Blocks visualization

Block states

Blocks visualizations are most useful when selecting a State column on the Mapping tab. This setting enables the blocks to change color depending on the state value, which can be rolled-up as a health state and used to trigger notifications.

However, you may find that many of your data streams don't have any state data built-in, meaning that your blocks won't have any way to use this feature out of the box and therefor only ever display gray and static.

In these situations, you can simply leverage the power of SQL Analytics to easily define your own state columns from the data returned by your data stream.

Creating state columns

  1. Follow the tile editor workflow as normal, selecting the Data Stream and Objects you want to visualize, and configuring any necessary Parameters,Shaping etc.
  2. Toggle Enable SQL Analytics on the toolbar and select Continue.
  3. Do the following in SQL analytics mode:
    1. On the Query tab under SQL, enter a query that uses a CASE statement to return a state value of Warning, Success or Error. The AS value for which you return this case is used as the State for the visualization settings.

      For example, in the following query a Warning state is returned for articles which haven't been updated in over 100 days, else the state is returned as Success:
      Query using a CASE statement to return a health state
    2. Click Execute to run the query.
  4. Do the following on the Visualization tab of the right-hand pane:
    1. Select the Blocks visualization.
    2. Select the State you created from the Mapping section of the Visualization tab. The blocks are updated to reflect the conditions you defined in the query.
      Blocks visualization with a state column specified
  5. Click Save to save the tile.

Blocks settings

Mapping

Setting
Description
State
Select the column that you want to use for the state color of each block. Available options will vary depending on the data stream that you have selected. By default, the State column is automatically selected.
Label
Choose the label for the block.
Sublabel
Choose the sublabel to be shown beneath the main block label.
Link
Select the column that you want to use for the link of each block. Available options will vary depending on the data stream that you have selected.

Layout

Setting
Description
Max columns
Set the number of columns the blocks are displayed in.
Manual height
Select this to be able to resize the blocks, larger or smaller.

Options

Setting
Description
Wrap text
Select to wrap the block text onto a new line if it overflows the container.

Was this article helpful?

Have more questions or facing an issue?
Submit a ticket