What is a Heatmap Report?

The Heatmap report provides an ideal way to quickly compare activity between learners. Like the Leaderboard report, each Heatmap report shows text-based data, but also presents a visual representation of your learners’ activities by using varying intensities of color. Darker and lighter backgrounds on cells are used to visually highlight outlier values. For instance, if you are looking at test scores for a group of learners, you can easily identify higher performers because their corresponding colors would be darker.

Creating and Editing a Heatmap Report

Use the report builder to create new Heatmap reports and to configure existing Heatmap reports.

Heatmap Report Filters and Options

Beyond the typical report builder filters and options, the Heatmap report provides options that are unique to the Heatmap report.

Heatmap Filter

When setting up a new Heatmap report or configuring an existing Heatmap report, click Heatmap in the filter menu:

In the Heatmap filter, you’ll choose what you’d like to rank (using the Organized menu), how you’d like to rank it (using the Measures menu), whether you want to show data values in addition to the heatmap colors (using the Value Labels menu), and how to scale the heatmap colors (with Scale Colors).

Organized

On the Organized menu, you’ll choose what you’d like to rank on the Heatmap. Choose an option from the Organized menu and the rows on the Heatmap will be what you’ve chosen.

For example, if you choose By Person in the Organized menu, your Heatmap will be organized by people (each row will be a person): 

Measures

On the Measures menu, you’ll choose which measures you’d like to rank what you chose in the Organized menu. You can choose multiple measures for the same Heatmap report, and each measure you choose is given a column in the Heatmap report.

For example, if you choose By Person in the Organized menu, each of the measures you choose in the Measures menu will be represented as columns on the Heatmap, and each block of the Heatmap would show how people performed on the measures you selected. In the below example, the measures chosen are Average Score and Total Time:

To add a measure to the Heatmap, choose a measure from the Select a Measure menu and click the Add Measure button next to the menu. You’ll see the measure added to the Heatmap, and the measure will be added to the Measures section. To deselect a measure, click the X next to the Measure in the Measures section:

As a note, the first 10 measures will appear on the report preview when looking at a heatmap report in a dashboard. When clicking on the report to view in more detail, you can scroll horizontally to see additional measures past the 10th.

Value Labels

In Value Labels menu, you'll choose whether you want the actual numbers to appear on your Heatmap or if you want to let your users decide whether to see the actual numbers.

Scale Colors

In the Scale Colors menu, you'll choose whether you want the colors of your heatmap to scale across all of the measures of the heatmap or whether you want the colors to scale within each measure.

Default Sort

The default sort menu determines the order rows will be sorted by default. Sorting Ascending means that lower numbers or letters near the start of the alphabet will be listed first. Sorting Descending means that higher numbers or letters nearer the end of the alphabet will be listed first.

Advanced Configuration

Whether or not values are shown can be configured in Advanced Configuration. Along with this, you can choose to exclude measures from being shaded.

If show values is null, the report viewer will be able to select whether or not to show values in the UI, without having to use the report builder.

Heatmap Custom Chart Colors

If you use custom chart colors, these will be used to determine the colors used for the background of cells in the heatmap.

• The first color is the color used for null values, for example on a heatmap showing quiz scores, if a person has no score for the quiz. The default color for this is grey.
• The second color is the color used for the very lowest value in the range of values present in the data (often 0). The default color for this is white.
• The third color is used for the lower end of the gradient. The default color for this is very light grey.
• The fourth color is used for the upper end of the gradient and for the very highest value in the range of values present in the data. The default color for this is a dark blue.

"colors": [
  "#e5e5e5",
  "#ffffff",
  "#f5f5f5",
  "#006691"
]

Advanced Color Options

If the above standard color options are not granular enough for your reporting purposes, the advancedColors property can be used to further control the Heatmap coloring. There are two ways that the advancedColors property can work: as a color gradient or a discrete color band---both covered in more detail below.  

Color Gradient

To set a color gradient within a range, a color stop should be used. A 'color-stop' is a number in the range [0, 1], with an rgb color.

The color-stop syntax in its simplest form:

color-stop at <i> color <c>

where i is the position of the stop on the number line (between 0 and 1, inclusive), and c is the color of the stop

A slightly more advanced form is shown here that can be used to set the color before/after a certain value:

color-stop before <i> color <c> tolerance <t>;
color-stop after <i> color <c> tolerance <t>

where i and c are the position and color of the stop, respectively, and t is a number that represents the degree to which the stop is nudged above or below i

As shown above, tolerance is optional, if you leave it out, the interpreter will add the default tolerance, 10000

To add multiple expressions within the advancedColors, the expressions will be delimited by semicolons. 

Color Gradient Example

The following is an example of the full color-stop syntax in practice:

"advancedColors": [
   "color-stop before 0.0 color #ffffff tolerance 100000; color-stop at 0.0 color #000000; color-stop at 0.25 color #0000ff; color-stop at 0.5 color #0700ff; color-stop at 0.75 color #7f00ff; color-stop at 1.0 color #ff00ff;"
] 

The above expression will display the following:

Discrete Color Bands

To set a discrete color band (e.g. every score between 80%-100% should be the same shade of green), a color-block property is introduced. 

The color-block syntax is as follows:

color-block <lower-bound> <m> <upper-bound> <n> color <c> tolerance <t>

where:

lower-bound is one of: gt, gte ('greater than' and 'greater than or equal to', respectively)

m is the lower-bound value between 0 and 1, inclusive

upper-bound is one of: lt, lte ('less than' and 'less than or equal to', respectively)

n is the upper-bound value between 0 and 1, inclusive

c and t are the same as described above and are the color and tolerance

Discrete Color Blocks Example

The following is an example of the full color-block syntax in practice:

"advancedColors": [
   "color-block lt 0 color #e5e5e5 tolerance 100000; color-block gte 0 lte 0.4 color #ff007f tolerance 100000; color-block gt 0.4 lt 0.7 color #00ff7f; color-block gt 0.7 color #007fff;"
]

The above expression will display the following: