Glossary
We know that there’s more than one way to slice a pi, and we know that we sometimes talk about pi in ways that might not always align with other peoples ways of thinking, so we’ve designed this glossary to help clarify exactly what we mean.
Letter | Item | pi Meaning | Could be known as / similar to |
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A | In pi, we mean the ability to have information about a chart spoken which means that the data is accessible for everyone. The information that will be spoken is generated automatically based on the chart you’ve created but you also have the option to add more content to the messages to make the information even easier to process. | Reader | |
| Administrator | An administrator is a user that can make changes to the dashboard that normal users may not have the permissions for. Administrators can have varying levels of permission from having full control or only being able to create new accounts. | Admin, Master Admin |
| This type of chart can be used to automatically search through your data and show you instantly what the most important characteristics are. | pi Predicts | |
| Apache | Apache, is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. | Apache HTTP Server |
| An API is an interface that defines interactions between multiple software applications or mixed hardware-software intermediaries. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc. It can also provide extension mechanisms so that users can extend existing functionality in various ways and to varying degrees. | Application Programming Interface | |
| This chart type is based on a line chart and is used to represent the change in one or more quantities over a period of time. |
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| Attributes, in relation to charts, refers to various options that can be selected to make the data in a chart easy to read. They include additional Titles and Subtitles, showing Data Labels, Trend Lines, Legends and labels for the X & Y axis. | Chart Attributes | |
| Audits | Find out who’s been using what charts and how many times they’ve viewed something. | Logging, Tracking |
| AWS | AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments, on a paid subscription basis. The technology allows subscribers to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet. | Amazon Web Services |
| Azure | A cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying and managing applications and services through Microsoft managed data centres. | Microsoft Azure |
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B | One of the most common chart types and the default chart type used in pi. A bar chart consists of an X axis, which contains a dimension and determines the number of bars in the chart, and a Y axis that contains a measure that determines the height of each of the bars. In addition you can also add a second dimension as a Legend, which is used to split each dimension into 2 different bars. |
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| This type of chart can be used to compare the relationship between an identifier (dimension) and 3 numbers (measures). The relationship is plotted as dots and each value in the dimension is plotted with it’s own dot - the size of the dot is represented by one of the measures. Bubble charts are great for comparing three dimensions of data without relying on color or 3D charts. | Bubble Plot | |
| Bug | Defects or Bugs are problems that exist within a product that prevent the product from performing a function that the product documentation claims it can perform. A software change is generally necessary to resolve a defect or a bug. | Problem |
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C | Cache | A cache is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. |
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| A very simple type of chart that can be used to show a single value or a piece of text but can also contain images and sparklines so it’s very versatile. It can be used to provide a quick view of important information/ facts on a dashboard. |
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| In pi, a Category is basically a page that holds all your charts and table tables. They normally contain related information, for example you may have a Category that shows HR data and another one that shows Sales related information. You can even restrict who can view a category so if you’d prefer users not to see certain data you can restrict access under User Management. | Page | |
| This area of the system will allow you to see what is linked to each category e.g. which charts, data connections and objects are linked to a category. |
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| Category objects can be used to filter all charts in a Category on the same value. | Page Filters | |
| This is the parent category that a chart belongs to. If you assign a chart to a category that users don’t have access to they will be unable to see the chart. |
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| A user type that will allow the user to create and save their own layouts and create, edit and save charts. | Designer | |
| This type of chart allows you to see the flow of data from one node to another and is usually used to show the relationships in data Each node in the diagram can consist of multiple weighted links to other nodes. | Dependency Wheel | |
| Child Category | Child Categories are simply normal categories that appear beneath a Parent Category. | Child Pages |
| A column chart is very similar to a bar chart except that the bars run horizontal instead of vertical. It’s a great chart type to use when you want to compare value sizes. |
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| Just what it says really, it combines two chart types into one chart and is an ideal chart type to use when you want to quickly compare two values. You can combine Area, Line and Bar charts in a Combined Chart. |
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| A type of table that is very similar to an Excel Pivot table. It’s basically a standard table but with the addition of a Header row. | Pivot Table | |
| CSS describes how HTML elements are to be displayed on screen, paper, or in other media. | Cascading Style Sheet, Dashboard CSS, Tags | |
| Customer Portal | This is where you can manage licences for your customers and also have access to any documents and product releases that we place there. | Download Site |
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D | This area is mainly used by an Administrator to create and manage Categories, Users and Roles. | Configuration Screen, Settings | |
| pi Dashboard connects to a Data Connection and uses the data within Tables in the connection to build charts from. | Data Sources, Connectors | |
| Tables are added to a Data Connection and contain the Objects (data) that charts are built from. | Views | |
| This is a layout that is seen by all users with access to the same category. |
