Creating widgets and adding them to a dashboard

This guide explains how to create table and visualization widgets in Explore, and add them to a dashboard.

Introduction

What is a widget?

A widget is an individual element on a dashboard. Use Explore to create table and chart (visualization) widgets based on your data. You can also add image, video, and text widgets to your dashboard.

In Explore, you create and edit widgets in a view. Only views that are added to a dashboard as a widget are saved.

What types of widget can I create?

There are two main types of widgets in Adverity:

  • Table widgets display data in a table.

  • Visualization widgets display data in a range of chart and graph formats.

How do I create a widget?

There are four steps in this process. This guide gives a brief overview of each step, and the guides linked below provide more detail about each step in the process:

  1. Selecting data to add to a widget - select the data you want to include in the widget from the data you have loaded into Adverity Data Storage.

  2. Configuring data tables - choose how the selected data is displayed in the data table.

  3. (Optional) Creating visualization widgets - create a chart to visualize the data in the data table.

  4. After you have created a widget, see the Adding a widget to a dashboard section of this guide to add it to a dashboard.

Prerequisites

Before you complete the procedure in this guide, perform all of the following actions:

Selecting data to include in a widget

To select the data you want to include in a widget, follow the steps below. For more information about this step of creating a widget, see Selecting data to add to a widget.

  1. Go to the Explore page.

  2. Next to the View tabs at the top of the page, click Create new view.

  3. From the Dimensions & Metrics list on the left, select the dimensions that you want to add to your widget.

  4. From the Dimensions & Metrics list on the left, select the metrics that you want to add to your widget.

As a result, the dimensions and metrics you have selected appear in the Data table section of your view. You can now configure how the data is displayed in this data table.

When you create a widget in Explore, the Datasource dimension is added to the View tab by default. You can change the dimensions that are added to widgets by default in the Default columns setting. For more information, see Changing default dimensions in widgets.

Removing dimensions and metrics from your widget

You can remove dimensions and metrics from the widget you are creating in two ways:

  • To remove an individual dimension or metric from the widget, follow these steps:

    1. In the Dimensions or Metrics section of the view, click on the dimension or metric you want to remove.

    2. In the drop-down menu, click Remove.

  • To remove all dimensions or metrics from the widget, follow these steps:

    1. In the Dimensions or Metrics section of the view, on the right-hand side of the page, click the Remove all icon.

As a result, the corresponding dimensions or metrics that you added to the widget are removed.

Configuring your data table

To change how the data you selected is displayed in table format, follow the steps below. For more information about this step of creating a widget, see Configuring data tables.

  1. Use the options above the data table to change how your data is displayed. For example, you can add a total row to your table, limit the number of rows in the table, and customize the appearance of the data table.

As a result, the data is displayed according to your chosen settings. You can now use this data table to create a visualization widget, or skip this step and add the data table to a dashboard as a table widget.

Creating a visualization widget

To create a visualization widget based on the data in your data table, follow the steps below. For more information about this step of creating a widget, see Creating visualization widgets

  1. Click on any metric value in the column containing the metric you want to visualize.

  2. In the pop-up Visualize menu, select a set of values to form the data set. Hover over the options in this menu to see which values are contained in each set.

    The data set or sets that you select will appear in the Visualization section of your view, below the data table.

  3. Above the visualization, select the type of chart or graph that you want to create.

  4. To the right of the visualization, adjust the visualization settings.

As a result, you have created a chart or graph that displays the data you have selected and configured in the data table. You can now add this chart or graph to a dashboard as a visualization widget.

Adding a widget to a dashboard

To add the table or visualization widget you have created to a dashboard, follow the steps below.

You cannot save the table and visualization that you have created unless you add at least one of them as a widget to a dashboard.

If you do not add a table or visualization widget to a dashboard, they will be lost when you close the View tab or sign out of Adverity.

  1. In the top right corner of the view, click Add to a dashboard.

  2. To add the data table to a dashboard as a table widget, click Add as table.

  3. To add the chart or graph to a dashboard as a visualization widget, click Add as visualization.

  4. (Optional) In Widget name, rename your widget.

  5. Select one of the following options:

    • Click Add to existing dashboard, and select the existing dashboard to which you want to add the widget.

    • Click Add to new draft dashboard, and enter the name of a new dashboard to which you want to add the widget.

  6. Click Add.

  7. To go to the dashboard containing your new widget, in the top right corner, click Go to dashboard.

As a result, you have added the data table and/or visualization that you created to the selected dashboard.