Calendar heatmap

The heatmap is a calendar of one year: one small square per day, coloured by that day’s value. Darker squares are bigger days. It is good at showing rhythm: which weekdays sell most, when the quiet weeks fall, whether month-end is busier.

Set one up

1. Click New Item, choose Heatmap and a dataset.

2. On the Configuration tab, choose the Value Type.

3. Pick the Date Field. Only date fields are listed.

4. Pick the Measure, unless the Value Type is Count.

5. Click Save & Preview.

That’s all a heatmap needs. It has no axis labels, sorting or theme settings. Drilldown Options let viewers click a day to open its records (see Drilldown).

Which year is shown

The calendar covers one calendar year: the year of the earliest date in the data. If the widget’s data spans several years, only the first year is drawn.

So give every heatmap a date filter that keeps it inside one year. The Daily Sales Calendar on Sales Overview uses Year to date; viewers can pick another year with a filter on the widget or the dashboard’s date filter. See Date filters.

With no data at all, the heatmap shows an empty grid for the current year.

Reading it

• The legend above the calendar splits the values into five colour bands, from the smallest day to the largest.
• Hover a square to see the date and its value.
• Rows are days of the week, Sunday at the top. Black lines mark the months.

Note

Heatmaps have no ⓘ icon, so the Info Tooltip isn’t shown on the dashboard, and right-clicking a heatmap doesn’t offer Open Configuration. Open it from the Dashboard Builder instead.