When you create a chart, you must provide values to determine the size of the chart element, and category groups to group the data and to provide category labels. You may also, for some of the chart types, use series groups to add a chart element for each series group to each category.

Values

You must provide at least one value series for your chart to appear. These are static, similar to a static matrix row group, and dictate the size of your chart elements such as the height of a column or the location and size of a bubble.

A single value series with no series groups shows a single chart element for each category group. Multiple values show a chart element for each value in each category group with the name of each value series displayed in the chart legend. (i.e. Adding a Freight value series to a Sales by Customer column chart adds a column for freight next to each sales column for each customer. It also specifies the Freight and Sales values by color or pattern in the legend.)

To use category groups or series groups, you must use an aggregate expression for the value. You do not need to use an expression for the value if you only have one value in your dataset for each category. For more information on using expressions, see Expressions.

Category Groups

Using category groups not only groups your data, similar to a matrix column group, it also provides labels for your chart elements. For a bar chart, these labels appear along the y-axis, while for a column chart, they appear along the x-axis.

Using multiple category groups nests the categories, so if you group sales by country and by city in a column chart, the x-axis shows a tick mark labeled with each city, and the country below with brackets encompassing all of that country's cities.

Series Groups (Optional)

Series groups are dynamic, similar to a matrix row group, so you can use them to create another dimension in your data. For example, by adding a Year series group to a bar chart of Sales by Product, instead of a single bar for each product, you would have a bar for each year for each product. Labels for series groups appear in the chart legend.

Connecting Data to a Chart

Data Bound Charts

To create a data bound chart, use the Chart UI or the Chart Properties smart panel.