Charts & formatting
Chart types
Section titled “Chart types”The Insert palette groups visuals by the question they answer — every type has its own page with field wells and usage guidance:
| Group | Types |
|---|---|
| Comparison | Bar, Column, Stacked Bar, 100% Stacked Bar, Bullet, Lollipop, Pareto |
| Trend | Line, Area, Stacked Area, 100% Stacked Area, Combo, Combo Stacked, Sparkline |
| Composition | Pie, Donut, Treemap, Sunburst, Funnel, Waterfall, Sankey |
| Distribution | Histogram, Box Plot, Heatmap |
| Relationship | Scatter, Bubble, Radar |
| Geo | Map — world countries and US states, chosen automatically from your data |
| Indicators | KPI, Gauge |
| Data | Table, Pivot Table |
Content cards, shapes, filter cards, and blocks have pages too — see the full visual-type index.
Drag fields from the Fields tab into the chart’s field wells; measures from your model (including SquareX measures) drop in like any field.
Quick calculations
Section titled “Quick calculations”Every measure in a field well has a quick calc dropdown — per-chart calculations computed on the result, no measure required: running total, year-to-date, YoY %, Δ vs previous, % vs previous, moving average (with a window size), % of total, and rank. The chart’s legend and tooltips label the result (e.g. “Revenue (YTD)”). For reusable, model-wide versions of these, define a SquareX measure instead.
Format options
Section titled “Format options”The Format tab is searchable and shows only the sections relevant to the selected chart type:
| Section | Controls |
|---|---|
| Typography | font family and sizes, title/text colors |
| General | in-chart title & subtitle, header-style preset, background, border, shadow, padding, chromeless container; KPI extras (invert trend colors, sparkline) |
| Axis | X/Y labels, dual axis, label size/color/rotation, grid lines, linear/log scale, axis titles, Y min/max |
| Numbers | display units (auto K/M/B, thousands, millions, billions), decimals, prefix, suffix — applied consistently to ticks, labels, tooltips, and KPI values |
| Columns (tables) | totals row; per-column rename, align, hide |
| Series | line width/style, markers, smooth/stepped; bar width, corner radius, opacity |
| Top N | keep the top N categories and group the rest into “Others” (with a custom label) |
| Map (maps) | location level (Auto-detect, World — countries, US states), allow pan & zoom, show the color scale with an optional min/max range, show the unmatched-locations notice |
| Colors | six built-in palettes (Vivid, Pastel, Earth, Ocean, Mono, Corporate), per-series overrides, and per-category colors |
| Data Labels | show/hide, position (inside/outside/center), percentages on pie/donut, size, color, number format |
| Conditional Formatting | rules (greater/less/equals/between) driving background, text color, or bold |
| Analytics | reference lines (constant, average, median, min, max) and a trend line |
| Legend | show/hide, position, size, color |
| Tooltip | show/hide and trigger (axis or item) |
To copy one card’s formatting onto others, use the format painter.
Header presets & chromeless cards
Section titled “Header presets & chromeless cards”Card headers support five distinct style presets — Plain, Accent bar, Filled band, Underline, and Minimal — making it easy to unify the aesthetic across cards. For freeform canvas compositions, toggle chromeless cards under General to strip away the card background, padding, and border.
Per-category colors
Section titled “Per-category colors”Under Format → Colors → Category colors you get one color picker per
category — and the list is taken from the card’s own data, so it names the
values actually in the chart. Every picker has a Clear button, and
Reset category colors clears them all at once. Clearing one picker returns
that category to the palette. The hex box only accepts a full 6-digit hex
(#rrggbb); a shorthand like #f00 won’t commit.
The pickers show up on single-measure charts with a category axis and no Series / Color field — pie, donut, funnel, bar, and column. Multi-series charts keep the per-series pickers instead. They’re offered on model-backed cards (not SQL or saved-query cards), and cover the first 30 categories.
Precedence: conditional-formatting rules override category colors, and category colors override the palette and per-series colors.
Small multiples (trellis)
Section titled “Small multiples (trellis)”On cartesian charts (bar, column, line, area, and their stacked variants), bind a field to the Small multiples well and the chart splits into one mini-panel per value — the classic trellis view for comparing a metric across categories. Set the column count under Format → Axis (leave blank for automatic).
Richer tooltips
Section titled “Richer tooltips”Add fields to the Tooltip well to enrich the hover tooltip with values that aren’t otherwise on the chart. The Map has a Tooltip well too — the extra fields appear under the region name.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Canvas basics
- Filters & interactivity
- Themes — palettes and chart detail tokens come from the theme.