Chartio is one of the most popular visualization tools available in the visualization market that’s not only easy to implement but has a short learning curve to help you visualize your data in a straightforward and easy-to-understand format in seconds.
In a world that’s data-driven, it’s ideal to use a system that can execute lightning-fast tactics based on sophisticated analytics and Chartio has this covered. In this post, you will be learning about the business intelligence tool called Chartio. It can be understood that this tool might be alien to a lot of people which is why it is made sure that the guide is comprehensive enough to provide you with every basic knowledge to be an expert Chartio user.
You need to be aware that Chartio has migrated to Atlassian, you can still access some features. So if you want to access the new Chartio platform, you will need to go to Atlassian.
Table of Contents
What is Chartio?
Chartio is a cloud-based business intelligence system that permits you to make refined graphs, reports, and dashboards that will engage decision-makers to settle on the right decisions, fast. It offers incredible usefulness to both specialized and non-specialized users.
According to the makers of Chartio, their statement of purpose is to “make data accessible to everyone.” They accomplish this with the power of Visual SQL. Visual SQL is a special framework that permits you to design no-code database queries utilizing a visual menu framework. This can be a major assistance to clients at all levels of tech ability whether you are an expert or a rookie.
Key Features of Chartio
As a user of Chartio, you have a similar goal as the Visual SQL: to make great and educational information representations. The platform incorporates various features that will assist with conveying extraordinary informative data;
- Smart Information Charts: this BI system can help you track down the most ideal type of chart for your information. You would then be able to utilize manual tools to design the outcomes and produce a stellar visualization.
- Information Dashboards: You can join various charts into one view, known as a dashboard. A dashboard can incorporate tables from various sources, giving you a solitary area to get every information you need.
- Collaboration Access: Clients can collaborate on charts, add memos, and edit charts. The system offers exceptionally configurable access control and history so you can monitor any changes.
- Simple Sharing: You can share the charts or dashboards basically by sharing the chart links. To make things considerably simpler, Chartio works perfectly with communication platforms like Slack, so you can share your graphs directly to the platform to be part of the discussion.
What are the Steps for Initializing Chartio?
As you earlier read, Chartio makes use of Visual SQL to create charts. The Visual SQL is the place where a majority of the magic takes place – it’s the interface you’ll use to make your charts.
Visual SQL engages clients of all expert levels to manage and query their data. This type of SQL is intuitive for business clients, quick for power users, straightforward for SQL masters, and adaptable for developers. Chartio makes SQL visual, instead of code – you get to see the image for yourself and each data link.
In the subsequent section, you will be learning about charts and how to make charts on Chartio which apparently is what the platform is majorly used for but before you do that, you need to learn about the Chartio dashboard.
What is Dashboard?
For those who already have an account with either Chartio or Atlassian, you will see the dashboard and a list of dashboards on the landing page when you log in. It’s an intuitive layout that gives you all you need. Basically, the dashboard is where you display all your charts. One of the perks of using the Chartio dashboard is that you can create more than one dashboard and easily manage them from your landing page.
Image Source: ChartioHence, it’s advisable to create a separate dashboard for separate topics that you intend to track. What it means is that you can create a different dashboard for let’s say; sales, growth, leads, engagement and that’s just to mention a few.
The more organized your dashboard, the easier it is to locate what you need to create an effective dashboard.
More so, when you create a new Chartio dashboard, it displays the dashboard layout shown below.
Image Source: Chartio- The part labeled 1 represents the main board which comprises all the Charts, Controls, and Dashboard Elements.
- The part labeled 2 comprises the Dashboard Elements, Settings, and the Menu View button. You can likewise click Download to download either a PDF or CSV of the dashboard.
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What is the Procedure for Create Charts?
Creating a chart on Chartio is pretty straightforward – but to do that, you will need data. I’m sure you remember that Chartio is a visualization tool, which means you need to have data prepared that you want to visualize. To add new data to Chartio, go to the Data tab from the top menu.
From there, you can connect your Chartio to some popular platform like Google sheets, upload a CSV file or even connect to any database of your choice. In case you need to connect to your database, Chartio will request access to your database.
Although it’s advisable to visualize on Chartio with your own data you can also use the demo data on the platform. With the demo data sources, you can start learning about how to use Chartio.
Once you have some data to visualize, it’s time to create charts.
The next step is to click the chart at the top left-hand corner of the dashboard. This page can be accessed from any page within Chartio. It makes it easier to analyze data with no need to save it to a particular dashboard. Then follow the steps below;
Image Source: ChartioStep 1: Select your data source from the top-left dropdown
Step 2: Drag a Dimension (such as Date or Category) to Dimensions
Step 3: Drag a Measure (such as ID or Payments) to Measures
Charts consist of Measures and Dimensions. The dimension for instance is the grouped value, such as Category or Date. While the measures, on the other hand, are aggregated value, like the Count of ID or Sum of Payments.
Image Source: ChartioStep 4: Click Run Query
Step 5: Change chart type (optional)
Chartio provides numerous useful chart types. A portion of the chart types involves specific column formatting and data types. There are different chart types and they all have their importance. So depending on your choice, pick the best chart type that best suits you. The most popular chart types are; Area, Bar, Bar Line, Box Plot, Bubble Map, Bubble, Bullet, Funnel, Heat Map, Line, Map, Pie, Scatter Plot, Single Value, Single Value Indicator, Sparkline, and Table.
The example below is a chart type called the Pie chart type.
Image Source: ChartioEvery chart type on this list has its customizable chart settings. These settings are categorized into different tabs, still, not all chart types have every settings tab. You can access the typesetting from either the dashboard or through the data explorer page by clicking ‘settings’ next to the chart title.