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| Docker | Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels. |
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| This chart type is used to express a ‘part-to whole' relationship where each section contributes towards the total 100% when collected together. |
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| This chart type is very similar to a regular doughnut chart but has the addition of a second measure. One measure determines the width of the segments and the second measure determines the length. |
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| Download Site | We place all our new releases and links to some documentation here. This is where you can obtain the latest release and download documentation. | Customer Portal |
| Drill can be used to provide a way of seeing different data when a user clicks on part of a chart. For example, if you create a Bar chart that shows Sales by Region you can then create a drill level that will show sales by individual Stores when a user a user clicks a Region. | Drill Levels, Drill Path | |
| This is used to create a drill level from a chart in one category to a completely different category. It comes into play when a user clicks a particular area of a chart and can be used to show information in a different category. |
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| This is used to create a drill level from one chart to a completely different chart. It comes into play when a user clicks a particular area of a chart and can be used to show further information about the area they clicked. |
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E | This type of table will allow users to make changes to certain specified fields. It uses an API call in the underlying application to update the data in the connected database. |
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| Enhancement Request | Enhancement Requests are additional product features suggested by partners/customers to make the product easier to use or to add new functionality. | Feature Request, Improvement |
| These can be used to configure the dashboard and are especially useful for automated deployments. | System Parameters, Settings | |
| Excel Reader | Excel Reader is freeware that you can use to Open, View and Print a Microsoft Office Excel (xls,xlsx) document. |
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F | Feature Request | An feature request is what we create when someone requests a feature that we don’t already have in our products. | Enhancement Request, Improvement |
| A filter is used to restrict the amount of data you see in a chart based on certain parameters. For example, you may have a chart that shows sales amounts for all stores but you may only be interested in seeing the ‘Top’ 10 performing stores - to do this you’d create a filter to only show that information. | Criteria | |
| First Line Support | Service Desk driven activity. Basic end user questions that can usually be answered by referring to product documentation, training materials, Panintelligence websites, User Guides or Knowledge Articles | 1st Line Support, Service Desk, Support Desk |
| A funnel chart is often used to visualize data from stages of a process. They’re really useful as a way of quickly identifying bottlenecks in a process by comparing the area size variation of each stage. |
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G | GitHub | GitHub is a provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, continuous integration and wikis for every project. |
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| GitLab | GitLab is a single application that spans the entire software development lifecycle. If you're not using GitLab, your DevOps lifecycle is likely spread across any number of applications. These silos take overhead to integrate, manage, configure, and maintain, slowing down your team and your deployments. |
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H | A variation of the standard Map Chart but instead of showing precise locations they’re used to show ‘hot spots’ e.g. you could use one to show the general location of your best customers based on the sales value. |
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| Waterfall charts are used to visualize cumulative values, where each data point contributes to a total. This type of layout is very similar to a Column Chart in appearance. |
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| Hyper SQL | Hyper SQL is a relational database management system written in Java. |
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I | This chart type allows the user to display information from an external source in a dashboard cell. |
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| IIS | IIS is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. | Internet Information Services Internet Information Server |
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J | A way of connecting data tables together. | Table Joins | |
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L | Layout | You add cells to your categories and then add charts to the cells. This is known as a layout. | Format |
| Licence | You’ll need a licence to access your dashboard. Licences specify how many users you can have and which modules are included e.g. pi Reports or pi Predicts. |
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| Essentially the same as a Traffic Light chart, but only one bulb is shown that can change colour depending upon which target range the measure falls in. |
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| These can be used to provide with a way of seeing different data. For example, you may have a chart that shows Yearly Sales figures - by using Link buttons you can provide a quick for users to view the data Monthly or Weekly without having to have lots of charts on the same dashboard. The charts that you provide links to must already exist in the Chart Library. | Chart Links | |
| Linux | Linux is the best-known and most-used open source operating system. As an operating system, Linux is software that sits underneath all of the other software on a computer, receiving requests from those programs and relaying these requests to the computer’s hardware. |
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| Load Balance | Load balancing refers to the process of distributing a set of tasks over a set of resources (computing units), with the aim of making their overall processing more efficient. |
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| Localisation | The ability to provide multi-lingual support to the application | |
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M | A very visual type of chart that uses longitude and latitude to plot data. Combined with a number, the map chart draws varying sized circles at locations defined by the longitude and latitude - the size of a circle is related to the number it represents so the large the circle, the larger the number. |
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| MariaDB | MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system. |
