Managing Visualization Data Roles

Add a Data Item

For a visualization to display data, you must assign data items to it. You can assign data items to a visualization by performing any of the following actions:

Drag and drop the data item onto the center of the visualization. The data item is assigned to a role automatically. If the visualization already has data items assigned to the required roles, then you can choose how to assign the new data item.
Drag and drop the data item onto a Measure or Category button in the visualization to assign the data item to a specific data role.
From the visualization toolbar, select the drop-down list, and then select Add Category or Add Measure.
Use the Roles tab in the right pane. Either drag and drop a data item onto a role, or expand the drop-down list beside the role and then select a data item.

Each visualization requires a minimum number of each type of data item. The following table lists the requirements for each visualization:

Required Data Items for Visualizations
Visualization Type	Requirements
Automatic Chart	one data item of any type
Table	one data item of any type (except aggregated measure)
Crosstab	one data item of any type
Bar Chart	one category or hierarchy
Line Chart	one category or hierarchy
Scatter Plot	one measure
Bubble Plot	three measures
Network Diagram	one category or hierarchy
Sankey Diagram	one category, one data item of any type (except aggregated measure), and one datetime or measure
Histogram	one measure
Box Plot	one measure
Heat Map	two data items of any type (except aggregated measure)
Geo Map	one geography
Treemap	one category or hierarchy
Correlation matrix	two measures
Decision tree	two data items of any type (except aggregated measure)
Word Cloud	one category or document collection

Replace a Data Item

You can replace a data item by using any of the following methods:

Drag and drop the new data item from the Data pane onto the data item in the visualization that you want to replace.
Right-click on the data item that you want to replace in either the visualization or on the Roles tab, and then select Replace item-namenew-item-name.

Remove a Data Item

You can remove a data item by using any of the following methods:

Drag and drop the data item from the visualization onto the Data pane.
Select the drop-down list from the visualization toolbar, and then select Removeitem-name .
Right-click on the data item that you want to delete in either the visualization or on the Roles tab, and then select Remove item-name.

Switch Data Roles

To switch the data items that are assigned to two roles, drag and drop one data item onto another data item either by using the buttons in the visualization or by using the fields on the Roles tab.

For example, you can switch the axes of a scatter plot by dragging the measure on the X axis to the measure on the Y axis.

Last updated: January 8, 2019