– View other Bime tips here

– Take a look at our other tutorial and demo videos here

Try out Bime for yourself with the 10 day free trial of the premium version.

Put your visualizations in a logical order

The visualizations which show the key metrics should be at the top and to the left of the dashboard as this is where research shows the user will direct most of their attention (as shown). Make sure that related visualizations, or visualizations where a comparison can be made are placed next to each other. The dashboard should be arranged to make the end user consume the dashboard in the order the dashboard creator intended it to be consumed. In Bime changing the layout of visualizations on your dashboard could not be easier, once in the edit mode simply drag-and-drop.






1. Be space efficient







Try to minimize the amount of ‘unused’ space on the dashboard. Bime makes this easy to do with some simple built in customizable features. Why not try these few simple tweaks to optimize space on a dashboard.

• Delete unnecessary legends
• Put labels inside of the visualization itself rather than below or by the side
• Rotate your labels to fit more labels into a smaller area
• When using an ‘explosion’ measure use the cover view instead of the tile view


















2. One screen?

Ideally a dashboard would always fit one screen without the need for scrolling, switching between pages etc. to allow the user to dig into the data, quickly and easily. However, this doesn’t mean visualizations should be crammed onto one page at all costs. If a dashboard doesn’t fit one page, the next best thing is to organize the dashboard so the viewer has only one scrolling bar, either to scroll down or to scroll across, but preferably not both. Alternatively in Bime several dashboards can be linked together to be listed under different tabs but under the same heading. This is usually only advisable if there are natural divisions in your data.

3. Size your visualizations adequatly

If possible, make your visualizations big enough so that all information on the visualization can be viewed without having to make further clicks on specific points to find out the underlying data. If the space you have allocated for a visualization isnt enough then that visualization will require its own scrolling bar, this makes it more difficult for the user to get the information quickly – ideally, visualizations should be made large enough so they don’t require their own scrolling bars. However, making your visualizations too large can often result in making the overall dashboard inconveniently large, therefore a trade off may be required.

Remember, it is important to have the end user in mind, how will they be consuming the dashboard? For example if the end user will be viewing the dashboard on the Bime mobile app then it may be a good idea to consider making the visualizations larger.

4. Align the elements of your dashboard

In all forms of web design, designers often use a grid system, leaving small gaps between elements on the page to ensure the lines on the page align where possible (see the example below from The Guardian homepage). In Bime users have the option to utilise the free flow grid layout setting or let Bime automatically align size and position of visualizations on a dashboard.



5. Utilize color

Color can be used to show patterns, set the overall mood or just make the dashboard look sleeker and the user has several different options of how to use color on the dashboard. Using different colors to the rest of the dashboard can draw attention to certain parts and using similar colors can also tie two parts of a dashboard together. Generally, a complimentary color scheme can drastically improve the appeal of your dashboard as a coherent color scheme draws the whole dashboard together and makes it look more professional. A good starting point is to identify colors which are prominent in any images or visualizations you have used on your dashboard and then use a color scheme to compliment these colors. However, the color scheme of your dashboard can also be used to provoke certain emotions or use colors which are related to the information you are trying to show on the dashboard. Different colors can be used as running themes throughout a dashboard to represent different groups, such as with this football dashboard from our showcase in which throughout, red represents the English league and blue the French.



Certain color combinations will be more pleasing on the eye, the color wheels below are taken from a Kissmetric blog post on the subject.



6. Keep your dashboard updated

In Bime, if selected, the built in cache, Deja Vu, will take a snapshot of your data therefore if your original data source is on premise the user is still able to share the dashboard created from this data, online. The deja-vu is updated automatically every time the dashboard is loaded and saved and can be scheduled to update automatically at regular periods, for example daily. In Bime all the data on the dashboard can easily be re-loaded from the query cache, from the data cache and from the data source. It is also possible to allow users to update the cache to allow them to view a perfectly up-to-date version of the dashboard.

7. Make sure you provide context to your data

In Bime the stunning range of visualizations bring the data to life and as they say ‘a picture (or interactive visualization!) is worth a thousand words’. However, again it is important to think about the end user, what information do they need to consume the dashboard? Make sure the dashboard includes adequate labels, legends and provide enough data on the dashboard to allow the user to get the information they need.

8. Allow interactivity on your dashboard

Which interactivity features may be useful for the end-user to get the most out of the data? The user may want to look at slightly different metrics to the owner of the dashboard or look at the underlying data behind a visualization on the dashboard. In Bime dashboards are interactive and everyone viewing the dashboard can click on a specific data point to view the numbers associated with that point. Additionally, in the premium version of Bime, the owner of the dashboard can choose to allow external viewers the ability to drill through, drill down and decompose the data.

9. Use text efficiently

Make sure that the text you have used on your dashboard, such as visualization headings, helps to explain the dashboard, graph titles are important and should signal exactly what that visualization shows. Use text to direct and assist the user in certain parts of the dashboard using rich text including font size, type and hyperlinks.

