Sparklines are typically small graphics, showing a horizontal line connecting several data points without labeling the values on their axes. The purpose of a sparkline is to show the movement of a trend over a certain period. Since its details are not available, the context of a sparkline must be clear to the dashboard user to interpret its meaning properly. This recipe will show you how to configure a sparkline.
Open a new file in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and enter the data into the spreadsheet, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Drag a Sparkline Chart component into the canvas.
- Bind the By Range field to the spreadsheet range from A4 to M5.
- Bind the Chart field to cell A1 and bind the Subtitle field to cell A2.
- Go to the Behavior tab of the properties pane of the Sparkline Chart component. In the Normal Range Area section, select Normal Range Area.
- Enter the value
600in the Normal Range Low field and enter1000in the Normal Range High field:
- Go to the Appearance tab and select the Text sub-tab.
- Select Show for Start Value.
- Set the Position for this Start Value text to Left.
- Select Show for the End Value option.
- Now go to the Color tab and select all markers:
- Your dashboard should look like what is shown in the following screenshot:
The configuration of the General tab within the properties pane of a sparkline chart component looks like the configuration of a line chart component. But, a sparkline chart component has fewer options here: no axis and no category labels can be defined. From a dashboard user's perspective, this also means that the user has to know and understand the context of the presented data. When multiple sparklines are displayed and they all have different bands without axes, it is very difficult to compare the values. The user needs to be aware of this.
With the Normal Range Area section in the Behavior tab, it is possible to illustrate the range of the values of this series. Also, the start and end and the highest and lowest values of the presented series can be emphasized.
In this section, we will discuss some specific labels for the sparkline component: header labels and low and high values.
Header labels can label two parts of the sparkline chart component: the series name(s) and the sparkline(s). To activate these labels follow the given steps:
- Bind the Header Labels field in the General tab to two spreadsheet cells.
- Enter the value of the series name(s) header in the first cell, and the value of the sparkline(s) header in the second cell.
- Now go to the Appearance tab and select the Text sub-tab.
- Select Header Labels. The labels will now appear in the component, as shown in the following screenshot:
