Build a Symphony Scorecard

This applies to: Managed Dashboards, Managed Reports

Use scorecards in Symphony to create a customized table with complete control over layout and support for any visualization in its rows. This example displays a row for each product with a different visualization used for each measure.

A scorecard in Symphony is another type of view and is similar to a report. While both scorecards and reports allow you to customize the layout and contents of each row and repeat the design for different data, reports are laid out into pages including page headers and footers and are ideal for PDFs or printing, while scorecards are focused on the design of a table. You can also add it to a dashboard just like you would display a table visualization.

Note: Table visualization columns can display data bars, bullet graphs and state indicators, and can be used instead of a scorecard view if it supports the type of scorecard you want to create.

Related video: Scorecards and Reports

Design a Scorecard

Here's a scorecard example that uses a data connector pointing to the Adventure Works sample database for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). You can follow similar steps with any data source to design your scorecard.

Create a New Scorecard

In the main menu, select Views, choose Scorecard along the top, then Create. This opens a new scorecard in edit mode.

To change the width of the scorecard, select and drag the diagonal arrow icon to the bottom-right of the editor.

You can also set a precise width by opening the Properties window, and finding the Width property in the Design tab under Layout & Spacing. If an element on the canvas is selected, select a blank area to de-select it first to access the overall scorecard properties.

Add a Row Grouping

From the Explore window, drag data that contains a value for each row you want the scorecard to display.

In our example, we expanded the Adventure Works cube, dragged the Product dimension and dropped it onto the row grouping area (drop data to display as rows). This will cause the body region we are designing (labeled B along the left) to be repeated for each product.

For convenience, a pair of items are automatically added to the scorecard: a data label in the body region, which will display the product name, and a header in the header region.

Note: When the data label and header elements are added, their position is linked, which means moving the header control will also move the body control.

Select View in the toolbar to see the scorecard with product names displayed in each row.

Add Sales by Date

To display more data, drag the Internet Sales Amount measure from the Explore window onto the body region. The corresponding data label and header are created automatically next to the product names.

The Data Analysis Panel for this data label opened automatically, showing that it currently displays the data from the scorecard group itself, e.g., data grouped only by each product. Select Select data separately if you want to create a separate metric set for this visualization that can display data grouped by additional hierarchies, such as by date in this example.

We have done so, and then dragged the Date.Calendar hierarchy from the Explore window to Rows in the Data Analysis Panel.

The data label would now normally automatically re-visualize to a sparkline, or you can choose Re-Visualize in the toolbar and then Sparkline.

Add Order Count

From the Explore window, drag the Order Count measure to the body region.

The corresponding data label and header label are created automatically.

Add Sales by Territory

In the toolbar, select Data Visualization and select Data Bar. This is another way to start a blank visualization instead of dragging data directly to the canvas.

Drag the Internet Sales Amount measure onto the empty visualization. Symphony automatically adds the Product grouping hierarchy, but keeps it as a separate metric set.

Drag the Sales Territory Group hierarchy from the Adventure Works cube to Columns.

You can connect a legend to this data bar just like adding a legend to a chart on a dashboard: with your visualization selected, select Data Visualization in the toolbar, then Legend.

To display the legend just once at the top, we can drag to move it to the header region above.

Add an Axis

An axis can be added to the header or footer of a scorecard to use as a reference for visualizations such as data bars in the rows, just like you would use an axis in a regular bar chart.

1. In the toolbar, select Data Visualization, then select Axis.

2. Drag the axis visualization to the header area, above the data bar, and resize it to match the visualization.

3. In the toolbar, select Connect Axis and select DataBar 1: Bottom Axis 1 from the dropdown in the Properties window.

Adjust the Group Header Area

The group header area appears only once for the list of products.

• Set the background color of this area by selecting an empty spot inside the group header area, opening the Properties window, and expanding Lines & Fills to change the Background property.

• In the Layout & Spacing section of the Properties window, select the Sticky option to keep the header frozen at the top as you scroll the scorecard down.

• Add a line at the bottom of the header by following the same steps as shown for a report: select Components in the toolbar, select Line, then position it along the bottom.

View and Edit Your Scorecard

• Select View in the toolbar to see the completed scorecard. For our example, we added an additional state indicator to comparing recent sales figures against the previous period.

• Hover a header such as Internet Order Count and select the icon to open the sort and filter popup, and sort by Descending order, for example.

  

Use a Scorecard in a Managed Dashboard

While editing a dashboard, drag the scorecard from the Explore window to your canvas. Then reposition and resize the scorecard as you would with any other visualization.

Note: Expand the scorecard in the Explore window to drag separate elements from it, such as metric sets or visualizations.