Sparkline charts

A sparkline is typically used to show trends in a series of values over time, such as stock prices or website traffic. Sparklines are often used in dashboards and other data visualizations to provide a quick and condensed view of a data series.

Inforiver provides line, area, baseline, columns, and win-loss sparkline charts.

1. Adding the chart

In this example, we have 12 months of data across regions and categories that we want to visualize using a column sparkline chart.

STEP 1: To insert a sparkline chart, you need to add a dimension in the column field. Note that we have added 'Month' in the 'Columns' field in the Visualization pane.

STEP 2: Select the column for which you want to insert the sparkline chart. In the following image, the 2022 Actuals for the month of January has been selected.

The sparkline chart option gets enabled. From the 'Sparkline chart' drop-down, select the Column sparkline chart.

STEP 3: The spark column appears in the grand total column, incorporating data for all the months. You can see the minimum and maximum values for each row highlighted in red and green. The Customize ribbon is enabled when you insert an inline chart.

You can select a subset of the columns using Shift/Ctrl + Click if you do not want to visualize all the periods as a sparkline.

2. Customization options

The following options are available for customizing a sparkline chart.

Depending on the type of sparkline chart chosen, some of these options may or may not be available.

2.1. Sparkline

You can change your current sparkline chart type by clicking the drop-down arrow in the Sparkline section. In the image below, we have changed the chart type from Column to Baseline.

2.1. Appearance

You can change the colors for the minimum, and maximum bars, variances, and data labels. Click on any of the color boxes to open the color picker.

You can also choose the default theme option if you want to use the Power BI theme colors.

You can increase the thickness of line charts or the border for area charts by setting the Stroke Width.

For Baseline charts, you can choose to apply a gradient. With this option, you can enable or disable the gradient coloring. If you enable this option, two additional options become available - Area above 1 and Area above 2 using which you can set the starting and ending colors for the gradient.

You can also set the border colors for the area chart using the Line Above and Line Below options. Line Above - use this option to set the color of the line above the axis and use the Line Below option to set the color of the line below the axis.

Similar to border colors, you can set the fill colors for the area above and below the axis - use the Area Above and Area Below options.

2.2. Null display

Using the 'Null display' option, you can configure how you want to connect the null values in your dataset. In this example, the 2023 Budget for Feb and May is blank.

Connect over nulls - If you select this option, then all the null data points in the dataset will be connected over by lines.

Consider null as 0 - All the null values in the dataset will be considered '0' (Zero)

Skip the nulls - All the null values will be skipped

2.3. Marker

From the 'Marker' drop-down, you can select the type of marker points you want to insert in your chart. Adding marker points in your chart helps you to analyze and understand the data better. You can insert marker for:

All points - All the points in the chart
None - No points at all
Min, Max, First, Last - Only for the minimum, maximum, first, and last values in the chart
Min, Max - Only for the minimum and maximum values
First, Last - Only for the first and last values
Max - Only for the maximum value
Last - Only for the last value

2.4. Scale bands

'Scale bands' visually display information about the overall distribution of values. If the distribution of values falls in the first quartile (0-25%), then it is represented by a lighter shade of gray. However, if the value distribution falls in the last quartile (75-100%), then it is represented by a darker shade of gray.

The scale bands option is available only if you select any of the standard sparkline chart types (Line Linear, Line Spline, or Line Stepped).

2.5. Show column

From the Show column section, you can choose whether to show the Min, Max, Avg, or Sum columns or All children (enabled by default). In the below image, the Avg and Min columns are enabled in the Show Column option, and the report shows the Min and Average columns.

2.6. Axis config

You can configure the type and style of the axis line using the Axis config option.

The axis config option is available only for the baseline chart.

Type - An axis in a chart serves as a reference making it easy to interpret other data values with respect to it. Depending on the axis type you choose, the axis will be displayed on the following points:

Median - Median value of the data set
Average - Average value of the data set
Mid value - Mid value of the data set
Standard deviation - Standard deviation of the data set
Custom - When the custom option is chosen, you can define a custom value for the axis as shown below.

Style - This option lets you configure how the axis line of the chart should look like. You can select any of the following styles for the axis line - Solid, Dotted, Dashed, Long dashed, and Double solid.

2.7. Padding

You can change the padding/spacing between the bars using the Padding option. The default padding value is 5.

The padding option is available only for the Column and Win/Loss Sparklines.

2.8. Show label

You can configure whether to show or hide data labels using this option. Data labels are shown by default. Clicking on this option once will hide the data labels and clicking again will show the labels.