Change Bar Widths of Horizontal Bar Chart

Ant T

Is there a way to increase the width of the bars of a horizontal bar chart? Even at 100+% width settings they're still really thin, causing the text labels to overlap, and I need all the labels so I can't simply hid the overlapped ones. There's so much wasted white space it's ridiculous to have the bars be this thin and 70% of the chart be empty space. See attachment for example.

 

Thank you!

ST_Superman

That does look odd.  Do you have a lot of series with null values?  My guess is that you do, and so the chart is saving space for those series.  I would try filtering out those null values and see if that fixes your issue.

Ant T

Unfortunately there are no null values in my series. My horizontal bar charts have always looked like this for many visualizations across various data sets and filters. Even if I reduce filters to allow more series values, the bars will only become thinner and more cramped while the white space between them remains the same. 

ST_Superman

would you mind sharing a screen shot of your analyzer?

 

It looks like you have either a user or location id as your y axis, the % of print jobs as your value and then the name of the printer as a series.  

 

In this case, for location 201805, it is saving a spot for every printer name that exists whether that user or location has used the printer or not.  That is the reason for the white space.  have you considered a stacked 100% chart?  Or even just a stacked bar chart?  I think the grouped bar chart is the cause for the white space.

Ant T

The y-axis is a date field (yearMonth) and all the products for that yearmonth are shown, so there wouldn't be other products in that yearmonth to save a space for, unless you're saying it's holding a spot for EVERY existing product across any timeframe. This might be possible, but there are hundreds of products and I'm I don think this is reflected in the white space. It's an interested theory though and could be contributing to the issue somehow. I may switch back to a stacked bar later if I can't find a solution for this. The data isn't represented as a comparison of monthly totals, so a stacked bar isn't the best visualization. 

ST_Superman

What happens if you filter the card for a single yearMonth?  Does the white space go away?

Ant T

It does go away. In the screenshot the y-axis date is beneathe the set of bars but when viewing only one month the date is centered within the set of bars, leaving no white space below.

Ant T

I see the pattern you're saying now. As I add more months, which in turn adds more products, the white space below the last bar of any particular month grows. I always just thought the bars were only getting thinner but the white space actually grows as well. If I use the y axis label as a reference point for the "middle" of that month's set of bars, I can see that there is more and more white space above the "middle", meaning the overall range of bars for that month is being filled with more white spaces/"invisible" bars. It seems like a flaw in DOMO's visualization to handle a series this way, although I understand the logic behind it. A stacked bar doesn't represent the data the way I need so I may have to accept the white spaces for now unless there's a way to remove it.

ST_Superman

You could create a beastmode that would bucket these products into larger groups.

You could always then allow the user to drill down to a view that provides the actual product name.

 

something like

 

case when `Product_Name` like '%PageWide%' then 'PageWide'

when `Product_Name` like 'LaserJet%' then 'LaserJet'

when `Product_Name` like '%HP%' then 'HP'

else 'Other'

end

 

Using this field as your series would give each month a max of 4 bars: PageWide, LaserJet, HP, and Other

Ant T

That's a good idea and may be applicable to a few other cards I have. For this specific chart however, we need to display all individual product names for our clients and show them all three months of a particular quarter. If I were still using screenshots for presentations, I could view them one month at a time and take 3 screenshots, but now I'm using the DOMO PowerPoint plugin to directly export cards to specific slides on a presentation, so the final desired visualization has to be accomplished at the card level prior to export.