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| A chart type that allows you to combine up to 3 different charts from either the same or different data sources/ connections. |
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| A way for users to be able to select a different language option when they log into the dashboard. | Localisation, Languages | |
| Multi-factor authentication is an electronic authentication method where a user is only granted access to the dashboard after they have successfully presenting additional evidence that proves their identify - using additional authentication methods. | MFA | |
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O | You can use Object Referencing in calculated objects to reference the actual objects. This prevents the need to use complex SQL logic in the select line. |
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| When an object is enclosed in curly braces {{}}, usually in Chart Titles or on Drill Levels, the object will be replaced with more meaningful text. For example, if you used ‘Employee Numbers for {{Gender}} Employees’ in a Chart Title and you filtered the chart to only show Male employees the Chart Title would be changed to ‘Employee Numbers for Male Employees’. |
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| You can use Object Swapping to dynamically change the dimension on multiple charts. |
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| Objects can be either Dimensions (character based database table columns) or Measures (aggregated number values). |
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| Objects | Objects are contained in Tables and are used to build charts. An object can be either a Dimension or a Measure. | Columns |
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P | Parent Categories can be used as a way of organising other related categories. For example, you could have a Parent Category referred to as ‘Human Resources’ that contains ‘sub’ Categories such as ‘Salary Details’ and ‘Staff Details’. Using this method of organisation means that related information is kept together and is therefore easier for users to find. Remember that you can also restrict which Categories each user can see. |
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| Charts in your dashboard can be specified as Parent Charts and this means that when they’re used they update all other charts in the same Category based on the selections made. |
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| Passwords are used to control access to the system and also to restrict access to certain charts. |
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| Licence files will now be managed with our new Licence Manager tool which will also provide us with metrics about current usage, active users and system performance which will allow us to concentrate our efforts on making pi the best in class in every way our consumers use the software. | Automated Licence Manager | |
| Pie charts are circular and use slices to show how each different item represents a proportion of the total figure. |
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| This chart type is very similar to a regular pie chart but has the addition of a second measure. One measure determines the width of the segments and the second measure determines the length. |
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| Ports | A computer port is a type of electronic, software- or programming-related docking point through which information flows from a program on your computer or to your computer from the Internet or another computer in a network. |
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| This is one of additional modules that can be used to automatically search through your data and show you instantly what the most important characteristics are. If you’re interested in this module, please speak to your Customer Success Manager for more information. | pi Predicts, Analytics | |
| Proxy | A proxy is an application-level gateway, a server sits between you and the Internet. It intercepts traffic flowing between you and the service you want to access. That data is containing information about you. The proxy server is replacing that data and that way hiding you in a web. Our free web proxy is a quick and easy way to change your IP address, unblock sites, and gain anonymity on the Web. | Web Proxy Server |
| Pyramid charts are related to funnel charts, and show a hierarchical structure that has a progressive order, such as a sales process. |
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R | Radar charts are a good choice of chart if you need to determine which variable is performing best. They are based on a Spider chart but instead of using just a line, the area between the axis and line is filled with colour. |
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| This restricts the number of rows of data in your data connection. | Max Rows | |
| Refreshes all elements on a category (page). |
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| Every month we release a new version of the dashboard which may contain new features or changes and fixes to existing features. |
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| This is an additional module that can be used in conjunction with pi Dashboard that will allow you to create and schedule visual, insightful reports. | pi Reports | |
| This allows you to restore your repository from a .sql file. |
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| A common type of proxy server that is accessible from the public network. Large websites and content delivery networks use reverse proxies, together with other techniques, to balance the load between internal servers. |
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| Roles are a great way of managing changes for multiple users at the same time. Let’s say that you create lots of new users and you need to give each of them access to a new Category in your dashboard, without using roles you’d need to manually edit each individual user. If, however, you assign users to a Role and you want to make the same change you only need to change the Role and the change will cascade to every user in that Role. |
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| A switch on the standard table view, the table headings are displayed in rows rather than columns. |
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S | Sankey Diagrams are used to visualize data flow and volume between nodes. The wider lines indicate larger volumes. |
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| SAML | SAML is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. | Security Assertion Markup Language, Authentication |
| Scatter charts are often used to visualize the relationships between data in two dimensions. They are similar to Bubble charts in the way they work - Scatter charts use points to represent items from the Identifier whereas Bubble charts show bubbles of different sizes to represent the data. |
