A Heat Map widget is a combination of colored rectangles, each representing an attribute element, that allow you to quickly grasp the state and impact of a large number of variables at once. Heat Maps are often used in the financial services industry to review the status of a portfolio. The rectangles contain a wide variety and shadings of colors, which emphasize the weight of the various components. In a Heat Map:
The size of each rectangle represents its relative weight.
The color represents the relative change in value of that rectangle.
The large areas, such as the Electronics area of rectangles in the image below, represent different categories of products.
The small rectangles in the image below represent different regions in which products are sold.
Insert a Heat Map widget into the document. For steps, see Inserting a widget into a document.
Add objects to the widget template. To do this, from the Dataset Objects panel on the left, select attributes and metrics and drag them on top of the widget, using the following requirements:
Place at least one attribute on the rows. If you add additional attributes to the widget template, all of the attributes are displayed as separate rectangles in the heat map.
You can also create a dynamic heat map which uses a selector. For specific requirements, see Creating a dynamic Heat Map.
Place at least two metrics on the columns. If more than two metrics are placed on the widget template, they are ignored.
The first metric on the columns determines the size of each rectangle.
The second metric at the bottom of the columns must include values in the range of -1 to 1. This range is used to provide different shadings of color in the heat map widget.
To enable a legend for the graph, right-click the widget and select Properties. On the Display tab, select the Show Legend check box and click OK. A legend is displayed near the widget.
View and test your results by selecting Flash Mode from the Home menu.
If Flash Mode is not available in the View menu, you must make Flash Mode available in the document. For steps, see Defining which display modes are available to users.
Modify the widget
In Flash Mode, right-click the widget and select Properties. The Heat Map dialog box opens. These are the options:
Display tab
Show legend: Determines whether to display the legend. This displays a better view of the value that each color represents in the widget.
Remove attributes from template: Determines whether you can remove attributes from the widget. For instructions on removing attributes from the widget, see Formatting a Heat Map widget.
Blend legend colors: Select whether to mix the minimum and maximum colors, which are defined in the Format section of this dialog box. For example, if your minimum color is red and your maximum color is yellow, then all the data in the widget in between will display as orange.
Show metric values: Determine whether to display the metric values -- for instance, revenue by state -- in each section of the widget. The widget is divided into sections by attributes. For example, you add customer region, quarter, and revenue to the widget. The widget will be divided into the customer region section first and then into quarters within the customer region section. If you select the Show metric values option, then you can display revenue values for each quarter in each customer region section.
Show labels: Determine whether to display the labels for each section of the widget. Select either On, which displays the object labels, Off, which removes all labels from the object sections in the widget, or Proportional, which displays the object labels by value -- the larger the object name, the higher the value and the smaller the object name, the smaller the value.
Format tab
Header color: Select a color for the attribute headers in the widget.
Background color: Select a background color for the widget. This color will display behind all of the object sections and the legend on the widget.
Border color: Select a border color for the widget. This color will outline the entire widget.
Scale Boundaries tab This tab allows you to select a specific metric and then define the value range that the color variation applies to. This is useful if you want to focus on a specific range of metric data in the widget. For example, a metric returns values ranging from -25 to 50. You want to focus on the range from -10 to 30. Enable the scale boundaries for that metric, defining the Minimum as -10 and the Maximum as 30. The color variations are applied to that range. Any metric values below the Minimum use the minimum color, while those metric values below the Maximum use the maximum color. (The colors are defined in the Interactive dialog box. For more information on using the Interactive dialog box, see Formatting a Heat Map widget).
Enabled: Determines whether to enable setting the minimum and maximum metric values for the selected metric. If this check box is selected the Minimum and Maximum fields become available.
Minimum: Type the minimum value. Any metric values below this use the minimum color.
Maximum: Type the maximum value. Any metric values above this use the maximum color.
Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.
In Design or Editable Mode, do one of the following:
Right-click the attribute, custom group, or consolidation in the Grid/Graph to use as the selector, and choose Edit Selector. The Configure Selector dialog box opens.
Right-click the Metrics column in the Grid/Graph, and choose Edit Selector. The Configure Selector dialog box opens.
Select the target Grid/Graph or panel stack in the list of available targets on the left. Click > to add it to the list of selected targets on the right. You can select multiple targets.
The attribute, custom group, or consolidation you selected in the Grid/Graph is the source, and the selected Grid/Graph is the target. The Action Type of the selector is set the Select Element.
To ensure that the user can select more than one element in the widget, select the Show option for All check box.
To ensure that the element displayed in the selector changes if an element is chosen in another selector, select Allow selection to be updated by other selectors.
Click OK to apply the changes and return to the document.
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