Forum Discussion
Helper IIHow to visualize x - y categorical data
Hello fellow community!
I having some trouble finding a good way to visualize some data ( or rather a way that actually works ). Let me explain the nature of my dataset first:
I have a set of chronologica records (timestamps) of some instruments from which certain parameters were set to "disabled". It looks like this:
I would like to be able to visualize chronologically when each parameter was disabled and of course split by instrument. My first thought was with a scatterplot where Time would be on the X a axis and each property would be a value in the Y axis.
The reason why I want to use directly the continuous timestamp is that there are waay to many generated and I only really want the grouping I have done by 5 min intervals.
This attempt of course doesnt work ( i keep getting "Remove Values to display x- and y- value pairs. Alternatively, you can keep Values and set a summarization for x- and y- axis." error). Also im not sure how this visualization would deal with the fact that there are many times for which more than 1 instrument has the same parameter disabled which would mean the dots in the plot would be on top of each other meaning no way to visualize the data properly.
I have seen this similar topic but I am unable to either use the provided template or modify it to suit my needs.
https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Categorical-data-as-X-and-Y-axis/td-p/1589093
Other than this, does anyone have any suggestions on what type of visualization can be used for this purpose and if exists already on PowerBI?.
Many thanks!
2 Replies
- saud968
Memorable Member
You can try below options
Clustered Column Chart:
X-axis: Group timestamps by your desired interval (e.g., 5 minutes). You can create a new calculated column to achieve this.
Y-axis: Instrument ID
Values: You can add a count of disabled parameters for each instrument within the time interval.
This will show you a stacked bar chart for each instrument, where each bar segment represents the count of disabled parameters within that time interval.2. Table with Slicer:
This is a simple option if you want to see the raw data.
You can create a table with all the columns (Date, Timestamp, Instrument ID, ParamID, Time).
Add a slicer on the Instrument ID to filter the data for a specific instrument.
3. Custom Visual: PBIVizEdit Bubble Chart (A custom visual)X-axis: Instrument ID
Y-axis: ParameterID
Bubble size: Count of disabled parameters (or another metric you want to represent)
This can be a useful option if you want to see the distribution of disabled parameters across different instruments and parameter IDs.
Best Regards
Saud Ansari
If this post helps, please Accept it as a Solution to help other members find it. I appreciate your Kudos! 
AutoJLHi saud968
Thank you for the suggestions! Unfortunately they dont really fit into what I need.
The stacked bar chart depicts a count of disabled params but that is not what I need. I need to see which param on which instrument is disabled across the day (or whatever time period I have the data from).
The bubble chart is basically the same issue. It would almost work using X axis: time, Y axis: Parameter, Legend: Instrument. The problem with this is is that, as I foresaw, it cannot visualize the same Parameter being disabled on multiple areas at the same time, it will display the dots all stacked on top of each other and you only get to see one colored dot (one Instrument) instead of all of them.
The table solution if we are being very technicall it works, but a table is indeed not a visualization it would display such a mess of numbers and letters that would be unusable by any human being. Also it displays the time vertically which is not very natural either to humans.
This last solution has gotten me thinking and a hybrid solution could work:
Instead of a table I can use a matrix visual with the Time on Columns, the Parameters on the Rows and for the values I guess I would need some kind of DAX measure that would return a list for every pair of values Time-Parameter that contained the concatenated names of the Instruments where that Paramer was disbaled at that time (And I not sure at all this is even possible).
I will try to find a solution for this last part but still my main focus is to achieve this visually as I think there really must be something out there that can fit this requirements im just not seeing it.(For instance with python you can just use a scatterplot but you just "jitter" the X axis coordinate so dots are not literally on top of each other and you can see there are multiple records for one time).
Many thanks for the superfast help in any case! 🙂
