Creating a combination chart

In a combination chart, you have the option to display both bars and lines in a single visualization. Because of the overlay effect, lines are drawn on top of the bars, it is easy to compare values for different columns or categories in your data. Trends can be identified, and you can spot deviations directly.

About this task

Depending on what you want to show, or on how your loaded data is organized, you set up the combination chart in different ways.

Comparing data columns

Procedure

On the authoring bar, click Visualization types to open the flyout.
Drag the Combination chart visualization type to the wanted position on the analysis page.
A suggestion of a combination chart is presented. However, no lines are drawn, only bars.
On the Y-axis, select the columns to present as bars or lines.
For each selected column, bars are drawn using a certain color. The Series axis in the legend is set to (Column Names).
For each of these columns on the Y-axis, select which type of aggregated value to display.
On the Series axis in the legend, click a column and select display option; Show as bars or Show as lines.
On the X-axis, select one or more columns for which values should be compared.

If a time column is selected, it can be beneficial to display the time data hierarchically.

Example

Assume you want to compare on a quarterly basis estimated figures in a budget to actual figures. The "Actual" and "Budget" columns below contain the monthly actual and estimated figures respectively.

See the settings made to compare the Actual to estimated Budget figures. Deviations are easily identified, for example, the budget was exceeded a lot in Q3.

Comparing categories within a column

Procedure

On the authoring bar, click Visualization types to open the flyout.
Drag the Combination chart visualization type to the wanted position on the analysis page.
A suggestion of a combination chart is presented. However, no lines are drawn, only bars.
On the Y-axis, select the column whose values you want to present.
Select which type of aggregated value to display for the selected column.
On the Series axis in the legend, select the column containing the categories you wish to compare .
Then click a category and select display option; Show as bars or Show as lines.

Example

The data table contains sales, split per gender, at different store locations.

The following combination chart shows the settings made to display the differences in the sum of sales made by women and men.