How can we help?

Applying colours to dashboard charts

Create a cohesive and visually appealing dashboard by choosing from our colour assignment options or by applying your own custom colours.

Looking for a quick introduction to applying chart colours? Check out this brief video:

This article includes:

Note: This article describes how to apply colours to dashboard charts. You can also apply custom colours to dashboard and widget backgrounds. Learn more here.

Colour assignment options

There are two colour assignment options to choose from:

  • Apply colours by data label: Colours will be assigned to data labels by name.

The same colour will be used for all data labels with the same name for all metrics in your account. For example, if “red” is set for the label called “Canada”, in all charts that include “Canada”, it will display as “red”. This method brings consistency to data labels for charts across all of your dashboards and is the default setting.

Note: If desired, you can override this account-wide setting for individual dashboards by selecting the “By display order” option instead for those specific dashboards.

  • Apply colours by display order: Colours are assigned according to their display order. Colours are applied to data labels in a chart in the same order each time (beginning with the first colour in the palette being applied to the first data label in a chart, and continuing through the palette colours and data labels in order).

This setting is applied on a per-dashboard basis. Applying this option can improve the dashboard presentation by creating a uniform, harmonious collection of data with a particular colour scheme, for example, when combined with custom colours, one that uses your company brand colours.

Colour assignment options: Example

Here’s an example to further explain the impact of choosing by display order versus by data label.

If you have multiple metrics on a dashboard that share one or more dimensional members and you select by display order, you might end up with label colour inconsistency between the metrics.

See the example below, that uses by display order, where different colours are applied to “Mexico”, “United States”, and “Canada” in each metric.

Following is the same dashboard using the by data label setting. Note that the colours are now consistent for each country in both charts.

Custom colours

Custom colours can be used to override colour assignment options on a per-label, per-dashboard basis. For example, you can select “by display order” and then apply custom colours for any number of labels in your chart.

Custom colours: Tip

If you have multiple metrics on a dashboard with shared dimensional members but the labels for the members are spelled differently (for example, “Canada” vs “CAN”) you can use custom colours to bring colour consistency to these labels.

In the example below, one metric includes “CAN” and “USA” and the other metric includes “Canada” and “United States”. To ensure the same colour is used for the shared dimensional members, regardless of spelling, apply the same custom colour to each spelling variation. (See below.)

How do I apply colours to charts on a dashboard?

To apply dashboard chart colours:

  1. In an open dashboard, click theEdit button in the upper-right corner.
  2. In the dashboard toolbar, click Dashboard settings.

The dashboard settings panel opens.

  1. At Chart colour assignment, choose how you want to apply colours to metrics on the dashboard: By data label or By display order. (See the description above for more details.)

  1. If you’re happy with the colour choices and assignment, click Save dashboard.
  2. If you want to create custom colours for one or more labels in the dashboard charts, click the + button beside Custom chart colours.

Note: Custom colours will override the preset colours that were applied when you selected “By data label” or “By display order”.

  1. Select the label name text and start typing the name of the label for which you want to apply a custom colour. As you type, options will display as a drop-down list from which you can select the desired label name.

Note: Enter the text using spelling that matches that displayed in the chart. For example, if the label in the chart is “Canada”, if you enter “Caneda” the custom colour will not be applied. This is because the custom color maps to the label’s text string.

  1. Click the colour cube to the left of the label name and choose the desired colour: Select a preset colour, or enter a hexadecimal colour code, or enter R G B values, or use the sliding colour selector scale.

Note: Each label can only be assigned to one colour.

  1. If you want to add custom colours for other labels, go back to step 5 and repeat.
  2. When you’re done adding custom colours, click Save dashboard.

Note: If you want to assign colours to an unsegmented bar or column chart (one with “Data” > “Segment by” set to “None”) select Bar / Column as the Chart Type and either the Bar (colour by category) or the Column (colour by category) as the Style. This chart style assigns colours based on the category you select in the Data tab, under Over. (See below.)

Updated
Have more questions? Submit a request