Task 3: Provide data for a chart
In task 1, you created the data source connection and data set that you need. After selecting the data set to use, you must set up the expressions that the chart uses to represent the data graphically. Each type of chart uses data differently. For a pie chart, you must select data expressions that specify:
The data values represented by sectors in the pie. In this tutorial, you use an expression that creates one sector for each product line value.
The size of each sector. In this tutorial, the number of orders determines the size of each product-line sector.You can use different techniques to provide a data expression in a chart. The easiest way to specify the data to use is to drag a column from Data Preview to a field. You can also type the expression or use expression builder to create an expression.
1 To navigate to the page you use to provide data, choose Select Data. The upper half of Select Data, shown in Figure 14-4, provides a chart preview.Chart Preview displays a rough sketch of the chart for design purposes. The final published version looks more elaborate and complete, particularly if you choose to use live data for previews. In Chart Preview, the chart builder uses either live data from your data set or randomly generated sample data, depending on how you set the Enable Live Preview preference.This report design includes only one data set. Select ChartData from the drop-down list. Select the Show data preview option if it is not selected. In the lower half of the chart builder, as shown in Figure 14-5, Data Preview displays some of the data from the data set.
3 In Data Preview, select the PRODUCTLINE column heading, and drag it to the empty Category Definition field, as shown in Figure 14-6.Figure 14-6 Supplying a category definitionA slice appears in the pie chart for each item in the category. The following expression appears in Category Definition:
4 To set the size of each sector, select the TotalOrders column header, and drag it to the empty field in Slice Size Definition, as shown in Figure 14-7.Figure 14-7 Supplying a slice size definitionIn Data Preview, the TotalOrders column is colored to show that the chart uses the column. The image in Chart Preview changes to reflect the data you specified. The product lines are now the chart categories. The size of the sectors represents the total orders for each product line category.
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