10. Avoid overloading the user

One of the main purposes of a dashboard is to provide a clear summary of the data, quickly and clearly. Therefore be selective with visualizations and only provide information which is needed for analysis. If it is essential to include extremely detailed visualizations in the dashboard then it can sometimes be useful to add them nearer the bottom and put the visualizations which provide a more general overview at the top so as the user works there way through the dashboard, layers of detail are gradually revealed. Alternatively in the example just mentioned, if they just want to look at the dashboard quickly then the key metrics are summarized as soon as they click to open the dashboard at the top of the page.

This is obviously only an express guide to dashboard design. What killer tips do you have for designing stunning dashboards? To view our selection of showcase dashboards, click here

BIME is a dashboarding and data visualization tool that helps you shine new light on your data. Click here to go to our Pricing & Plans page and sign up to turn your data into dollars!

When to use a line chart:

When NOT to use a line chart:

It can often be a challenge, however, to display a lot of trends on one line chart clearly and succinctly.

With Bime there are a few easy ways to display a vast amount of data on a line chart, in a simple and concise way.

To quote one of my favourite acronyms, KISS – Keep it simple, stupid! Only show the metrics which you need to display and are relevant to your analysis. In Bime there are several easy ways to do this. Firstly, by clicking the drop down arrow next to your attribute on the frame and selecting or deselecting the elements you wish to display. After executing the calculation you can again select which elements you wish to show by clicking them in the row selector on the left of the chart (hold ‘ctrl’ or ‘cmd’ to select multiple elements and ‘shift’ to select a list of elements).

Alternatively, you can filter your measures by only showing the top or bottom x number of results using the ‘Top’ tab of the post-processing menu.

Another quick technique is to simply highlight a measure using the mouse. Just hover the cursor over the name of an element in the legend on the right and that element will be shown while the others are faded out. For example in the image below we are able to just show the values for ‘Internet Explorer’.

In Bime you can switch through your selected row members automatically, simply click the ‘play’ button above the list of row members or manually click through.

To make a chart less cluttered, group similar values. For example in the initial image in this post we had a visualization looking at the web browsers used to access a website, in which we had several different Blackberry browsers which can obviously be grouped together. To group attribute elements; click the arrow next to the attribute you wish to make a group from, select ‘create a group’ to bring up the group selection box and then follow the instructions in the images below.

In Bime it is possible to display several measures on a line chart, in a succinct way, to maintain the simplicity of the visualization, even when the values are far apart numerically. The three examples below show both visitors per browser and visit bounce rate. Bime offers 3 options:

Hopefully this post has given you some ideas of how to best utilize line charts. A line chart is just one of the many stunning visualizations available in Bime.

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Single Sign On (SSO) is a way to authenticate a Bime user based on third party identity providers. The idea is that Bime users don’t have to type their login / password to log in. This can provide enhanced security and central management of identities, making the log in process generally, more convenient and more secure for Bime users.

Bime currently supports 5 identity providers:

• Google Apps
• Gmail
• Twitter
• OpenID
• SAML

SSO can be used by creators and architects to access their Bime account in the browser (but not from Bime Desktop) and also, to acccess dashboards.

1- Enabling / disabling SSO

Everything is managed from Admin > Account.

Notes about SAML:

Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML), allows you to provide Single Sign-on (SSO) for your help desk using enterprise identity types such as Active Directory and LDAP.

Remote login URL: SAML server with provisioned users or connected to identity repository (Active Directory, LDAP, etc.).

Certificate fingerprint: SHA1 fingerprint of the SAML certificate from your SAML server.

2- SSO for dashboards

In the publish pop-up of your dashboard, Protection > Protect with group:

All the SSO options enabled in the admin session are listed.

The “Propose to log with” option will ask the user how they want to login based on the different options provided.
The “Automatically log the user with” will use the selected SSO option to log the user transparently. If they have a session on the identity provider, the user won’t even see the sign in with this option.

This was a quick overview detailing the flexibility that the SSO capability in Bime can give you. For more resources, head over to our support page. Want to see something in particular in our ‘Bime Tip’ series? Let us know in the comments!

Now you can choose exactly what order you want elements to appear in… We try to offer maximum flexibility in Bime so you can customize your analysis to suit your preferences. Click here to see other ways you can customize your dashboards.

Start in the pivot table. Place the attribute you want to use on rows. We are using some sales process data to illustrate this example.

By default the sort gives you this:

Clearly it’s not the order we want to see it in. So let’s create a custom sort:

Clicking “create and ordered set” will bring up the list:

Simply drag and drop to order:

So now it’s in the order you want. Rename and click save:

The new attribute will appear in the list of calculated attributes on the left hand side. If you use it you’ll get the values sorted accordingly, like so:

Now you can really sort your data down to the last detail. Want to read more bime tips? Follow this link.

