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Storyboard

A Storyboard is a sequence of visualisations that together tell a story. Currently Cubes, Charts, Venn diagrams and Data Grids are supported in this feature (with some restrictions – see note below). Visualisations, which are displayed as thumbnail previews, can be collected and organised into a Storyboard using a new tab on the ribbon bar.

Whilst you can create as many visualisations of these types as you require for your Storyboard, for the sake of simplicity in the following example, 4 pre-created visualisations have been used called Cube, Chart, Venn and Data Grid.

  • Create and Save an example of a Cube, Chart, Venn and Data Grid.

  • Click on the Storyboard tab and drag each of the visualisations onto the bar.

Each visualisation is represented as a thumbnail preview which can, as necessary, be dragged back onto the workspace for editing before being dragged back onto the ribbon bar.

  • Reorder the thumbnails by clicking and dragging them to a new position within the ribbon display.

It is possible to make amendments to the display of each visualisation in its frame.

  • Click on the Preview icon.

In the top left of this window you can give the Storyboard a title.

Settings

Settings can be viewed and altered on the right hand side of the window. Click on each individual visualisation frame to alter its settings.

  • Title – as shown on the page, can be amended here.
  • Show notes – add notes and determine if they are to be displayed on the page.
  • Show selection – show underlying selection on the page (if available)
  • X axis title - relabel the default description for the x axis
  • Y axis title - relabel the default description for the y axis
  • Legend position – select position of legend if required (Charts only)

When changes have been made the following message is displayed at the bottom of the panel:

To ensure that all settings have been applied, click on the Apply changes button:

The effects of these changes can be viewed on the image on the left hand side of the window:

To save the Storyboard:

  • Click on the Save icon.

This has the same effect as the Save icon on the main Storyboard ribbon bar.

  • Click the Return icon to return to the Storyboard ribbon bar.

Now that you have saved your Storyboard, you may wish to work on a new project and therefore clear down any existing activity from the Storyboard ribbon.

  • Click the Clear icon to clear existing work and start afresh.

When you have finished your projects you may wish to share your original Storyboard with some of your colleagues.

  • Click the Open icon and navigate to where you saved your Storyboard.

Once your Storyboard has been loaded it can be output as a PDF or Microsoft Word file, saved and then sent on.

  • Click the Export to PDF icon to create and save your PDF file in your preferred location.
  • Click the Export to Word icon to transfer your Storyboard to Microsoft Word.

Visualisation restrictions

Cubes

  1. Any Cube that's too big to fit on an A4 page will be clipped in the Word or PDF output. The maximum approximate dimensions for a cube to fit on an A4 page is 10 to 15 columns and up to 50 one line rows.
  2. Cube Thematic shading isn't supported in the output. This is a known restriction of the conversion process.

Charts

  1. Treemaps with Horizontal and Vertical layouts will be accepted but rendered in the Storyboard with the Slice & Dice equivalent
  2. Treemaps using Slice & Dice Vertical / Horizontal can squash or clip labels.