Lesson 2: Adding more fields

You can create more advanced graphs by adding additional fields. You can add a maximum of four fields, or two fields to the top selection area and two to the lower selection area.

About this task

By adding more fields you can enrich graphs to capture more interesting data points. By combining filters with fields and appropriate graph types, you can create advanced graphs that indicate key trends at a glance.

Complete the following steps to create a graph that combines three fields and shows how long it takes for incidents to close over different months.

Procedure

  1. From the Analytics Dashboard, select Add Widget > Custom Incident Widget.
  2. Enter a title for the graph, such as Average time to close by severity over time.
  3. From the filters at the top of the screen, for Date Created, select All and for Status select Closed.
  4. Drag Average Time to the top field selection area. Click the edit icon beside Average Time and change the Time Unit to Days and click Save.
  5. Search for and then drag Severity to the same selection area as Average Time. The following animation shows how to configure the fields.
  6. Search for and drag Date Created to the lower field selection area. Click the Edit icon beside Date Created and change the Bucket Type to Months. Then click Save.
  7. From the graph types icons, select Line. A preview is displayed.
  8. Use one of the following Sort By options to determine the order in which the fields are presented:
    • Label (Natural Order) sorts the fields' label; alphabetical for strings where multi-digit numbers are ordered as a single character, oldest to newest for dates, and ascending for numbers. Severity is an exception to the alphabetical sorting. This is the default selection.
    • Ascending sorts the fields by the total number of incidents within your selected criteria. For example, a graph displays incidents by status per city, where Boston has 30 open incidents and 30 closed incidents for a total of 60, and London has 20 open incidents and 50 closed incidents for a total of 70. In ascending order, Boston would be first in the graph showing open incidents although London has less open incidents.
    • Descending also sorts by the fields by the total number of incidents within your selected criteria. Using the previous example, London would be shown first.
  9. From the Size menu, select Full, then click Save.

Results

The graph is created on the dashboard, similar to the following example.

Lesson checkpoint

By combining more fields, you can add more data points to the graph. By adding a date related field to the lower field selection area, we can add a time line to the graph.

Edit the graph that you just created to make the following changes and then observe the results:
  • Add an additional field to the lower field selection area.
  • Change the graph type to Column.
  • Change the filters at the top of the screen to filter by incidents over a specific date range.