Understand Visual Names and Titles

Visual names are not necessarily the same as the title of a visual when it used on a dashboard. This section explains how visual names and titles are assigned by default and the rules for specifying them.

• The visual name is a name assigned to the visual that is used by Composer to track the visual throughout the system. If you change the visual name, that change is reflected throughout the system. The name will be changed on every dashboard that uses the visual.

• The visual title is a specific name for an instance of a visual. If you change the visual title on a dashboard, the change is only reflected on that instance of the visual on the dashboard. If you change the visual title when editing the visual from the Visual Gallery, the new title is applied to all new uses of the visual in dashboards. Other instances of the visual are not affected.

When you edit a visual from the Visual Gallery, you can see both the visual name and the visual title on the visual itself, as depicted below. They can be altered directly on the visual.

You can also see and alter them on the visual information sidebar.

On a dashboard, you cannot see the visual name on the visual itself, but you can see it on the visual information sidebar. If you have newly created the visual on the dashboard you can change the name on the visual information sidebar, but once you have saved the dashboard and the new visual, you can no longer alter the visual name on a dashboard. Thereafter, it must be altered from the Visual Gallery.

Visual names must be unique. When you attempt to save a visual in the Visual Gallery with the same name as another visual, an error message appears and the visual is not saved. However, when you save a new visual in a dashboard with the same name as another visual, the visual is saved, but an incremented number in parentheses, (<n>), is appended to the end of the name. For example, if the original visual name was Orders, the name of subsequent visuals with the same name is Orders (<n>), where <n> is a number that increments for each visual with the same name.

The minimum length of visual names and titles is one character; the maximum length is 255 characters. They can start with and contain numbers, special characters, and uppercase and lowercase characters. They can contain spaces, but cannot start with a space. They cannot be empty or contain only spaces and they cannot have leading or trailing spaces.

The following table describes the default behavior that occurs when you specify or change a visual name or title. This behavior varies depending on whether you are editing the visual from the Visual Gallery or from a dashboard.