Bullet charts display data compared to a metric split out over different categories. Ranges and targets can be displayed overall or per category.

Similar charts include:

  • Circular gauge charts compare a single metric to a target and can be conditionally colored.
  • Conditional colored number charts display a single metric and conditionally color the chart based on a target
  • Speedometer charts compare a single metric to a target. Ranges in the speedometer can be set to indicate progress towards the target, and a marker indicates current progress.

How to create a Bullet chart

The bullet chart can be found underneath the Gauges section.

There are three slots to add data to - Category, Measure and Target.

Category

The categories that will be measured are determined by the category slot. The data type of your category can be hierarchical, datetimes or even numeric. You’ll see that multiple bullets are being formed immediately with the category names at the left side of them - one for each value, range, etc. appearing in your category column.

After adding your data column to the category slot you will notice that the bullets are filled with a blue bar, that’s because the measurement is not yet added to it.

Measure

The Measure slot defines the colored bar in the middle of the bullet. The longer the bar, the higher the measurement. The column added to this slot should be the one with your measurement numbers in it, meaning that the datatype of this column will likely be numeric. By default shows the sum of the values for a numeric column or the count rows for a hierarchy or datetime column. Different aggregations can be set to execute different calculations, e.g. the average.

Target

The most important part of the Bullet chart is the seeing your data compared to a target.

There are two ways to set the target:

  • Manual target - you can set a fixed target manually. This can be done in the settings of the chart underneath the ‘Bullets’ section. By activating the ‘Manual target’ option, a specific target number is automatically set and the vertical line will appear in the bullet. You can change this target number for every bullet by clicking on it, meaning that every bullet can have a different target.

  • Target slot - if you have a target column in your dataset you can add it to your chart directly. You can either have a "Target" column directly in your dataset, or link to a dataset containing your targets. Aggregation type can also be set for the Target data.

Video tutorial

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