Ordering Data using Show Top/Bottom feature

You can do more in the Visual Report Builder than create analyses that trend over time. For example, you can build a report to show how valuable your acquisition and marketing channels are, but you can also build a report that shows only the top five performers. Similarly, you can refocus your marketing efforts by creating a report that shows you which states generate the most revenue.

This kind of sorting and ordering of data can be done in reports that use both a Group By and a Time Interval of None. When both of these elements are in a report, the Show Top/Bottom feature displays above the chart preview. This feature allows you to see the top (highest to lowest) and bottom (lowest to highest) data points based on the parameters you set.

How do I use this? how

Click the Show Top/Bottom link to set the display and sorting parameters. The number in the textbox can either be a whole number (like 5) or ALL. Next, you can choose to sort the report either by the metric OR by the grouping.

For example, if you wanted to display the five referral sources that brought in the most revenue, this is how you do it:

What about using multiple metrics? multiplemetrics

Using this feature gets complicated when tHere is more than one metric in a report because each metric can only be sorted by itself or by one of the groupings.

Say you built a report with both the Revenue and Number of orders metrics, grouped by referral source. Revenue can only be sorted by Revenue or referral source and Number of orders can only be sorted by Number of orders or referral source.

This means that while you can show the Revenue from only the top 5 revenue-generating referral sources, you cannot show the number of orders also by the top 5 revenue-generating referral sources. Simply put: when there are multiple metrics, the best bet is to sort each metric by the grouping.

Below is an example of a chart that sorted the Revenue metric by itself instead of by the grouping. As you can see, not sorting the metric by the grouping created a strange (and ultimately unhelpful) report:

If you had sorted both metrics by the grouping, the chart would look like this:

How are values sorted by default? defaultsorting

When only one metric is included in a report with a Group by and a Time Interval of None, the default ordering in the Visual Report Builder is to show the top values based on the metric. In this instance, the Show Top/Bottom feature may not be necessary if this serves your needs.

This example looks at how many opportunities that your sales reps have closed. This table is automatically sorted from highest to lowest based on the metric, in this case Won Opportunities.

However, when a second metric is added, the default is to order the top based on the grouping. As metrics and groupings are added, the default sorting is based on the first grouping, then the second grouping, and so on.

Wrapping up wrapup

While some basic features are covered here, this feature has many interesting uses.

Think about the previous sales rep and opportunities example. Removing the Time Interval, applying a Group By, and sorting the data based on the grouping allowed us to get a detailed picture of each rep’s number of won opportunities. Also, using the Show Top/Bottom feature let us discover who the top performers are.