Line Chart

A line chart is useful in representing data over a continuous time span. It displays change over time as a series of data points connected by straight line segments. It’s commonly used to show data variables and trends and can help you make predictions about future performance.

A line chart allows you to see changes in dependent variables over time. You can use it to measure changes in sales over time, traffic changes, and others.
It allows you to identify trends and spot spikes and dips. That way you can predict future performance.
It allows you to compare patterns from multiple sections and find areas of improvement.

Some Line Chart Use Cases includes:

Example: you can use a line chart to track weekly, daily, or even hourly changes in your website traffic. You can also use it to track the changes in sales and other events. A line chart allows you to trend multiple values at the same time. Each value will be represented by a different line on the chart.

How to Add A Line Chart to your dashboard

Here are the steps to create a line chart on your dashboard.

1. From within your dashboard, click on Manage Dashboard icon at the top-right.

2. Under Charts, click on the line chart icon.

The line chart creation window should pop up. (This is where you set the specifics you want to display on the line chart). It’s also where you edit the line chart if you want to change any parameter.

General Section

The line chart window is not different than what we’ve discussed under creating tiles.

The first part is the general, where you enter a title and description for the line chart.

For instance, if you want to weekly track visitors to a website, the title can be Weekly Site Visitors.

For the description, enter a detailed description that helps you understand what the chart is all about (daily visitors in this case).

Data Section

The data section is where you choose the type of data you want to display on the line chart.

View (Select view)

A view is a predefined query modeled to simplify your reporting. What event/data do you want to display on the chart?

Since we want to track weekly visitors, the view would be events.

Clicking on open view details will open the dictionary where you can find what the view is all about and the associated values.

Value (select a measure)

What dimension or measure do you want to track/visualize on the line chart?

From the dropdown of values, we’ll choose visitors.

And since line charts allow trending multiple values. We can also add more values.

We would also track pageviews and sessions on the line chart.

As such our tile will visualize weekly visitors, page views, and sessions.

Breakdown (select a breakdown dimension):

Do you want to segment the event(s) to learn more about them? By default, the breakdown is by date. However, you can break down your tile by week, hour, and other dimensions like page URL, referrer, etc.

Since we are tracking weekly visitors, we’ll breakdown by ‘Days of Week’.

Granularity

How many data points do you want to break the line into?

In our case, we’ll choose Date, so we can see the number of visitors for each day of the week.

Date Range

What date range do you want to track with the line chart? Set a start and finish date, so the date range is the time in between.

You can either choose a predefined date range or enter a custom date range.

Since we are tracking weekly visitors, we’ll select ‘Last full 7 days’ as our date range.

Filter Section

Is there any specific set of data you do not want to display? Do you want to only visualize specific data or data for a particular date?

For instance, if we want to only show visitors with a page referrer, we’ll select page referrer on the first tab, and for the second tab, we will choose exists. So the line chart will only show visitors within the last 7 days that had a page referrer.

Options section

The Options section is where you select the type of line chart you want and how you want the data to be visualized. There are different options in this section.

* Sort

You can sort the lines to go top to bottom or bottom to top.

* Limit Max Items

Do you want to limit the number of items that appear on the line chart? You can limit the number of items that's displayed to make your line chart readable when covering a large date range.

* Type

what type of line chart do you want? There are currently three line chart options available on the FoxMetrics dashboard.

1. Line

2. Area

3. Area Stacked:

Edge

Do you want to smoothen the edges of the lines? By default Line charts have pointy edges. But you can smoothen them by checking the Smooth box.

Example of a line chart with pionty edges.

Smooth

Example of a line chart with smooth edges.

Look and feel

This section allows you to control the size of the line chart. There are several predefined sizes you can choose from including unset, small, default, default wide, wide small, wide and full width.

You can choose to make the tile look small to make space for other tiles on the dashboard.

If you choose full width, the line chart will look like this.