How to use KPIs and Gauges in a Dynamic Way

The Use Case

Working with a customer, I recently ran into an interesting use case that required dynamic band values in a KPI and a gauge view. As the solution needed some thinking I thought it would be good to share for everyone.

The customer use case is for a dashboard that shows the safety of a specific process or event. This client measures events to group them in different severity levels.

With the actual measure they want to show the KPI for events that have a severity 4 and 5 and for the year to date.

The KPI goal for this measure is a minimum 10% decrease from the previous year (the lower the better).

What was the challenge

The challenge was, that we wanted the gauge to only show a green bar when the goal is met. When it’s not met, we want a green bar from the bottom to the goal, and a red bar from the goal to the actual value.

The Requirement:

The solution is using a KPI formulation, with dynamic bands. 

For our example we will use expenses data (it is all available in our explore server, here). We have the actual expenses, and the expense budget. If the actual is lower than the budget then we have met our goal, otherwise we haven’t:

For your information, this is what desired KPI should look like.

You can try to build it yourself in the Explore Server where you can find this Example in the knowledge base folders.

Let me know your solution and results.

Solution:

First we need to create a KPI with actual and goal.

Create the Values

The status is defined as the same as the actual:

Set the Bands

Now we set the bands to Tri Reverse range, and set all except the minimal value to formulas:

Band 1 end:
If the actual is lower than (or equal to) the budget: actual
If the actual is higher than the budget: budget
Band 2 end:
If the actual is lower than (or equal to) the budget: budget
If the actual is higher than the budget: budget (so it’s not seen – starts and ends with the same value)
Band 3 end:
If the actual is lower than (or equal to) the budget: budget (so not seen).
If the actual is higher than the budget: actual.

Design the gauge:

Start a new discover, check the KPI in the measures, and change from Grid to Gauge:

 Right click on the color pane and click “edit color logic”:

Select green for the first band, light gray for the second, and red for the 3rd, and apply:

Choose the correct elements for the trellis and use formatting as you wish – in our case just showing 2 elements as seen above (taken from a present):

We hope you liked this Tip&Trick. If you have further questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.