I don't think you need sectioning on your list. In my example report I didn't use sectioning. I just used grouping and a group header. If you're not careful, sectioning can add more query time to a report.
You can change the colour of the bars using a conditional palette. If you are using my pass through technique, then you will need an additional data item to pass through. In my example, I would need an additional data item to pass through the product. This would then need to be used on the chart so that the conditional palette can use it. Charts are very flexible in their formatting, so you could quite easily use the new data item on the axis and completely hide it.
When I get 10 minutes I will update the blog post I made to show this, and also upload an example report.
Original Message:
Sent: Thu May 23, 2024 11:55 AM
From: Mike Comiskey
Subject: request suggestions for tool (Report or Dashboard) and techniques for display
Marc,
Do you have a link for that dashboard enhancement request? I searched a bit (IBM Data and AI Ideas Portal...) but didn't see it, and would be happy to vote for it.
Regarding your suggestion for using a list and microchart, thank you for that, that hadn't occurred to me. I worked with that a bit yesterday and it has definitely gotten me close to the desired report output format, with the exception of changing bar colors per subcategory - if you know how/where that could be set, please let me know.
Using the added technique of passing a prompt value to the microchart query -- also a cool technique. I found when I took this list and applied the "Section" for formatting, to create the section header look -- that then the values of the measures in the microcharts were not correct (i.e. repeated one of the values), from which I presumed that I'd need to add to the master-detail relationship to make that work. But I paused that work while I consider whether my data set is well formed for this report - I now think it is not. For example, I don't actually have a field that represents 'Category' from my diagram. So I'm considering taking a step back and creating a data set or data module that would form the data better for this output.
Thank you for your detailed reply!
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Mike Comiskey
Original Message:
Sent: Wed May 22, 2024 02:39 AM
From: Marc Reed
Subject: request suggestions for tool (Report or Dashboard) and techniques for display
You can get a report to look exactly like that without too much work. As with everything in a report, you can pretty much customise everything...
Use a list for the main part of the report. Then put a microchart on each row to display the value. The chart has a masterdetail to the list, so that the list can pass in the value you require.
One advantage a report has is that the size of the bars are fixed. If you had a filter that just displays a few bars, or hundred of bars each would show the same size. Unlike in a dashboard where the size of the overall visual is fixed and hence the bars can sometimes end up too big or too small depending in the number of data items. (Unless you use the zoom control which is a really nice feature but can remember the size from dashboad close to dashboard open)
![](https://dw1.s81c.com//IMWUC/MessageImages/71a38c20136746f4bc0be9dff40ad8f0.png)
The above is quite a common report scenario. To have a list with a microchart representing a value on the list.
A beginner report author would have a data query for the list and a data query for the microchart. The data query for the microchart would query the data and apply the appropriate filter. This is a really inefficient way of writing such a report. The list row already has the value ti display, why not just use that?
And indeed that is how I write such a report. The chart query doesn't query the database. It just has a simple macro to receive a value:
This is the value that is used on the chart. It's just prompting for a value.
The list master detail then does this:
![](https://dw1.s81c.com//IMWUC/MessageImages/25f73ee4fc5c4516b4821af17f5e1e0f.png)
Which is passing the value from the list into the chart.
I use this technique quite a bit, usually passing multiple values through to the chart.
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/businessanalytics/blogs/marc-reed/2024/05/22/more-efficient-report-microcharts?CommunityKey=6b10df83-0b3c-4f92-8b1f-1fd80d0e7e58
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Marc Reed
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