MicroStrategy ONE
Defining dynamic Heat Maps that use selectors
A Heat Map widget is a combination of colored rectangles, each representing an attribute element, that allow you to quickly grasp the state and impact of a large number of variables simultaneously. For more information, see Understanding and working with widgets.
When you insert a Heat Map widget into a document, you can also add a selector to it to create a dynamic heat map. This type of heat map is considered dynamic because a user can use the selector, such as a Drop-down list, to select a different attribute element to be displayed by the heat map.
A standard Heat Map widget requires one attribute on the Grid/Graph rows and two metrics on its columns, as described in Defining Heat Map widgets. A dynamic Heat Map widget has the same requirements; however, you must perform a few additional steps to successfully create the widget, as described in the procedure below. An example of how to create a dynamic heat map follows the procedure.
To create a dynamic Heat Map
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Define a Heat Map widget. For these steps, see Creating widgets.
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Add at least one attribute to the rows and two metrics to the columns of the Grid/Graph. For more details about this requirement and the purpose of these report objects, see Defining Heat Map widgets.
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Insert a selector, such as a Drop-down list, next to the widget. For steps to insert a selector, see Steps to insert a selector into a document.
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Choose an attribute from the dataset and set this attribute (a different attribute that is not already on the Grid/Graph) as the Source of the selector. Do not include this attribute on the Grid/Graph itself. Although this second attribute is not included on the actual Grid/Graph, it will be used to populate the selector. This allows an analyst to switch between different attribute elements in the selector to view different information on the heat map. For steps to select a source for a selector, see Steps to insert a selector into a document.
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Set the Grid/Graph as the Target of the selector.
Example
For example, a Grid/Graph (for a Heat Map widget) has Category and Subcategory attributes on its rows and one of the metrics on its columns is the Revenue metric. However, you want to use a selector to see heat maps for categories and subcategories in specific regions. In this case, you create a drop-down selector, set the Region attribute as its Source, and set the Grid/Graph as its Target. The Region attribute should not be added to the Grid/Graph because, if it is, all regions will be displayed on the heat map. In Flash Mode, you can use the selector to choose different regions for which to view category and subcategory data.