Step 6: Add chart title (optional)
Step 7: Customize chart settings (optional)
Step 8: Click Save to Dashboard and choose a Dashboard from the pop-up or create a new one
What are the Steps for Managing your Charts?
After creating your charts from either your data or the demo data provided by Chartio, you can use the chart in several ways within the platform and in other formats outside our platform.
Among other things, you can either edit the chart data to modify your queries, edit the chart settings, delete it from Chartio, refresh the chart and clone it to create another chart with the same settings, download the chart or share to other platforms like Slack.
Image Source: ChartioWhat is Controls and Variables?
Chartio provides several different types of Controls and Variables, these controls and variables can be utilized on Chartio dashboards and across the application. For instance, the dashboard control is one of the many controls that permits users to filter numerous charts simultaneously from their dashboard, utilizing a Text Input, Calendar picker, or any other input type.
The platform also has relational date variables that are in-built date variables that can be utilized all through the Chartio application. They each resolve to a solitary date string, so you can utilize them anyplace you would somehow enter a date value.
Similar to the relational date variable is the current user variable; it can help you populate electronic mail of the user viewing a dashboard currently and as a filter within charts or to show the user on your dashboard.
What is Data Sources?
There are two methods you can use to connect your database with Chartio; the direct connection and tunnel connection. The direct connection for one is easier as it only requires you to allow a Chartio IP address and input your connection details on the connection page. If your database is on a private network and you don’t want to alter any firewall rules, you can utilize an SSH tunnel to create an outbound encoded query from your network to Chartio.
When it comes to connecting to a local machine, please note that Chartio can’t connect directly to any databases on local machines. You will have to connect this type of database utilizing an SSH tunnel connection.
Here’s a list of the support data sources accessible with Chartio
- Amazon
- Athena
- Amazon Aurora
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon Redshift
- Amazon VPC
- CSV Uploads
- Databricks
- Google Analytics
- Google BigQuery
- Google Cloud SQL
- Google Sheets
- Heap SQL
- Heroku
- MariaDB
- Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft SQL Server
- MongoDB
- MySQL
- Oracle
- PostgreSQL
- Presto
- Rackspace Cloud
- Segment
- Snowflake
- Stitch
- Tenjin DataVault
- Treasure Data
- Vertica
- VoltDB
- Workable
What is Data Stores?
Data Stores permit you to save query results as another data source. A Store Table consists of query results saved as another data source. Thus, a data Store is an assortment of at least one store table. More so, making a Store Table is like making a chart. You can join sources and apply changes to the data pipeline to get the data precisely how you need it. At the end of the day, the data is channeled into a data set table (the store Table) instead of a visualization.
Uses of Data Stores
- Improve query performance through pre-aggregated data
- Design easy, team-specific data sources
- Combine several data sources and implement frequently utilized transformations such as calculations, filters directly to a data source
- Compose SQL queries against Google Analytics
What are the Steps to Creating a Data Store?
Firstly to create a data store, you need permission as the owner of the Chartio account. You cannot create a data score with a team account other than the owner.
Creating a Data Store is a two-part process:
Step 1: Create a Data Store Connection
- From the top navigation bar,
- Click Data to go to your organization’s data sources page then
- Switch to the Data Stores tab and
- Click the +Add a Data Store button.
Image Source: ChartioName the Data Store and determine other connection settings as you want.
Image Source: ChartioStep 2: Create a Stored Table
The next to do is add a Stored Table to the Data Store you just created.
- From the Data Stores tab,
- find your Data Store and
- Click the + Stored Table button
Image Source: ChartioYou then get redirected to the chart editor (Visual SQL or Data Explorer). Proceed to select the data source, then pick data like you are creating a chart. Proceed to add queries and Pipeline steps as needed.
When you save your stored table, you’ll be diverted to the full rundown of data Stores and your Stored Tables. For one thing, the Store Table won’t run until its planned time, yet on the off chance that you need to utilize it immediately, you may refresh it by clicking its Refresh button.
Image Source: ChartioWhat are the Steps to Connect to Data Stores?
Now that you know the types of data sources Chartio accepts, you need to learn how to connect Chartio to these data sources. The process is pretty straightforward. To connect a new data source to Chartio,
Step 1: Select Data from the top left-hand bar,
Step 2: Click + Add Data Source,
Step 3: Proceed to select your data source type from the list (make sure it’s part of the ones specified above).
Step 4: Fill in the connection form then click Connect.
Image Source: ChartioWhat is Alerts?
Chartio likewise allows you to create an alert by running your query at a specific interval and in the case where the value returned meets the threshold you specified, the system automatically sends you an email with a customized message.
With Chartio, you can likewise send an alert to everyone and anyone, even if they are not a user of Chartio. Alerts can also be scheduled for non-numeric values such as dates or text. To manage or view your alerts, check the alert admin page at the top of the dashboard.
To create an Alert, go to the Alerts admin page and click + Add Alert. Build your query as you normally would for any chart and ensure that your final result set returns a single value.
Image Source: ChartioConclusion
Chartio offers so many features for both programmers and non-programmers. In this post, you have been able to learn about the process of using Chartio especially if you are not so techy. It offers convenience and coordinated effort capacities for those with practically zero specialized knowledge in IT. In any case, even though Chartio is easy to learn, it additionally offers a set-up of incredible data analysis abilities for you to learn from.
More so, Chartio offers a wide scope of database connections, ensuring it connects with the database you use. If you are not yet utilizing any database, you should check out the Chartio demo database. If you are interested in learning about SSIS, you can find the guide here, and if you want to learn about Amazon Kinesis, you can find the guide here.
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