Dashboards enable you to add trend lines and apply advanced analytic models over a widget to highlight tendencies in your data and get insights quickly. Dashboards support trend lines on all Column, Line, Area, and Bar charts. For any relevant widget, the Analyze It icon is displayed in the widget’s menu.
To add a trend line:
- Click Analyze It and then select Trend.
- Select the value to be analyzed (if more than one value is displayed on the widget).
- Define the trend settings.
Four different trend types are supported:
Linear Trend: A linear trend line is a straight line that usually shows when values are increasing or decreasing at a steady rate.
Logarithmic Trend: A logarithmic trend line is a best-fit curved line that is used when the rate of change in the data increases or decreases quickly and then levels out.
Exponential Smoothing: An exponential trend line is a curved line that is most useful when data values rise or fall at increasingly higher rates. You cannot create an exponential trend line if your data contains zero or negative values. Sisense averages two spline regressors to reduce the noise in a time series when calculating this type of trend.
Local Estimates: Local Estimate models add trend lines according to the mean of a time series.
From the Trend Settings window, you can also:
- Compare data to previous time periods: Select to add another trend line based on data from the previous time period you select.
- Ignore anomalies: Select to ignore data points that differ significantly from the majority of the data, e.g. Sales peak on ‘Black Friday’. These points are replaced with the average of the two adjacent points (before and after the detected anomaly
- Add trend lines to forecast: Select to add a trend line not just to your historical data, but also to forecasted results.
Adding Trend Lines to a Widget
- In the dashboard, click Analyze It on the relevant widget’s menu.
- Select Trend and then the relevant value.
- Enable Show Trend if it is disabled. If it is already enabled, select Trend Settings.
- Select the trend type. Only supported trend types are enabled. If your data does not support a trend type, you cannot select it. The trend line is added to your widget.
- Click Close.
Your trend line is now added to the widget. You can right-click the trend to open the Quick Settings again to make any changes.