Utilize Template Reports as a starting point to customize your reports and visualizations. Whether you want to change the metrics, the type of visualization, or simply update the color scheme and fonts, making reports your own is easy to do.

Create a Report from a Template

Select the Template Report that most closely matches the type of report you wish to create. Examples of Template Reports include Day of Week Report, Market Report, and Room Type Report.

Select Copy Template, enter a new name for the report, then select Copy. 

Create a New Report from Scratch

Select +New Report.

Enter a new name for the report, then select Create.

Whether you copied a template or created a report from scratch, the report you just created will appear on your canvas and be listed under User Reports. 

Edit a Report

Click Edit above the report canvas to access the report editor. Click here to get to know the report editor.

Add text boxes, shapes, buttons and visual interactions to your report pages from the horizontal toolbar above your canvas.

Edit a Visualization

You can change the color of data series, data points, and even the background of visualizations. You can change how the x-axis and y-axis are presented. You can even format the font properties of visualizations, shapes, and titles. Compose provides you with full control over how your reports appear. Always begin by selecting the visualization you want to update. 

Use the Visualizations pane to add, change, or customize visualizations, and apply drill through. To change the type of visualization, you can select it on the canvas, then select a new type from the top of the Visualizations pane.

Within the bottom of the Visualizations pane are three tabs, each with its own icon: the Fields tab has a blank report icon, the Format tab has a paint roller icon, and the Analytics tab has a magnifying glass icon. The icon that is selected has a yellow bar below it.

Format Tab

When you select the Format icon in the Visualizations pane, the area below the icon displays the customizations available for the currently selected visualization. You can customize many elements of each visualization. The options available depend on the type of visual selected. Some of those options are: Legend, X-axis, Y-axis, Data colors, Data labels, Total labels, Shapes, Plot area, Title, Background, Lock aspect, Border, Tooltips, Visual headers, Shapes, Position, and more.

Learn more about aligning your report to your branding. 

Fields Pane

The Fields pane shows the available fields in your queries. You can drag these fields onto the canvas, the Filters pane, or the Visualizations pane to create or modify visualizations.

To add data to a visualization, first select the visualization. In this example, we'll select the visual below that shows Room Revenue by Major Market Name.

Next, drag a new data point from the Fields pane to the Visualizations pane > Fields tab > Values area. In our example, we'll drag the Food Revenue field over and add it under the Room Revenue field that was already there. 

The visualization automatically updated to show both Room Revenue and Food Revenue as seen below.

Select the down arrow for data fields added to the Values area for additional options such as Remove field, Rename for this visual, Move to, and Show value as.

To resize a visual, drag the corners of the cell. Drag items on the canvas to rearrange them.

Select View from the left side of the horizontal toolbar for different options such as Snap to grid to keep items on the canvas aligned or Lock objects to prevent items from moving from where you placed them.

Add a New Visualization

To create a simple visualization, first ensure that you don’t have a visualization selected. Then select a data point from the Fields pane and drag it onto the canvas.

Add a New Page

Select the Plus Sign icon at the bottom of the screen to add a new page to a report. You can show different visualizations on different report pages. To add a new page, select the + symbol next to the existing pages on the pages bar. Drag the desired Fields into the new page. To go to a different page of the report, select the page from the pages bar.

Save a Report

After making any changes, select Save on the horizontal toolbar to save your report.

To exit the Edit mode, select the Save button.

Copy and paste between reports

You can easily take a visual from one Compose report and paste it into another report. Simply use the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut to copy your report visual while in Edit mode. In the other Compose report, while in Edit mode, use Ctrl+V to paste the visual. You can select one visual at a time, or all visuals on a page to copy, then paste into the destination report.

The ability to copy and paste visuals is useful for people who build and updates multiple reports frequently. When copying between files, settings and formatting that have been explicitly set in the formatting pane will carry forward, while visual elements relying on a theme or the default settings automatically update to match the theme of the destination report. So when you get a visual formatted and looking just the way you want, you can copy and paste that visual into new reports and preserve all that good formatting work.

If the fields in your model are different, you'll see an error on the visual and a warning about which fields don't exist. The error is similar to the experience you see when you delete a field in the model that a visual is using.

To correct the error, just replace the broken fields with the fields you want to use from the model in the report to which you pasted the visual. 

How to Undo 

Compose provides an easy way to undo your last command. For example, let’s say you change the color of a data point, or a series of data points, and you don’t like the color when it appears in the visualization. You don’t recall exactly which color it was before, but you know you want that color back!

To undo your last action, or the last few actions, all you have to do is type CTRL+Z.

To discard all the changes you made on a Formatting card, select Revert to default.

Learn more about formatting visualizations here.