What are chart tiles?
Chart tiles turn sheet data into visual representations — bar charts, line charts, waterfalls, pie charts, and single-value KPIs. They're created by adding a Sheet Tile to a dashboard and choosing a chart visualization type. This article covers the configuration options available to any chart tile.
Visualization Type
Available visualization types
A Sheet Tile can present data in several formats. Available visualization types include:
Sheet: Shows the sheet directly for data entry or structure building
Table: A simplified sheet view with additional visualizations and formatting
Column Chart
Stacked Column Chart
Waterfall Chart
Pin Chart
Area Chart
Stacked Area Chart
Line Chart
Combo Chart: Mix columns, lines, and areas
Pie Chart
Single Value: Displays one key number with optional comparison
Each visualization responds differently to rows, columns, filters, and timeline selections.
Orientation & Layout
Orientation & Layout options
Orientation: Defines whether the chart is displayed:
Horizontally (e.g., time series from left to right)
Vertically (e.g., categories stacked top to bottom)
Layout: Controls the tile structure:
Flat Layout: Standard chart or table view
Grid Layout: Creates a small multiples view by generating a separate chart for each top-level row.
Requires at least two row levels
Ensures all charts scale consistently
Provides additional settings: number of grid columns, X/Y spacing, X/Y axis spacing
Ideal for comparing multiple entities side-by-side (e.g., regions, products, departments)
Data Options
Use this dashboard's filters
ON: Tile uses the dashboard's global filters
OFF: Tile shows its own local filter bar in Sheet visualization
Use this dashboard's timeline
ON: Tile uses the dashboard's global timeline
OFF: Tile shows its own local timeline in Sheet visualization
Use columns as series: Transposes the data. Useful when time periods or versions should behave like series:
Columns become series
Rows become categories
Normalize to 100% (Stacked Charts Only): Normalizes columns or bars so they all have equal height/length. Useful for part-to-whole analysis.
Show empty categories: Controls whether empty categories (rows or columns with no data) appear in the chart. When disabled, categories with no values are hidden.
Show empty values: Controls whether data points with empty (null) values appear in the chart. When disabled, null data points are skipped, which can affect the visual continuity of line and area chart series.
Visualization Options
Toggle value axis, category axis, totals (stacked charts only), legend, and integrated legend, which is recommended for stacked charts and follows IBCS best practices.
Shared Axis
When a dashboard has several chart tiles that need to be compared side-by-side, you can make them share the same axis scale so bars, columns, and lines are directly comparable at a glance — a key IBCS principle.
To enable it, assign a chart to a shared axis group in its axis options. Any other chart tile assigned to the same group will automatically sync its axis range with the rest of the group, using the largest range across all group members. Charts not in any group keep their own independent scale.
Shared axis works with both horizontal and vertical chart orientations, and is especially useful when building dashboards with multiple small-multiple chart tiles that represent different slices of the same measure (e.g. revenue by region).
Value labels
Value labels options
Configure how labels appear on data points by defining the color, font size, emphasis (bold, italic, underline, outline), position (Start, Middle, End, or Auto), angle, X/Y offset, smart filtering (shows labels only when a trend change occurs), and custom formatting.
The outline emphasis option renders labels with a contrasting border around the text, making them readable even when they overlap chart elements like bars or grid lines.
Row/Column Options
Each row or column can have individualized settings:
Visualization type per series (Only for Combo Charts)
Color and fill style
Value labels (these options override the tile-level value label configuration)
For details on colors, palettes, fill patterns, and color modes:
Rules for Pie Chart & Single Value Tiles
Pie Chart
Uses only the first value column
Orientation & layout options are disabled
Represents contributions by dimension members
Single Value
Expects one row and two columns:
1st column → main value
2nd column → comparison value
Example of single value data
Single value visualization of the data above
Additional Single Value options include:
Custom comparison text: Overrides the default comparison label shown beneath the main number. By default, the comparison is displayed as (Value change) vs. (Column name) — for example
+2.87 (1.8%) vs. PY/PL. A custom text replaces only the "vs. (Column name)" portion.Data entry: Enabling data entry allows you to type directly into the Single Value tile and modify the underlying value. Useful for what-if scenario dashboards.
Show Buttons & Step: Adds increase/decrease buttons next to the value. Each click changes the value by a defined step — either an absolute number (e.g., +10 / −10) or a percentage (e.g., +5% / −5%).
Custom formatting: Apply custom numeric formatting to the displayed value.