Grouping Date Values in Charts

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Sunday, March 8, 2015PrintSubscribe
Grouping Date Values in Charts

When using a date as a row in a chart, it is necessary to form groups for each date value. Otherwise, a row will be created for each date. This excess of rows will render the chart useless:

Data Field Tag
OrderDate pivot1-row1-line

A line chart with too many date values as rows.

The data behind the chart looks like the following:

The data for a chart with too many date rows.

Instead of listing each date as a unique value, the dates should be placed into buckets in order to provide a clearer view of the data. For example, let’s group the dates by quarter. Add the “quarter” keyword to calculate the quarter of each date.

Data Field Tag
OrderDate pivot1-row1-line-quarter

The chart is now easier to read.

A line chart showing count of orders by quarter.

The data for the chart looks as follows:

Line chart showing orders by quarter.

However, notice that we have lost information about the year. To solve this problem, we need to group the dates by year first, and then by quarter.

Data Field Tag
OrderDate pivot1-row1-line-year pivot1-row2-quarter

The chart now displays quarters per year.

Line chart showing orders over quarters by year.

The data is shown here:

Data for chart showing orders grouped by year and quarter.

However, what happens when the data is filtered to produce a different subset of data? The chart may become useless again.

The filter has caused the chart to display only a single point.

The single row is displayed below.

Only a single row is displayed in the data.

In order to solve this problem, an automatic grouping function can be used. By specifying a group of “date”, the server will make several attempts with various groups. The chart with a number of rows closest to 25 will be selected and displayed to the user.

Data Field Tag
OrderDate pivot1-row1-line-date

The function has decided to use year/month/week as the most optimal solution for the currently applied filter.

The auto date grouping decided to use year/month/week.

The data can be seen below.

The data for the chart.

When the filter is cleared and all data from the Orders table is displayed, the group mode will try to maintain the number of rows. The function has elected on using year/month.

All data is visible in the chart.

The new data can be seen here:

All data is visible in the table.

A full list of available groups is displayed below.

Keyword Description Example Value
date An automatic function that will attempt several combinations of groups and select the result that has a number of rows closest to 25.  
timeofday Takes the hours, minutes, and second of the date. 12:30:45
minute Takes the minute from the date. 30
halfhour All dates with minutes less than 30 will be grouped into the hour group. All dates above 30 will be grouped into the half-hour group. 1:30
hour The hour will be used as the value. 1:00
day Uses the day of the month. 31
dayofweek Uses the day of the week. The value will be formatted according to the current culture. Saturday
dayofyear The day of the year. 156
weekofmonth The week of the month. The value is derived from the first letter of the word “Week” in the current culture’s language, plus the number. W3
week The week of the year. W16
month The month of the year. The values will be formatted according to the current culture. January
quarter The quarter in the year. The value is derived from the first letter of the word “Quarter” in the current culture’s language, plus the number. Q1
year The year. 2015