One of the key advantages of Knoema dashboards is that they can be interactive, not static. Interactive means that the displayed information can be changed as a user interacts with a dashboard (for example, clicks or makes a choice in a drop-down list).
A user can create a dashboard with interlinked charts or with options to select a single country, company, or another indicator, and have all charts refresh to feature that information. We refer to this as Parameterization, the linkage of charts (aka gadgets) based on a selected parameter that is shared among them.
By parameterizing a dashboard or select visualizations within a dashboard, users can change the selection in this dimension and see different results. For example, if you parameterize a page based on the location, users may change the default country selection and the chart will refresh to feature the newly selected country. To parameterize a full dashboard or a set of visualizations within the dashboard:
- Open your dashboard in edit mode.
- Click the Parameterize link in the action bar along the top of the page. Select gadget you want to parametrize. The site opens the 'Choose Parameter' dialog box.
Note: there is a green question mark icon. Click it to view a step-by-step guide!
- Select the parameter (e.g. the dimension) that will be the variable by which a user can adjust the charts.
Note: If you plan to parameterize a dashboard that includes charts with indicators that you calculated in the formula editor, you must parametrize based on a dimension that does not include the calculation, otherwise, you'll break calculation added.
- Specify a name for the parameter by clicking on the name again from the top of the page.
- Choose the Display all members option if you want the parameter to show all available elements regardless of whether data is available; choose Restrict to selected members to define a custom list of elements to be available to users.
- Click Save to apply changes.
Once you save the parameterized page, the site adds a drop-down menu at the top of the page. Select a new element for the parameterized dimension by choosing a value from this drop-down menu. All the gadgets on the page that you linked via the parameterization feature will refresh automatically to show the data for the new selection.