This guide walks you through the various options available when customizing widgets powered by Datasets.

If you need to get your data into Geckoboard as a dataset, see our Datasets API docs.

The visualization picker allows you to choose between plotting your data as:

The options available depends on how you've configured your widget. See our guide to choosing the right visualization for your data.

The widget config panel is broken into several sections unique for each visualization type. All types include Metric, Time and Formatting.

The metric picker allows you to select any of the metrics available from your dataset.

A useful field option here is Record count. Using our example Space Cargo dataset you could plot the number of orders by day and then split that by category or destination.

Linked to the metric field, Aggregate calculates a roll-up value from related records. The options are:

Latest: Shows the latest values by defined date or datetime types.

Sum: Adds all records up and shows the total.

Min: Shows the minimum value.

Max: Shows the maximum value.

Average: Shows average of all values for that record.

To understand why your data is populated in the way it is when you viewing your field options, you can preview your dataset from the dataset options menu in the navigation bar. The preview displays the dataset as a spreadsheet with 30 records.

On the Line, Column and Bar charts visualizations the X-axis displays the Time value. It accepts both Date and Datetime types to display Time, or a String to display the name of the field. You can choose to group (bucket) by Day, Week, Month, or Year.

The time picker allows you to select timeframe for your data. You can also create a Custom period from the bottom of the select menu.

Filters allow you to dial in to the exact value you care about. Filter options available include:

The option to add a comparison visualization (Sparkline, Percentage, Number and Goal) becomes available when the aggregation is set to Latest. Note that the Field has to be set to the data you push, rather than Record count, as that's an already aggregated field.

On the Number, Line, Column and Bar charts visualizations it's possible to show your progress towards a chosen target by setting a goal. In the example below, you can see the data points inside the goal shaded area.

Setting a Starting from value on Number visualizations also enables you to set more meaningful goals.

Adding success and/or negative values to Number and Gauge visualizations allows you to draw attention to changes as they happen. Status indicators will overwrite any goals you set on this widget.

Change your Line chart's Y-Axis minimum and maximum values.

The Formatting menu allows you to overrule the automatically set number of decimal places used, or add additional information about the values on your widget. For more information, see our guide to using the data formatting options.