DV waterfall chart revision

Luca Ascolese

Organization Name

Assicurazioni Generali S.p.a.

Description

New logic for the waterfall chart in order to let it become a “waterfall build up” (horizontal and vertical).

- by default, the chart should set on one of the axes all the values of a dimensional attribute (either sorted by alphabetic /ascending/descending / custom order as requested in another "idea") and as a final bucket it should report the total sum of the measure of all the dimensional attribute values

- the measure for each dimensional attribute value could either be positive or negative (therefore subtract or add up to the total sum according to the value of that dimension)

- possibility to show values in each stack of the waterfall as percentage (of the total), absolute number or both together

Use Case and Business Need

In an HR analytics context, visualize the contribution of the different leaving/hiring reasons (voluntary, subsidized, retirement, …) for the employees leaving/joining the company, custom ordered.

More details

Basically, instead of plotting the difference between the previous and the current value, plot the current value, starting from the provious one  (and going up or down based on the measure sign or by the sign option configured for that bar by the user).

Other details that could better explain the requirement:

- possibility of “add subtotal” by clicking on one of the dimensional attribute value; this operation should create another column of subtotal (that should be custom-named) which sums all the previous values and from which the waterfall “re-starts” to arrive to the total

- possibility to determine the sign of the measure for a dimensional attribute value by clicking on it. For instance, we have the attribute “inflow of people” expressed in absolute numbers. With this desired functionality, the user would click on it and select subtract to edit the sign to minus

Original Idea Number: 16262f9fda

Bhavin Khatri

Even the way logic for waterfall chart works between classic and DV is different. The way classic waterfall chart works is more desirable.

TimVlamis

First of all, I agree that it would be awesome to have more control over waterfall graphs and I fully support the ideas above.

This reminded me of a "hack" that's been around for a long time. The idea is to use a stacked bar graph and to assign white (or the background color of the graph) for a piece that you want to not appear. That way the piece above it appears to be floating. The way you'd do your waterfall graph is to use a stacked bar graph and to calculate the "difference white bar value" for each element so that the red or green colored piece appears in the correct place. It's a pain and and an ugly hack, but I thought I'd include it in case someone had a strict requirement and just needs to get it done.

Here is a screen shot from the old SampleApp VM that shows how this technique was used to create a box plot graph. There are actually three white pieces in every stack. One at the bottom, one between the red line (actually a very small value box) and the light purple box, one between the light purple box and the green line (actually another very small value box). You can tell because the white boxes actually cover the grid lines (the purple box isn't "floating", it's just suspended between white boxes). 

Gabby Rubin-Oracle

Hi Luca, 

In your example, create a My Calc for 'RSUM(Measure)' and create the waterfall using the new calculation. 

We are adding a few options to make it easier, e.g. 'no sort'. We will also consider how we can make this specific use case simpler (without a formula).

Regards,

Gabby

Angel Shipp

I agree with this idea. To date, our organization has had to use calculated fields using RSum + case statements in order to trick the waterfall into doing custom sorting and falling the way we want. Our workaround works, but it will not work for users who are not familiar with creating calculations.

Gabby Rubin-Oracle

Download this project 

It will have a simple example that does what you asked for. Note that in 6.1 you can sort based on the Sort column and show the Attribute column on the viz, but since not all customers are on 6.1 I placed the Sort column on the X axis.

I will keep the link up for two weeks.