Charts in Dashboards: What’s coming
Over the last few releases, ArcGIS Dashboards has made some changes to how data visualizations work behind-the-scenes. With the June 2024 release, that effort will be completed, meaning we will have set ArcGIS Dashboards up to bring far more chart types and features than ever before to users.
As part of this effort, we will also bring in a couple of new improvements.
Chart legend
You will have the options to place your pie chart or serial chart legend at the top, bottom, right, or left of your visualization.
Chart actions in mobile view
You can now configure charts on a mobile dashboard to be the source of actions. Mobile dashboard viewers will be able to select one or more data points on the chart to trigger events such as filter, zoom, flash, and pan.
Keyboard navigation
Dashboard viewers can now navigate a chart using the Tab key on a keyboard. On a chart that is a source of actions, viewers can also use the Enter key to trigger actions.
New chart defaults
To promote best practices, new grouped values pie chart slices will be sorted in descending order based on statistics. The slices will go from largest to smallest, in a clockwise direction. As a dashboard author, you can remove or modify this sort setting at any point in time.
When "Parse dates" is enabled on a new serial chart, we will automatically switch the chart from a column chart to a line chart, as it is more effective for visualizing change in values over time. As a dashboard author, you can modify this chart option at any point in time.
We tried to make the re-plumbing effort as smooth and non-disruptive as possible for existing dashboards. However, there are a few things to look out for, specifically, if you have serial charts that fall into either category:
- Serial charts with "Periods labeling" customizations
- Serial charts with more than 10,000 groups or features
If neither sounds relevant to your dashboard, great! Keep an eye out on our What's new page around mid-June to check out all the latest enhancements and features. Otherwise, continue reading to see what will change and how your dashboard might be impacted.
Serial charts with "Periods labeling" customizations
If you customized the period labels on your serial chart using the pattern formatter, they will not be preserved with the update. Instead, they will be formatted using one of the pre-defined formats available from a drop-down menu. If you have charts with customized pattern strings, we recommend that you make note of those as they may require fine-tuning after the release.
Before June 2024 update
After June 2024 update
Refer to the table below to see if your desired format will be supported.
| Period | Formats |
| Year |
|
| Month |
|
| Day |
|
| Hour |
|
| Minute |
|
| Second |
|
We have provided various date and time format options to enhance flexibility. These options offer consistency, efficiency, and awareness of local preferences when displaying temporal data on charts. Localized date and time formats will be available when dealing with temporal data from different regions and in different languages. This makes the process of creating charts smooth and more intuitive.
Localized date and time formats
Serial charts with more than 10,000 groups or features
The upcoming June release will bring changes that, while optimizing certain aspects, may impact performance, leading to slightly slower response times for serial charts with a high volume of data points. This adjustment is part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the overall functionality and user experience. We have tested and discovered that charts trying to process and display tens of thousands of data points will bog down the browser, if not crash it. To mitigate this issue, we have set a hard limit on serial charts to return up to 10,000 data points. This means a grouped values chart will display up to 10,000 aggregations or groups, and a feature-based chart will display up to 10,000 features. If you have charts that are, with or without your knowledge, fetching and rendering more than 10,000 data points, you will see a "Data limit exceeded" warning.
Data limit exceeded warning
We recognize that the forthcoming adjustments might affect the speed and efficiency of dashboards with charts designed for large datasets. However, these changes are aimed at improving the broader system's performance and user experience, ensuring a more robust and effective platform in the long run. To ensures a smooth transition, we recommend doing the following to prepare:
- Filter your data at the layer-level: Bring any data filter down to the layer-level, if possible, even if you have runtime filter actions configured for narrowing down data.
- Make sure that each chart has a purpose: Effective dashboards and visualizations communicate information at-a-glance and draw attention to what is important. If you have a dashboard that is focused on incidents over the last 30 days, verify that your charts represent the same period. If your dashboard provides a summary of requests, highlight the top 5 or 10 request types. Learn more about how to design effective dashboards.
If you encounter any issues with your existing dashboards, you can reach out to Esri Technical Support for assistance.