Trellis Charts

Don’t make a chart like this! I dare you to try to make sense of it. You can’t. I’m not even going to try to list its faults. But its biggest fault is that it makes me angry. You wouldn’t like when I’m angry.

We can fix it.


A Trellis Chart is a layout of smaller charts in a grid with consistent scales. Each smaller chart represents an item in a dimension. That’s a fancy way of saying that Qlikview will create a series of small charts, one for each (in this case) segment. Instead of looking at the mess above, the user can simply scroll through the segments and easily pick out patterns'

It’s also pretty easy to do. Go to the Dimensions tab in your Chart Properties. Click on the ‘Trellis’ button.

A new dialog box will pop up. Check ‘Enable Trellis Chart’ and decide how many columns and rows you would like to display.

Click OK a few times and you’re almost done. Go back into your Chart Properties and fix the formatting so it looks nice and clean. BAM! Now you have a useful chart!

But we can never leave well enough alone. It's time to get Tricky Dicky.

Let's assume that it's important for a district manager to easily pick out his territories. One way is to simply make him read the chart titles. But dashboards should be visible so let's get clever.

If you remember Commandment #3 (and I'm sure you do), you should use color to highlight important information. In this case, we are going to change the color of the lines in the mini-charts that belong to the manager.

Step One - Create a new variable

We've done this before, so it should be easy. Go to Settings > Document Properties and click on the Variables tab. Click New, name the variable (vSegment in this example), check Predefined Values Only, check Predefined Values in Drop-down, check Listed Values. In the expression box for Listed Values, enter your districts, separated by semi-colons. Click Apply and OK.

Step Two - Create an Input Box

Use your new variable in the Input Box. Start thinking about where you will put it for easy use.

Step Three - Chart Properties

Open your Chart Properties and go to the Expressions tab. Click on the '+' next to your expression and then click Background Color.

In the Definition expression box, use an expression similar to:

     If(Segment Like '*$(vSegment)*', Red())

The only new concept here is the '*$(vSegment)*'. This uses $-sign expansion to insert text from your variable into your 'like' statement.

So there you go. You've cleaned up your presentation and made it way more usable. You've avoided Chaos. And as the original Tricky Dicky said:

"Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist."