The Slice Chart Transform allows you to view the distribution of your aggregated Data Series by the values in another column. For example, if you wanted to view Sales by Rep, you would select your Sales column as your Data Series and Slice by the Rep column in your data.
Slice replaces the Pivot Transform on the Data Tab of the Metric Builder. By using Slice in Data Explorer, you preserve transactional level data for Filtering and dynamic Groupings (in the Builder and on the Dashboard). Additionally, Slice automatically adds new values to your chart as they enter your data. With Pivot, if a new value was added to the data, you would have to manually select the column to add that value to your chart.
Using the Slice Chart Transform
Slice by
Select the column you want to Slice your chart by in the Slice By dropdown. The dropdown contains a list of columns from your charted table of data. Please note you cannot Slice your Chart by your Data Series or Grouping column selection.
Upon selecting a column to Slice By, the chart will update to display a data series (bar, column, line, etc) for each Category. A Category is a unique value in the Slice By column, for example, the name of a sales representative. The Slice Chart Transform also lists all possible Categories for you to Sort and Format.
Sort by
Sort by options
Sort by allows you to customize how the Categories are displayed on the Chart. For example, you might want to display your Representative’s name in Alphabetical order. Sort by options are dependent on the datatype of the Slice by column:
Text
- A -> Z: displays Categories in alphabetical order
- Z -> A: displays Categories in reverse alphabetical order
- Custom: enables drag and drop UI for the user to define a custom order to display Categories
Numeric
- Ascending: displays Categories in ascending order
- Descending: displays Categories in descending order
- Custom: enables drag and drop UI for the user to define a custom order to display Categories
Date & Datetime
- Old -> New: displays Categories in oldest to newest order
- New -> Old: displays Categories in newest to oldest order
Please note Custom is not available for date and datetime Slice by columns.
Custom
Drag and drop Categories to define a Custom order specific to your data (ex: Sales Funnel). To enable the drag and drop UI, you must select Custom from the Sort by dropdown.
Any future Categories that are populated in the data will be automatically added to the bottom of the list in the order in which they are added to the data. For example, if I sort my Lead Source Categories in the following order when I create the metric:
- Paid Traffic
- Social Traffic
- Organic Traffic
If a new Category comes in called Referral, the Category will be placed under Paid Traffic in the 4th position.
If Custom sorting is enabled and a Category is dropped from the data, Grow will preserve the dropped Category in an error state in the Chart Transform. The Category will not show on the chart, but if that Category comes back into the data, the Category will be removed from the error state and added back into the Chart respecting the original order defined.
If the Category is dropped from the data and you do not anticipate it will ever come back into the data, you can permanently remove the Category from the list.
Sorting Slices is not available for all Chart Types. For example, Line Charts do not support Slice because there is no ordering to display Lines, each point of a line is plotted solely based on the value. Sort by is available for the following Chart Types in Data Explorer:
- Column: first category listed is the leftmost column
- Stacked Column: first category listed is the bottom column
- Stacked Column 100%: first category list is the bottom column
- Stacked Bar: first category is the leftmost bar
- Bar: first category is the top bar
- Table: first category is the first column after the grouping column
- Area: first category is the front most area
Color and Rename
You can rename or change the color of a Category in the 3 dot menu to the right of the Category pill.
Renaming Categories allows you to clean up the values in the data to make the names more intuitive to the viewer. For example, you might slice by a column called Refund? and the values are 1s and 0s. A 1 may indicate that a refund was requested for an order and a 0 indicates no refund. You could rename the Categories as Refunded and No Refund, making it very clear what the data is showing on the dashboard.
When you rename a Category, the original value will continue to show so you can continue to match the Category to the value in the data. Please note that you cannot rename a Category with the same name of another Category, all Titles must be unique.
Remove Slice
You can remove Slice from your Chart by selecting No Slice in the Slice by dropdown. When you remove a Slice, all formatting (Sort, Color, and Rename) settings are cleared.
Slice Errors
More than 20 Categories
Grow allows you to select any column to Slice your chart by. However, for BI best practices we recommend that your Slice by a column contains less than 20 unique values. Charts that display lots of Categories are more difficult to digest. Additionally, the more Categories your Slice by column contains, the more likely you are to see performance degradation in the Metric Builder or on the Dashboard. If your Slice by column contains more than 20 unique values, a warning state will appear on the Chart Transform. Please note the warning will only appear in the Metric Builder and you can still save the metric in this state.
More than 500 Categories
If your Slice by column contains more than 500 unique Categories, the Chart will fail to build and Grow will show an error in the Chart Transform. You will not be able to save your Chart in this state, you either need to select a new Slice by column or Filter out Categories.
60 Character Limit
Category names cannot exceed 60 characters. If at least one Category name exceeds 60 characters, the Chart will fail to build and an error will show on the Chart Transform. Please note you will not be able to save the Chart in this state, you must shorten the values in the Slice by column on the Data Tab using SQL or the Tag Transform.
Date Value Limitations
When you add a data series of Date type, you cannot use the Min and Max aggregates. The chart does not show up accurately when you add either of these functions. To use the Min or Max aggregates with dates, you can use multiple groupings in place of a slice.