SmartViz visualizations
This feature is in beta and subject to change. Reach out to support with any issues.
SmartViz is SquaredUp's enhanced visualization engine. It provides 18 chart types and an integrated AI that builds and edits the chart for you, from a plain-language description.
Classic visualizations had their own fixed list of settings, so changing a chart type usually meant starting a visualization from scratch. SmartViz uses a single shared visualization spec, so you can reshape, restyle, or swap out charts on the fly, without having to rebuild everything.
Visualizations stop being a decision you commit to up front, and become something you can think out loud with.
SmartViz vs classic visualizations
Most charting tools ask you to pick a chart type first, then live with the handful of options that chart type happens to expose. That works until the data changes shape, or someone asks the same question slightly differently.
SmartViz separates what you are showing from how it gets drawn. Because every chart type reads the same spec, the settings you already understand carry across all 18 of them, and switching type is a change of one field rather than a rebuild.
See Visualizations for the classic visualization editor.
Turn on SmartViz
SmartViz works on new and existing tiles. Open the Tile Editor and click Use SmartViz on the Visualization tab. If the tile already has a chart configured, SmartViz converts it into the equivalent spec. If it does not, the engine builds one from scratch out of whatever data the tile is pulling.
Describe the chart you want
If the generated chart is not quite what you were after, and you would rather not work through the settings by hand, use the composer box at the bottom of the SmartViz panel.
Type what you want to see, and SmartViz builds or modifies the visualization for you.
For example, on a tile pulling CPU percentage by region, show this as a stacked bar chart by region sets the chart type and maps Region to the x-axis. Following it with color anything over 90 red adds a color rule on top, leaving the mapping you just set alone.
What SmartViz reads
When you send a request, SmartViz passes your wording, the names and types of the columns in the tile's data, the tile's current visualization spec, the number of rows, and up to your last ten requests on the same tile.
It does not send the rows themselves. SmartViz builds the chart from the shape of your data rather than its contents.
Review changes
Each request is listed above the settings panel with an icon showing how it went. Hover the icon for the detail.
Manually editing a setting adds its own Styles manually changed entry to the same list, so the full history of a tile, whether changed by request or by hand, stays in one place.
Undo changes
Hover a previous entry to preview the chart as it was at that point, then click Reset to this step
to roll the tile back to that version and discard every entry after it.Choose a chart type
Start from the question you want the tile to answer, rather than the chart you already have in mind. Every chart type is available for every data stream: SmartViz doesn't hide types based on your columns, though a chart only renders once you've mapped its required columns.
The groups below match the chart type selector in the Tile Editor, so you can find the same heading in the product.
Shared chart settings
Because every chart type reads the same spec, a handful of concepts turn up everywhere. Learn them once and they apply across all 18.
- Data mapping: Every chart type exposes slots, the roles a column can play, such as X axis, Value, or Label. SmartViz classifies each column and only offers columns of the right type for each slot.
- Colors: A palette applied in order, named values pinned to a specific color, and conditional rules that recolor data when it crosses a threshold.
- Mark lines and mark areas: Reference lines and shaded bands on line, bar, and scatter charts.
- Label format templates: Expressions that build the text of data labels and tooltips.
- Status normalization: Mapping your own status strings onto the built-in SquaredUp health states.
See Visualization spec reference for the full detail on each, and the article for an individual chart type for the settings that only apply to it.
Switch back to classic
Click Switch to classic at the top right of the SmartViz panel to return the tile to the classic visualization editor.
Switching back discards the tile's SmartViz spec and its request history, and you can't undo it. SquaredUp asks you to confirm first, unless the tile has no spec and no requests yet, in which case it switches straight away.
Everything else in the tile’s configuration is left alone, so a tile that had a classic visualization before returns to it.