Creating a dashboard

You can explore your data and easily communicate the analysis and insights that you discover.

Procedure

  1. Click the Open menu icon Open menu icon, and then click new icon New.
  2. Click Dashboard.
    Menu for the New icon
  3. You see predefined templates that contain grid lines for easy arrangement and alignment of visualizations and other elements in a dashboard.

    Select the template with four panes and then click Create.

    Template with 4 panes
    New dashboard page with the Data panel open and empty
  4. Let's add a data asset to this dashboard so that we can explore its data.
    1. In the Selected sources pane, click the Select a source icon.
      Select a source icon
    2. Go to the My content folder and select IBM_HR_Training_2014-17.csv. Click Add.
  5. Let's explore the data by adding a visualization to the dashboard.
    1. Drag Department to the top left pane and drop it on the square that appears in the pane.
      Department being dropped into the square in the center of the pane

      You now see a list of departments.

      Department now appears on the canvas in a list.
    2. Drag External hires to the canvas and drop it on the Department list. In the column visualization, you see that the Sales departments hire the most external people followed by the Finance departments.
      External hires by Department in a column visualization.
  6. Let's change the visualization type.
    1. Click white space, in the column visualization, away from the visualization title. A toolbar appears.
      Toolbar appears for the visualization.
    2. Click the Change visualization icon in the toolbar.
      Change visualization icon
    3. Scroll to and click the Packed bubble icon.
      Packed bubble icon
  7. Let's add a second visualization, using a different way to create a visualization.
    1. Click the Visualizations icon.
      Visualization types icon
    2. Click the Tree map icon.
      Tree map icon
      An empty tree map is created with empty data fields on the side, indicating where you need to add data.
      Empty tree map with empty data fields.
    3. From the Selected sources pane, drag Organization to the Area hierarchy field.
    4. Drag Course cost to the Size field.
    5. Close the Fields pane for more room for the visualizations.
      Dashboard now contains a packed bubble visualization and a tree map.
  8. Let's hide the legend to have more room for the tree map.
    1. Select the tree map visualization.
    2. Click the Properties icon.
      Properties icon
    3. Click Legend and deselect the Show legend toggle.

    Take a look at the visualization. The size of each box in the tree map tells you the amount of training that is spent by each organization.

    Note: You have two more panes where you can create more visualizations or add widgets such as text or shapes.
  9. Let's add a filter to see the impact of the duration of courses on the visualizations.
    1. Click the Filters tab to open the All tabs and This tab filters.
    2. From the Selected sources pane, drag Course days to the This tab filter area.
    3. To define the filter, click Course days in the filter area.
      The range for Course days
    4. Move the slider to show courses with a shorter duration, or type a new end point. We picked 14.5 as the end point but feel free to select a different one. Click Done.
      Packed bubble and tree map visualizations are filtered by Course days.
  10. Another way to filter data is to select one or more data points in a visualization and see the impact on the other visualizations. Click Finance in the packed bubble visualization.

    Take a look at the tree map visualization. It doesn't contain the Department column so it is filtered by the Finance department.

    Finance is selected in the packed bubble and the tree map is filtered by Finance.
  11. Save the dashboard and then use the switcher in the app bar to close it.
    Switcher menu shows the Welcome page and Tutorial - dashboard.