Bar Chart–Color Encoded and Sorted

This view displays the sum of the profit for each customer and is color-encoded by the average sales. The data are sorted from highest to lowest profit for the top 15 customers. You can create the view with the following procedure.

1. Place the Profit measure on the Columns shelf.

   The measure is automatically aggregated as a summation and an axis is created with a label given by the name of the field.

2. Place the Customer Name dimension on the Rows shelf.

   Row headers are created with labels given by the dimension member names.

3. Place the Sales measure on the Color shelf.

   The measure is automatically aggregated as a summation. Change the aggregation to an average by selecting Average from the field’s context menu. The color legend reflects the continuous data range.

4. Sort Customer Names.

   Complete the Sort dialog box so that Sort order is Descending and Sort by is Profit aggregated as a summation.

   
   
   
   
   

5. Filter the data to include only the top 15 customers based on profit.

   You can create this filter using the Limit tab in the filter dialog box. Select By Field and complete the definition by making selections on the drop-down lists. To learn more about defining filters refer to i1011423.html#i1011320.

   
   
   
   
   

6. Add a reference line that indicates the average profit.

   Right-click the SUM(Profit) axis and select Add Reference Line. In the subsequent dialog box, select Average for the computed line type and computation for the label.

   
   
   
   
   

The view is shown below.

The marks are horizontal because the axis is horizontal. The length of each mark represents the sum of the profit for customer and the color of each mark gives the average sales. For example, the average sales for John Stevenson is $6,083 and his profit is $18,850. You can display these numbers with tool tips by placing the mouse cursor over the mark.

Notice that for similar profit sums, there is a wide range of average sales as indicated by the bottom six rows in the table. For example, John Stevenson and Clytie Kelty have essentially the same profit, but John has a much higher average sales as indicated by the darker color.