Creating a Tile

When you add a tile to a dashboard, it opens a window where you can set elements for that specific tile. All the different types of tiles have similar windows. The sections (General, Data, Filters, Options, Look & Feel) are similar but the options are different.

So when you click to create either a chart or widget, the tile creation window will pop up to allow you to set the data set you want to track/visualize and how you want it shown.

Here's a breakdown of the various sections you may find on a tile creation window.

General section

Title: This option allows you to enter a title for the tile. The title should be short and précised.

Description: the description comes in handy in reminding you and anyone else accessing the dashboard, about what that tile represents. Your tile description should be detailed and précised.

Data Section

The data section allows you to choose the data source and the specific type of data you want to display.

Views

A view is saved in the database as a named query and can be used to access frequently used or complex queries. So a view is the result set of a stored query on the data that allows users to quickly and easily create complex hierarchical and dimensional queries on data in the database.

When creating a tile (widgets or charts), the view you choose should be the specific event/data you want the tile to display. There are various predefined views on FoxMetrics built around your data to simplify its usage and reporting. The standard views include Events, sessions, and visitors, there are also custom views.

If the view you want isn’t on the dropdown, you can create that view from the workbench.

Once you’ve selected a view, click on open view details to see the list of values under that specific view. You'll find the titles, names, descriptions, data types of the values under that view.

Values (Select a Measure):

The value section allows you to choose the specific measure of an event that you want to display on the tile. After selecting a view, you’ll get a dropdown of the various events available for that view based on your data.

For example, if you want to create a bar chart to display your daily visitors; select events under view and choose visitors as the measure (value).

FoxMetrics allows users to create custom events from the workbench.

Breakdown (Select Breakdown Dimension):

Use breakdown dimensions if you want to know more about an item (event) or its related segments. You can break down your data in various ways to build queries.

By default, the breakdown is by date. However, you can breakdown the displayed data by product names, users ID, and others values.

When working with line charts, it's advisable to use a breakdown that has critical values, especially if you are covering a large data set.

Choosing a breakdown that's sparse may make your chart unreadable. For example, if you choose to breakdown a line chart by Products SKU or product Category names, and you have numerous products, your chart will be unreadable and very slow to render. We recommend creating more tiles if you want to further breakdown your line chart.

Granularity (date):

Granularity is a measure of the level of detail in a data structure. It refers to the number of data points that you want the tile to be divided into. In FoxMetrics, the available granularity options include minute, hour, week, date, week, month, quarter, or year.

By default, the granularity is 'date' (day), but you can change that.

For example, if you want to create a line chart to show pageviews.

  • First select a view, event in this case,

  • For the value, choose pageviews.

Then you can set the Granularity.

If you choose ‘Hour’ granularity, the pageview data will be divided by hours (more data points).

The line chart will look like this.

However, if you set the granularity as day or month, it will have fewer data points.

Here’s the same pageviews line chart with the Granularity set as 'day' (date).

Date Range (date):

You can specify the data range that you want to display on the tile. A date range sets a particular start and a finish date, so the data for the date in-between is displayed on the tile.

By default, the date range is set to the Last 30 days starting from today. But you can change that and choose any specific date range you want. You’ll find several predefined date range from the dropdown including today, yesterday, last week, this week, 3 days ago, last 7 days, and others.

If you can’t find the date range you want on the dropdown, you can create a custom date range.

1. To do this, scroll to the bottom of the date range option and click on Choose a date range.

2. Click on the empty tab by the right to choose a custom date range.

Compare

What period are you comparing the data range with?

Just like with the date range, you can either choose a predefined period or select a custom period.

  • Select any of the predefined date range.

Follow this step to choose a customer comparison date.

1. Click on compare.

2. Select Custom from the list.

3. Click on the blank bar by the right. The date selector will popup.

4. Select the date range you want to cover. For instance, you can choose to cover the whole of June.

Filter Section

The filter section allows you to narrow down your data into a smaller group. This way you can display only the specific data you want to see. You can use filters to exclude unwanted data, include specific data subsets, or search and replace certain information.

1. To create a filter, click Add Filter

2. The first tab allows you to specify the dimension or measure you want to filter.

3. The next tab allows you to choose a filter option. There are several options like equals, does not equal, exists, does not exist, contains, does not contain, and more.

4. The third option is where you specify what you’re filtering for or against.

For example, if you want to only show cart additions that are higher than $100; you’ll set the dimension as cart addition, while for the filter you’ll choose greater than, and in the last box you input the 100. You can still edit any tile and add or remove its filters.

Options Section

The options section is where you can specify the number of items to show on each tile, the styling of the chart or widget, and others.

Limited Max Items

This option allows you to limit the amount of data displayed for each tile to make it readable, especially when you use a large data source.

Select the limit max item from the dropdown. It can be 5, 10, 20, 25, 1000, or unlimited.

Look and Feel Section

This option allows you to choose how you want the tile to look (i.e. the size of the tile). There are several predefined options including:

  • Unset:

  • Small:

  • Default

  • Default Wide

  • Wide Small

  • wide

  • full width

Note: The section for each type of tile may differ. Follow these instructions to create a specific chart or widget.

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