Get to know the List Table

Most have heard the idioms "never judge a book by it’s cover" and "there’s more than meets the eye". Keeping these statements in mind, I’d like to introduce you to the List Table in SAS Visual Analytics.

The List Table can be more than just a black and white ledger style visual. Here is one example where I’ve highlighted some of the enhancements you can apply to the List Table.

• Cell Graph: Article | YouTube
• Display Rules: Color-Mapped, Expression or Gauge
• Abbreviated value
• Sparkline
• Hidden Data Role
• Totals
• Freeze Columns to the left

You can also control the styling of the List Table by changing the header and total cell background colors as well as an alternating row color.

Some of these features have already been covered and are linked to in the above list. I’ll cover the remaining features in the following sections.

Display Rules

The List Table is one of the objects that can have all three types of Display Rules applied, depending on the List Table’s Role assignments. One of the advantages of using a display rule is to be able to quickly apply business rules to flag certain rows.

The types of display rules include:

• Color-Mapped: Based on a category data item
• Expression: Based on a measure data item expression
• Gauge: Based on a measure data item and interval definition

You are even able to apply a rule to a data item not assigned a role in the List Table! In this example, I am applying a Display Rule for the Expenses measure and that data item is not assigned a role in the List Table. Not show here, but you can even compare columns to calculated data items in the same data source.

Abbreviated Value

Use the Options pane to individually select which measure data items you would like to use an Abbreviated numerical value.

Or you can right click on the target column and use the menu to select Abbreviated numerical value.

Sparkline

A sparkline is intended to display a trend line for high density data in a small space. The idea with any line visualization is to represent the trend of data over a time period. That said, your data source must contain a date or datetime data item and a measure.

To add a sparkline to the List Table you will need to make use of the right click menu. To demonstrate that you can add a sparkline representing the trend of any data item in your data source, this current List Table only has one column Facility Region assigned.

The list of available Time Axis and Measure data items are driven by the report’s data source.

In this example, I’ve selected 2011 as my year and used Date by Month as the sparkline’s Time Axis. I selected Profit as the measure to trend. See the different styles available for the sparkline below.

Totals

Use the Options pane to easily customize which Totals you would like to add to the List Table. You can see the other formatting options available: showing labels, background cell color, font style and size, and placement. You can choose to have the totals of the List Table placed after the rows of data or before.

Freeze Columns

Use the right-click menu to select the column you wish to freeze on and select Freeze all columns to the left.

The recording below shows that any user can use the freeze column feature even when in View mode.

Summary

Here is a list of the List Table enhancements covered either in this article or previous articles:

• Cell Graph: Article | YouTube
• Display Rules: Color-Mapped, Expression or Gauge
• Abbreviated value
• Sparkline
• Hidden Data Role
• Totals
• Freeze Columns to the left

If you want to style your List Table for all users to have the same color scheme and other style enhancements, consider using either a Report Theme or Object Templates for consistency across report developers.