Spotfire visualizations are both highly configurable and versatile. They have the ability to visualize many different dimensions, and common visualizations like the Scatter Plot, Map Chart, and Heat Map can be configured to create many other visualization types. In this tip, we will discuss how to use the Heat Map to create a calendar visualization in Spotfire.
Let’s assume you have data which contains information that could be displayed in a calendar-like visualization. Typically this data needs a start and end date, and then something categorical, like an activity or a user name or department.
For this example, we have the following data:
To create the calendar visualization, we need to first create a new Heat Map visualization. We specify ‘None’ for both the X-Axis and Y-Axis, and then using an expression we set the ‘Cell Values’ to ‘Concatenate([Activity])’:
When then need to configure the Trellis axis. For this we should use ‘Rows and columns’ and setup the Rows value to be ‘Week([Start Date])’ and the Columns value to be ‘Day of Week([Start Date])’
Our calendar is now starting to take shape:
We then need need to color it. For this we are going to add a Color scheme grouping for our Cell Values in the Heat Map:
We specify ‘Unique values’ and One scale per ‘Axis value’ for this grouping and then manually select the colors to use for each Activity.
When can then update the Tooltip to display the Start Date column, the Details column, and the Number of Days column:
Finally we are ready to clean up the User Interface. You can remove the Axis Selectors, and have the legend just display the Color.
