Series.Area Range

The Chart Canvas element's Series child elements cause a data visualization (the chart) to be rendered in the canvas. This topic discusses the Series.Area Range element.

• About Series.Area Range
• Multiple Series
• Attributes
• Data Labels Element
• Quicktips Element
• Action Elements
• Input Selection

About Series.Area Range

The Series.Area Range element generates an Area Range chart, which is commonly used to represent sets of low and high values, as numbers or percentages, over time.

The example above shows a simple Area Range chart, presenting the low and high temperatures for a month.

As shown above, the chart is created by adding Series.Area Range to the canvas, along with a datalayer. Very few attributes need to be set for this Series element in order to produce a basic chart.

Note that a datalayer element can be used either beneath Series.Area Range, as shown above, or beneath Chart Canvas. If used as a child of Chart Canvas, its data is available to all child Series elements. This can improve performance if you have several series, all using the same data, beneath the same Chart Canvas element.

The properties of the X- and Y-axis, including captions, are set using the X-Axis and Y-Axis elements. For example, in order to provide a caption for the X-axis, add an X-Axis element beneath Chart Canvas and set its Caption attribute, as shown above. Repeat for the Y-axis.

Multiple Series

You can add additional series to the chart by adding additional Series elements:

The example above shows two Series, one for each set of temperature ranges. A legend can also be added very easily.

The example above shows the two Series elements, their datalayers and optional Quicktips, and the X-Axis and Y-Axis elements used to produce the previous chart. You can adjust which data range appears "in front" of the other in the chart by changing the order of the Series elements in the definition. Setting the Series elements' Legend Label attribute will automatically cause the legend to be displayed.

When using multiple series, you may be able to reduce the number of data queries and improve performance by using Local Data (see Introducing Datalayers) to read all of the data once and then link its datalayer (see Link Datalayers) to share it to the series. At each Series element, link its datalayer to the shared Local Data datalayer and filter the data to meet the needs of each individual series.

You can combine different types of Series elements, for example, Series.Area and Series.Bar, to produce combinations of visualizations.

Attributes

The Series.Area Range element has the following attributes:

Data Labels Element

A "data label" is text shown next to each data point that shows its value. When the Data Labels element is used as a child of Series.Area Range, text representing the data values will appear on the chart:

The Data Labels element has attributes that allow you to control the font family, color, size, and weight, the data format, border color, and positioning of the text.

The Data Labels element's color-related attribute values can be set using @Chart tokens.

Quicktips Element

By default, a "quicktip" is displayed when the mouse hovers near or over a data point:

The automatically-generated quicktip displays information for the X- and Y-axis, as shown above, left. However, you may want to display other information or format it differently, as shown above, right, which can be done by adding a Quicktip child element beneath Series.Area Range.

The example above shows a Quicktip element (no attributes need to be set) and three Quicktip Row child elements, used to create the quicktip shown in the previous image. Note that an @Chart token is used access the chart data.

Intrinsic functions are supported in the Quicktip attributes.

Action Elements

Action elements initiate processing of a report or process task definition, redirection to a link, or other processing when a data point in the series is clicked. 

In the example above, an Action.Report element has been added as a child of the Series, along with its Target.Report and Link Parameters child elements. To reference chart data in parameters, use the @Chart token, as shown above.

A variety of Action elements are available for use with Series, including Action.Link, Action.Process, and Action.Refresh Element. Additional Action elements will be added in future releases.

Input Selection

This series can also be used with the Input Selection family of elements, which turn the chart into an input control. This allows users, at runtime, to select points or values on the chart with their mouse and your report can then take action using the selected data. This is very useful, for example, for drilling into the data.

For more information about this functionality, see Input Selection.