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IBM Cognos Analytics Platform => Cognos Analytics => Reporting => Topic started by: pacificbeavs on 26 Jan 2018 12:34:56 PM

Title: How to assign colors to specific values in a visualization?
Post by: pacificbeavs on 26 Jan 2018 12:34:56 PM
I have three pie visualizations, each pie is a particular store.  The slices are sales by department, let's say there are up to three departments.  One pie might have Bakery and Deli, the next Bakery, Deli, Meat, and the third only has Deli and Meat. 

If each pie has the same color palette, it'll assign the "correct" color values to stores one and two alphabetically, but since store three skips bakery and starts at Deli, then its color assignment won't match, and thus be misleading when one looks at all three pies together. 

How do I get the colors to match, so that Deli is always the same color pie slice, no matter where in the order it is?  Same concept for the other values... Hopefully this makes sense.

I was hoping there would be a way to assign colors, or possibly show all three values on each pie, even though only two may have values?
Title: Re: How to assign colors to specific values in a visualization?
Post by: MFGF on 29 Jan 2018 02:47:01 AM
Quote from: pacificbeavs on 26 Jan 2018 12:34:56 PM
I have three pie visualizations, each pie is a particular store.  The slices are sales by department, let's say there are up to three departments.  One pie might have Bakery and Deli, the next Bakery, Deli, Meat, and the third only has Deli and Meat. 

If each pie has the same color palette, it'll assign the "correct" color values to stores one and two alphabetically, but since store three skips bakery and starts at Deli, then its color assignment won't match, and thus be misleading when one looks at all three pies together. 

How do I get the colors to match, so that Deli is always the same color pie slice, no matter where in the order it is?  Same concept for the other values... Hopefully this makes sense.

I was hoping there would be a way to assign colors, or possibly show all three values on each pie, even though only two may have values?

Hi,

If this really is a visualization (rather than a chart) you have fewer formatting options. Charts support things like conditional palettes, but visualizations don't. In this case, I'd be tempted to add a query to your report containing the three departments, and outer join this in the query explorer to the queries for each pie, forcing the three department values to exist regardless.

Cheers!

MF.
Title: Re: How to assign colors to specific values in a visualization?
Post by: pacificbeavs on 29 Jan 2018 09:40:53 AM
Thanks- I'll look in to changing to a chart, or possibly the outer join.  Thanks for the input!