Click here to see the list of data sources that bime connects to!

When you connect to a CSV file, you’ll need to edit the parameters to make sure bime reads the file properly.

Here is a step by step on how to do this.

First of all, you have to create a CSV connection.

Then, just follow these steps:

1) Choose a file, you can choose any kind of extension

The CSV/flat files connector only works with Bime desktop except if you are using the “Déjà Vu” cache and reloading an existing pivot table.

2) Edit parameters

Once you choose a file, just edit the parameters (for instance, decide if you want to process a CSV or a flat file and choose all the specific parameters).

CSV parameters popup

If your file headers are NOT embedded in the first line, you can easily edit your own headers. If you uncheck the “Line 1 is headers” checkbox, it is possible to specify your own headers. Then, the CSV tab asks you to determine some parameters, such as the recordset delimiter, the separator etc. If you are French and using a French date in your file, please select the “French dates” checkbox. In a same way, if you are using a comma instead of a decimal point for your numbers, change the default value in the “Float separator” field.

The text in your file should look like this if you use the first line as headers.

Flat file parameters

If you select the “Fixed Width” tab, you will be able to define parameters for a flat file. As you can see on the illustration above, there are two possible formats: a fixed length and a variable fixed length format. If you check the “Columns have Variable Width” box you implicitly choose a variable fixed length format.

3) The preview

In order to validate your choices, you can use the preview button which enables you to see if the connector will correctly parse your data. This ensures accurate processing.

4) Save your data source

As you can see for all other data sources, the final step is the same: save the data source and generate the data schema. You can then modify the schema and save it. Then just load it to the pivot table and begin to manipulate your data.

I hope this answers any CSV connection questions you might have! Don’t hesitate to talk to us if you require any bime support.

Don’t be put off by technical-sounding terms – in reality they are pretty simple to understand. For our visitors who might not be entirely familiar with the business intelligence world, we’ve created a glossary to help you out with any ‘tech’ terms you might come across on our pages.

If you see anything you think should be added to the glossary, please let us know! You can email me at kirsty at wearecloud dot com.

Familiarize yourself with the current version of the Bime Glossary.

If you have an Enterprise or a Premium Edition of Bime, Data Filter Prompts allow you to give your viewers an advanced level of interactivity in your dashboards: the ability to examine data from multiple perspectives in a single place allows you to discover even more of the meaningful relationships that exist in your data. The good news is that analysts can pursue an unlimited set of questions directly from the dashboard, leading to comprehensive and free-flowing exploration.

Data visualization guru Stephen Few writes:

Comparison is the fundamental activity of analysis. Something powerful happens when we are able to see data simultaneously from several perspectives. We are able to spot connections and discern relationships that would otherwise remain hidden. If we were to look at these same views of the data independently, one at a time, we would never gain the same insights, largely due to the limits of short-term memory. Once one of these views is no longer in front of our eyes, we remember little, if anything, of what we saw, so we cannot compare it to what we’re looking at now. We can hold about four chunks of information at one time in short-term memory. One of the best ways to work around this limitation is to place everything that you wish to compare within eye span.

Enter Bime’s Data Filter Prompts.

‘Use query filters as prompts’ option

In the dashboard preferences pop-up, just select ‘Use query filters as prompts’. Then, the attributes of the ‘Filters’ axis of each query are prompted and all viewers of the dashboard can re-execute a query by modifying the filtering attribute value.

How does it work?
This looks at every level in the pivot table filters dropbox to create prompts in the dashboard.

Example:
Query 1 from connection 1 has “Product” in the filters with no member selected

Query 2 from connection 1 has “Product” in the filters with P1 member selected. Query 2 has also “Year” in the filter.

If we send these queries to a dashboard, we will get three prompts for data filtering: Product with nothing selected, Product with P1 selected and Year. Changing these filters will affect only the original query of the prompt. A color legend is used to convey the link between the visualization and the prompt.

‘Share filters between same connection queries’ Option

If you select the option ‘Share filters between same connection queries’, then filters from queries originating from a common connection will be mingled. In other words, if there are queries of the same connection and if some of them are restricted (i.e. attribute(s) on the ‘Filters’ axis), then these restrictions are applied on all other queries of the connection.

The same example as before will now give two prompts in the dashboard: “Product” with P1 selected by default and Year with nothing selected. Changing either of these prompts will modify query 1 & 2 in the dashboard.

What other Bime tips would you like to see? Let us know in the comments!

https://myaccount.bimeapp.com/players/dashboard/A8ACE50029BE771D502A016…

you can have:

https://myaccount.bimeapp.com/players/dashboard/my_sales_dashboard

which makes it much more easily identifiable and more relevant if being presented.

How to change it?

In the monitor tab click “Publish”.

At the top you have the means to change it. Simply click customize and type in your new tail. The embed code will be updated automatically.

Check out the rest of our Bime Tips here!