Use heat maps

Prerequisites

  • You have the Insights Author license.

Page location

Insights > Analyses > Click an analysis

Use heat maps to show a measure for the intersection of two dimensions, with color-coding to easily differentiate where values fall in the range. Heat maps can also be used to show the count of values for the intersection of the two dimensions.

For example, the following heat map shows which products are most used by the customers in these countries, measured by a simple count.

Each rectangle on a heat map represents the value for the specified measure for the intersection of the selected dimensions. Rectangle color represents where the value falls in the range for the measure, with darker colors indicating higher values and lighter colors indicating lower ones.

Heat maps show up to 50 data points for rows and up to 50 data points for columns. For more information about how Insights handles data that falls outside display limits, see the “Display limits” section in Visual types in Insights.

BEST PRACTICE   Heat maps are similar to pivot tables. Use a heat map if you want to identify trends and outliers because the use of color makes these easier to spot. Use a pivot table if you want to further analyze data on the visual, for example by changing column sort order or applying aggregate functions across rows or columns.

Procedure

Create a heat map

  1. Click Visualize (the bar chart icon in the tool bar). The Visuals panel opens.
  2. Click Add.

  3. Click the Heat map icon.

  4. Drag a dimension from the Data panel into the Rows field well.
  5. Drag a dimension into the Columns field well.
  6. Drag a measure into the Values field well.

  7. (Optional) To add drill-down layers, drag at least one more field from the Data panel into the Rows or Columns field wells. For more information about adding drill-downs, see Adding drill-downs to visual data in Insights.

Heat map features

The following table lists the actions you can do with heat maps.

Feature Supported? Comments For more information
Change the legend display Yes   Legends on visual types in Insights
Change the title display Yes   Titles and subtitles on visual types in Insights
Change the axis range Not applicable   Range and scale on visual types in Insights
Change the visual colors No   Colors in visual types in Insights
Focus on or exclude elements Yes, with exceptions You can focus on or exclude a rectangle in a heat map, except when you are using a date field as the rows dimension. In that case, you can only focus on a rectangle, not exclude it.

Focus on visual elements

Exclude visual elements

Sort Yes You can sort by the fields you choose for the columns and the values. Sorting visual data in Insights
Perform field aggregation Yes You must apply aggregation to the fields you choose for the value. You cannot apply aggregation to the fields you choose for the rows or columns. Changing field aggregation
Add drill-downs Yes You can add drill-down levels to the Rows and Columns field wells. Adding drill-downs to visual data in Insights
Conditional formatting No   Conditional formatting on visual types in Insights

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