Tips and Tricks

Every chart that has been automatically or manually defined will display a title. This title will be composed using the row, column, and value fields and their properties that have been specified for the chart. For example, suppose we create a curved line chart on Orders page of the Northwind sample app that uses OrderDate for rows, EmployeeID for columns, and the sum of Freight for values.

The data for the chart can be seen below.

The title states that the chart shows top three “Employee Last Name”. The value is the sum of “Freight” and the rows are grouped by “Order Date”. While the title may reveal all the necessary information, the title can be better. Let’s manually specify the title by adding the following tag. Note that the tags do not need to be on any particular data field, as long as the correct pivot ID is specified. Open the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab and double-click on Orders / Views / grid1 / EmployeeID data field node.

Add the highlighted tag:

Save the data field and regenerate the app. When the page comes up in your browser, navigate to the Orders page. Note that the new title has been applied.

The new title will also be displayed above the chart data.

By default, the axes do not have a title applied. One can use the “haxistitle” or “vaxistitle” properties to manually specify a title for the horizontal or vertical axis, respectively. Let’s specify the following axis titles:

The new chart will display the specified labels on each axis.

The chart data will not be changed.

The “geo” chart type will render a map of the Earth. Each value will be a country, region, or city with a number associated with it. Countries with larger numbers will be a darker shade. The scale for the values is shown in the bottom right corner. The example below shows the location of customers by country in the Northwind sample app.

To use “geo” chart type, add the keyword “geo” to any “pivot-” tag, and make sure that it is separated with hyphens (-).

The data for the chart can be seen below.

Hovering over a data point will reveal the data. An arrow will be rendered on the scale in the bottom right corner.

The label for each row is attempted to be resolved by Google Maps. Please see the Google Maps Terms of Service for more information on their data policy.

Display Mode

The “displaymode” property determines the rendering of data points on the chart. By default, the mode is determined automatically. When using countries, such as in the example above, it will render using “regions”. One alternative mode is to place markers that are relative to the size of the value by specifying “markers”.

To define the display mode, add the keyword “displaymode”, followed by a colon and the value in quotation marks. This keyword must be the last in the tag.

Hovering over densely packed data points will magnify the region.

Using a display mode of “text” will render the value as a string over the correct location. The size and boldness of the text reflects the size of the value.

Region

The “region” property allows setting the zoom level of the map. By default, the property is set to “world”, to display the full map. The value can be set to a continent using its 3-digit code, a country with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, or a state in the United States with the ISO 3166-2:US code. If using a state, the resolution property must be set to “provinces” or “metros”.

The example below is set to zoom into the continent of Europe with code “150”.

Resolution

The “resolution” property determines the display of data points on the geo chart. By default, it is set to “countries”. The “provinces” value is supported for some country regions and US state regions. The “metros” value is supported for US country region and US state regions only.

An example of the “metros” resolution mode can be seen below. The chart uses “markers” display mode.