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| The Scheduler allows a user to send a report to one or several users at a set interval e.g. once a day or once a week or only sending a chart when data exists. |
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| Second Line Support | Application Support or Technical Support activity. Supporting the configuration of the software and involves attempting to duplicate the customer / end users environment, collecting and analysing log files, fixing configuration and installation errors. | 2nd Line Support, ApplicationSupport, Technical Support, Operational Support, Configuration Support |
| This area of the dashboard allows you to set Custom Variables and specify password expiry. | Customer Variables | |
| This is one of the most used charts in connection with KPI’s. It adds instant visual appeal to a dashboard and can be used as a standalone graph. |
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| A great choice of chart when you need to compare multiple dimensions. |
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| This is a combination of an area chart and a spline chart, it’s really just an area chart with a smooth curve instead of a jagged line. It’s best used for visualising quantitative data, showing how the measure changes over time. |
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| SSL | SSL is a computing protocol that ensures the security of data sent via the internet by using encryption. | Secure Sockets Layer |
| SSO | Single Sign On | Authentication |
| Very similar to a standard Area chart, however a Stacked Area stacks/ aggregates the values to give a total number. | Mountain Chart | |
| This type of chart is ideal when you want to compare data that accumulates up to a sum. |
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| This type of chart is ideal when you want to compare data that accumulates up to a sum, basically the same as a Stacked Bar Chart except with a change in orientation of the bars. |
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| This is basically an Area Chart but with the points connected by horizontal and vertical lines. This type of chart is used when you want to highlight any irregularity of changes. |
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| Styling is used to change elements of the dashboard such as the colours used, font type and how buttons are displayed. This allows users to customise their own dashboards based on their own individual colour schemes. | Theme | |
| A Sunburst chart is typically used to visualize hierarchical data structures. A Sunburst Chart consists of an inner circle surrounded by rings of deeper hierarchy levels. The angle of each segment is either proportional to a value or divided equally under its parent node. | Ring Chart, Multi-level Pie Chart, Radial Treemap | |
| SwaggerHub | SwaggerHub is an integrated API management platform that provides a faster and standardized API design. | API |
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T | Table charts consists of columns or rows of data that can be sorted, filtered and calculated. We have the following types of Table charts - Standard, Rotated, Crosstab and Editable. |
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| If you know you need to sell a certain number of products to meet your sales goal, you can set a Target on your charts that will provide a quick view of how close you are to achieving your target. |
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| Our dashboards are shipped with 7 pre-defined themes which can choose from. Themes change the way the dashboard looks from the default colours used in charts to the colour of the buttons. | Styling | |
| Third Line Support | Performed by the Panintelligence Service Desk, ‘after’ all 1st and 2nd line investigations have been fully completed by our partner. | 3rd Line Support, Product Support |
| Ticket | When you log a problem, bug or enhancement with our Support team you’ll receive a Ticket ID which you can use to view the progress of your query/ problem. |
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| Tomcat | Tomcat is an open source web server software for Java programming that is developed and maintained by the Apache software foundation. The initial idea of Apache tomcat software was to host and deploy the Java servlet which is the server-side Java code that manages HTTP results from client application build using Java. | Apache Tomcat |
| Very similar to the speedometer chart but more binary. |
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| Treemap charts are used to display hierarchical data within nested rectangles. Each rectangle has an area proportional to the data it represents. |
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U | Each month we release a new version of the dashboard, upgrading just means installing the latest version. | Latest Version | |
| One of 3 transitional chart types. URL Link is used to navigate to a URL when a value is selected in the prior level of the hierarchy |
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| User Access is used to control which:
| Access Management, Access Control | |
| Used as a way of restricting what a user can see. For example, you may have a chart that shows information about Job Roles but you need to restrict certain users so they can only view details for particular roles. This method allows you to use the same chart for all users instead of having to create several individual charts. | Access Management, Access Control | |
| There are 5 different User Types, which are used to control what users can and can’t do in the dashboard. |
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| Anyone who has an account to access the dashboard. |
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V | This is type of Bar chart but contains two measures; one that determines the height of each bar and another that determines the width. |
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| Variables are the names you give to computer memory locations which are used to store values in a computer program. |
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| Every month we release a new version of the dashboard. | Product Version | |
| Waterfall charts are used to visualize cumulative values, where each data point contributes to a total. This type of layout is very similar to a Bar Chart in appearance. | Flying Bricks Chart, Bridge Chart, Cascade Chart, Mario Chart | |
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W | This chart type uses radiating spokes from a centre point. The length of the spoke represents the value, e.g. the longer the spoke, the higher the value. | Polar Bar Chart | |
| This chart comprises of text that is linked to a figure, the size of the text relates to the number it represents, the larger the text the larger the number. They provide an instant visualisation of your data and are easy to interpret. | Tag Cloud, Text Cloud |
NEWS: We are pleased to share that our March 24 dashboard release is now available to download, see HERE for more details