Product updates

Column chart visualization

Today we’re rolling out some major improvements to our column chart visualisation. These include:

Better handling of date and time data

When displaying data plotted against a date or time, column charts will now label axes much more intelligently in order to prevent overcrowding in your widget. For example, if you’re configuring your widget to show weekly data over a year-long period, the column chart may now label each month (rather than every single week), depending on how large the widget is.

In addition, column charts will now handle data points at irregular intervals and missing values much more effectively.

Scaling based on size of data set

When plotting a large set of data, columns within the chart will now scale down to fit within the space available, meaning it’s much easier to display most or all of your dataset within your visualization.

New tooltip

When building a dashboard, hover over a data point on your column chart with your mouse and you’ll notice a new tooltip that displays the exact value that’s plotted.

To begin with just widgets built with our Spreadsheets and Salesforce integrations or our API will be upgraded, with our other integrations following in the coming weeks.

Spreadsheets Text Widget

We’ve just added the text visualization to our Spreadsheets integration! You can use it to display the latest cell in a selection, or loop through the most recent five.

We use it at Geckoboard to show our “What’s new” updates and customer feedback on our Development Team dashboard.

Combined with Google Sheet’s IMPORT features it opens up a multitude of opportunities for what you can display on your board.

Enjoy!

Preview the contents of a dataset

You can now remind yourself of the structure of a dataset, preview the records in there, and see how long it’s been since it was last updated. This is particularly helpful when you start working with a dataset you’ve not touched in a while, and need a reminder of what’s in it. You can access the dataset preview from the dataset options menu in the navigation bar.

Comparison styling available on Datasets line charts

You can now set comparison styling on one of a line chart’s series. It’s perfect for showing period-over-period comparisons, as it keeps the emphasis on the present period while still giving a point of reference. You’ll find the option in the new Series options menu by clicking the three dots next to any series.

Line chart upgrade

Today we’ve begun rolling out the latest version of our line chart to all our integrations. We’ve started with Mixpanel, but will be rolling out to all our integrations over the next week. Find out more about the change in this blog post.

Record Count and extra time bucket support for Datasets

Our Datasets feature now supports Record count.In our example Space Cargo dataset this now means you can now plot the no. of orders by day and then split that by category or destination. This feature will get more powerful as we add additional filtering options.

We’ve also added Week and Minute time bucket options, giving you more flexibility over how you group your data.

Emoji support

Widget titles and units now support emoji! The flags are a concise way of indicating different regions or teams and emotions are a great way of showing customer sentiment. We’re using emoji on a Google Sheets leaderboard to show the status of various items on our backlog.

If you’re on a Mac, the easiest way to add an emoji is to open the keyboard with cmd + ctrl + space, otherwise just copy paste the symbol you’re after from getemoji.com.

Example dataset

We just added a sample dataset, so that anyone can try out our new Datasets feature without writing a single line of code. Check out the powerful widget-building interface by exploring data from our fictitious intergalactic delivery company 🚀

Secondary visualisations on Datasets number widgets

The Number visualisation in Datasets now supports showing a secondary visualisation.

You can show a fixed comparison to the previous value in the series, which is great for focussing on period-over-period improvement. Alternatively, a sparkline allows you to visualise how a metric is trending over time.

Full bleed image widgets

We’ve updated our image widgets so they now fill the entire width of the widget. We’ve also made the widget’s background transparent so if you’re using a .png, .gif or .svg the dashboards colour will show through, making it easier to brand your dashboard!