Vizlib Bar Chart: How to use a Bar Chart to visualise data in Qlik Sense

Bar Chart Extension for Qlik Sense: What is a Bar Chart?

A Bar chart is a graph displaying data using a number of bars with equal width. It’s also known as a Column chart. Each bar displays a particular category. And the length of the bar represents the category size.

A Bar chart is a common graph type because it’s simple to create and easy to interpret. It’s a popular visualisation tool for analysing categories of data, like cities or product types. You can use it to compare the values between different categories in one view. The design of the graph highlights the performance level of each category, ensuring the highest and lowest performing categories are easily recognisable.

Bar charts can be displayed vertically or horizontally. And sometimes the bars are stacked on top of each other, like with a stacked Bar chart. This variant is useful for viewing the contribution of the different sub-groups to a total amount and comparing their performance.

But the show’s not over yet for this practical chart! You can also combine it with other extensions to create more substantial visualisations and dashboards, like you may have noticed with the Vizlib Combo chart.

How are business leaders using Bar charts across industries?

In the Healthcare industry, Bar charts display metrics like the heart rate of a patient per day, analyse the highest adult diabetes prevalence around different states or compare the average waiting time of the patients in different health centres.

Within the Finance world, they’re useful for comparing budget vs. actual expenses for the quarter, revenue for each month, the profits of different divisions over time or actual performance against an average benchmark.

Leaders heading up Retail companies find Bar charts useful for measuring target vs. actual sales for multiple quarters, comparing product sales across categories for multiple divisions or showing sales performance for different geographies.

Manufacturing companies utilise them to analyse productivity levels over different periods.

Bar charts help technology companies compare traffic trends, the number of active users or the performance of different business units.

Energy and Utility companies analyse how much was spent on gas and electricity for different periods of the year with the help of Bar charts.

In the Communication sector, companies use the Bar chart to establish their main traffic sources for the year.

Public sector organisations review the data from various entities with Bar charts, as well as demonstrate the developmental and financial impacts for different units.

The Life Sciences industry may measure metrics like deaths vs. births over a decade period or compare a population by income with a Bar chart.

And, in the Consumer Products industry, Bar charts help executives to compare income vs. expenditure for different stores in a city or identify which products performed best in which region.

What is the Vizlib Bar Chart for Qlik Sense?

Vizlib Bar Chart is a user-friendly and highly customisable extension for Qlik Sense. Your data visualisation skills will benefit from features such as:

Support of two dimensions with one metric, or one dimension with multiple metrics to display data for the best visual learning experience.
Full formatting control to create the exact visualisation for your business needs.
Dynamic interactivity to control graph access levels and maintain your data security.

How to master the Vizlib Bar Chart features

Here are a few tips for creating a highly-customised visualisation with the Vizlib Bar Chart:

- Choose between grouped, stacked or overlapping bars to better compare and visualise quantitative data across a set of dimensions.

- Use connected bars for stacked representation to visualise the flow of data and easily show related data points.

- Use reference lines to indicate the particular value of data you want to compare or measure against the data values displayed in the graph. It is possible to set for both x- and y-axis. This provides an easy visual guide for your audience and steers them towards the right insights quicker.

- Enable grid lines to add precision in large graphs, to enhance the visual learning process and ensure your audience spot the patterns and trends in the data.

- Add contrast to your visualisation by specifying the colour for the measures, overriding any global colour settings. You can also specify the bar opacity to make the chart more transparent. This will highlight the key elements of your visualisation and make the message impactful.

- Dynamically add dimensions or metrics and decide whether to use them directly as second metrics or add them as alternative dimensions. You’ll be able to save space on the dashboard and reduce the likelihood of overwhelming the audience with too much data.

- If you have several bars in your chart, the scroll preview lets you preview the full set of available bars using a scrolling mini chart. You can pre-define the scroll range. It’s user-friendly and provides the navigation ease you need to analyse your data sets.

Viztips: The power of visual analytics on hover

Viztips is a next-level capability for Vizlib Library that enables you to insert customised, dynamic charts in your tooltips. Include Viztips with Vizlib Bar Chart to add additional insights without adding clutter to your chart. Your end-users can get granular level data on hover, without being overwhelmed by too much data. Since Viztips consist of two components; your main Vizlib chart and a Vizlib KPI Designer Layer, you can include up to 10 layers in your Viztip design!