Creating Visualizations and Graphs

Netskope makes it easy to create graphics and charts based on the results of a report. This page explains how to create visualizations that best show off your data.

You can add an eye-catching chart to any report result set on the Explore. This page shows how to create visualizations that best show off your data.

You can further customize your visualization by specifying which dimensions and measures you want to be included in the visualization. If your data is missing key values, you can tell the system to fill in those values on the appropriate part of your visualization.

Choosing a Visualization Type

Once you’ve created and run your report, click the Visualization tab in the Explore to configure visualization options for the report. Use the chart buttons to pick the visualization type that’s right for the data.

The visualization type you select determines how the data series are represented in your chart. A data series is a set of related data points plotted on a chart. In a column chart, a series is represented by columns of the same color; in a line chart, a series is represented by a single line, and so on. You can see a list of the series for your chart in the series menu, and also on the chart legend.

Drilling into Data Points

You can hover over some regions or points in a tile’s visualization to reveal a tooltip that displays more details about the data. To go deeper, click a region or data point. Depending on the underlying data, a drill overlay may open automatically, allowing you to drill down into that data point. (In table visualizations, data points that you can drill into show a dotted underscore when you hover over them.)

You can sort the drill overlay by a single column. Click a column’s header and the data table will sort in that column’s ascending order. An upward pointing chevron appears at the right of the column to indicate the sort. Click the column header again to change the sort to descending order. The chevron on the right of the column will switch to downward pointing. Sorting by multiple columns is not available.

Click Explore at the top of the overlay to navigate to an Explore page that contains this data, where you can explore the data more.

Click Download in the top right to download the data in the drill overlay.

Depending on the underlying data and the permissions given to you, you may also be able to drill down further directly in the drill overlay. Drillable data points show dotted underscores when you hover over them. Click the data point to drill further or open a drill menu with your drilling options, depending on the underlying data.

Fine-Tuning Your Visualizations

Learn how to customize your visualizations with the features below.

Customizing Visualizations with Chart Settings

You can customize a visualization to make the data more readable and to add visual styling. Click Edit to see the visualization options, then change the settings to get a result that suits you.

The example below shows some of the visualization settings chosen for an area chart with stacked series.

Including Multiple Visualization Types on a Single Chart

You can also create charts that include more than one visualization type:

Click the Edit button to show the chart customization options.

Click the Series tab.

In the Customizations section, you’ll see an entry for each series in the chart. Click the arrow next to the series you want to change to display its customization options.

In the Type box, select the type of visualization to use for that series.

Charts with multiple series types always layer line and scatter series in front, then they layer area, column, and bar series.

You can alter the layering order of column, bar, and area series by changing the series’ positions in the data table and clicking the Run button. The leftmost series will layer on top and the rightmost series will layer on bottom.

Creating Stacked Charts with Multiple Visualization Types

You can include stacked series in a chart with multiple visualization types. All the series of the same type as the chart overall will be stacked together; series of other types will not stack. For example, the chart below is a column chart, so the columns stack, but the line series do not stack.

To create a stacked chart that uses multiple y-axes, drag any series to a different axis in the Y menu. The stacked series will appear together, but all other series can be moved independently, including individual series within a pivot.

Specifying Fields to Include in the Visualization

All dimensions and measures are automatically added to any visualizations you use. However, sometimes you won’t want to display every dimension or measure in the chart. In the example below, note that the measures Accidents Serious Accidents Count, Accidents Fatal Accidents Count, and Accidents Total Fatalities are displayed:

To hide a column from the visualization, select the gear icon at the top right corner of the column, then select Hide from Visualization:

This will hide the column from the visualization. In the example below, the field Accidents Total Fatalities is hidden from the visualization, leaving only Accidents Serious Accidents Count and Accidents Fatal Accidents Count in the chart.

You can also enable or disable a charted series by clicking on that series in the visualization’s legend. When disabled, the series color turns grey in the legend and the data disappears in the chart. Click the series again to re-enable it.

Table calculations can also be hidden from a visualization, as described on the Using Table Calculations page.

Filling in Missing Dates and Values

Some datasets have values, such as dates, that follow a predictable pattern. A user might pull data by a timeframe and find that some dates, weeks, months, or other date types don’t have any corresponding value. By default, the data table and the visualization will display dates returned from the report and skip any dates that are missing. Dimension fill option lets you display the missing dates or other values in the data table and on the corresponding axis of the report’s visualization. This option is found in the dimension’s gear menu in the Data section of an Explore.

If you do not use dimension fill, the system connects the data points it has, resulting in a potentially misleading graph:

Turning on dimension fill adds the missing dates and makes the graph more informative:

To use dimension fill simply choose the Fill in Missing Dates or Fill in Missing Values option from the gear menu of the appropriate dimension:

Dimension fill is available for dimensions with yes/no values, tiered values, and most date types. It can also be applied to any dimension based on a list of values, via the case parameter.

Dimension fill will turn on automatically for reports that run with a single dimension and/or a single pivot, just as long as you haven’t applied filters to any measures.

There are a few cases when you will not be able to dimension fill: