Viewing Data Tables

Data Tables appear in cells on a Dashboard just like charts do and you view them in pretty much the same way. They do, however, have a couple of options that are different to a standard Bar or Pie chart.

When you see a Data Table on a Dashboard, it may have already been sorted in a particular way by the person who built it but that doesn’t stop applying a temporary sort if you need to view the data differently.

In the following example, the data in the table has been sorted in ascending order based on the ‘Value Annual’ figure

but what if you wanted to view the figures by Employee so all Paul’s customers are together and so on. This is easily done but remember, it’s only a temporary sort. When you close the Dashboard, it will revert to being sorted by ‘Value Annual’. To sort the table on the data in one of the other columns, click the column heading - the first click will sort the column into ascending order and if you click the same column again, it will sort in descending order. You’ll notice a small arrow to the right of the column name that indicates the sort order. In the following example the Employee Name column has been sorted into descending order.

You can only sort on one column at a time, so if you sort on another column your first sort will be undone.

The width of the columns in a Data Table will also have been set when the table was built but if you need to make a column wider (or smaller) you can click and drag the line between each of the column headings. When you position your mouse over the dividing line, you’ll see a double headed arrow - just click and drag this to make the column wider or smaller. Again, this option will only be a temporary resize. When you close the Dashboard, the column will revert to its original size - unlike sorting though, you can resize multiple columns at the same time.