here.
• 02:49 This is the value for that specific month that I've used in the trend axis.
• 02:56 So if I go and click on July, you'll notice that 469,133 is the value.
• 03:01 If I click on multiple different columns,
• 03:04 you'll notice that it's always returning the latest,
• 03:08 even though my card is returning the sum of all of these data points.
• 03:12 So this is kind of an interesting little comparison.
• 03:14 It's just giving me that latest data point.
• 03:17 Now, what else can I do with this?
• 03:19 Well, I have one more field that I can use on my KPI.
• 03:23 And that is a target goal area.
• 03:25 So if I go to Budgets, it makes sense that the budget would be my target goal,
• 03:30 so I'm gonna drop that on there.
• 03:32 And you'll notice that now, it turns red.
• 03:34 And if I look really carefully underneath this, I can see that at 16.765,
• 03:39 and underneath, it's got 253.8K is the goal, minus 93%.
• 03:44 So what does that mean?
• 03:46 Well, what it means is this.
• 03:48 When I go back and look at the unfiltered data, 16,765, and
• 03:53 here's the budget goal, 25,300.
• 03:56 So if I were to go back and say give me July, you'll notice that it goes green.
• 04:02 If I were to go to say, January, it goes red.
• 04:05 But why?
• 04:06 Well, here's the deal.
• 04:08 Let's start with January and February.
• 04:10 It's red.
• 04:12 March is green.
• 04:13 April is green.
• 04:14 May, June goes red.
• 04:18 Now you can start seeing a trend here, that every time the last data point is
• 04:21 lower than the previous one, it's going down.
• 04:25 But that's actually not the real thing that's happening here.
• 04:27 What's happening is that any time the sales number is lower than the budget
• 04:31 number, it's going to turn red.
• 04:34 That's what the real key is in this whole thing.
• 04:36 So those things is a little bit of a red herring there that
• 04:38 you gotta watch out for.
• 04:39 But as we expand this, you'll notice that as the budget's sort of roll up and
• 04:44 down here, we can see that things change here.
• 04:46 So the big key thing to remember is if it's green,
• 04:49 that means that it actually is better than budget.
• 04:51 It's irrelevant compared to the change axis.
• 04:54 So you can actually see something where a number goes down like it has here.
• 04:57 Notice that March is less than February as far as the sales go, but
• 05:01 we're still green.
• 05:02 So that's kind of a key thing to actually watch out with for the KPIs.

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