Visual BI Extensions - Using Error Bars in SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

[IngoH]

Error Bars as part of a chart are a way to indicate the error level or - in a more positive way - they are used to express the confidence level in the actual data and are often used in scenarios where the user is looking at a larger set of measurement values.

In case you are interested in more details, take a look here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_bar

How can we use Error Bars as part of SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio ?

Relatively easy with the latest version of our Visual BI Extension Charts. Lets start with a simple data set, where we have 20 measurement values in a Google Sheet.

I am using our Excel data connector which also allows to use Google Sheets and assign the data source to a column chart. In the Additional Properties of the chart I can then configure the details for the Error Bar options. I can choose from a Fixed Value, Percentage, Standard Deviation, or the option Custom - which we will look at a little bit later.

For the simple scenario I am just adding a 5% Error Bar to my measurements and my chart is going to look like shown below.

For the second example I am using another Google Sheet with two sets of measurement values and the upper and lower limit for the error values already being part of the dataset.

In this example we can use the Custom option for the Error Bar, which then allows us to select the measure for which we would like to activate the Error Bar and which measures in the data source represent the upper and lower limits.

Using the data from the second example, my chart will look like shown below with the Error Bar option activated for the second set of measurements

100 Things you can do with Visual BI Extensions and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio