Manually Change Report Colors

Related products: CS Reports & Dashboards

Currently the colors that are in reports are automated, but it would be nice to be able to change the color of reports to be more customized. 
Hi Kaycee,





Thanks for your feedback. This requirement is in our roadmap. Actual timing is TBD.





Thanks,


Sumesh
Sumesh can this issue be fast-tracked?  It continues to be frustrating when I try to create reports that end up using duplicate colors or in some cases, like the attached, the colors are so similar it almost defeats the purpose of the categories.  It looks really badly to our executives when they ask for reports and this is the best we can do.



+1, we've run into this a few times. Green shows red and yellow shows green. It is quite confusing to the teams.
Jeff,





Yes. We understand the pain point here and have fast tracked the enhancement internally. This enhancement will be implemented in the next 1-2 months. I will get back with the accurate timing by next week.





Thanks!
Hi Sumesh. Any update?
Hi everyone, we are currently building out this capability. I'd love your feedback on a few items since manually changing report colors supports multiple use cases and we want to prioritize accordingly





1) In Lane's use case where she wants a particular value (e.g. habits = green), have a color 'green', would it be acceptable to have this to do this for every report this was used it. Ideally, we would do this globally, and we do so with standard objects but in her case she (I believe) is using a custom column so can't set the color globally today (and that will take a bit longer to build compared to manually setting color for each column)





2) In Jeff's use case, how important is it that 'Onboarding kick-off' shows up in a particular color vs. just saying 1st series of bars = yellow, 2nd series of bars = green. If we do the latter, if for some reason the report changes where 'onboarding kick-off' goes from 1st series of bars to 2nd series, the color will change. 





3) More broadly do you prefer to control the color of every report individually or apply color settings at a dashboard or more global level. 





Thanks!
Hi Gaurav,





Thank you for the update. While it would be great to be able to change the colors as we feel, for the particular use case above, we have found a hack around it and use the HEX number to populate the color. But it would be great to know that #FFFFFF is white and not something else. 
1st series of bars = yellow, 2nd series of bars = green is fine.  If understand what you're asking.





Basically, I just need to be able to color code the report so that it makes sense. Each value should be a separate and distinct color on a report.





I would prefer to control the report individually.





@Lane - can you elaborate on how you are implementing your hack?  





Thanks
Thanks everyone. I am going to setup a 30-minute meeting for tomorrow, and invite you. Would be great if you can attend so I can solicit feedback on this live. Thx
Gaurav - not a good week for me.  Mid-late next week would be better.
@Jeff, Sure!





We have a report that shows number of accounts by plan and by their score color. Example: Score of 0-50 = red





The report pulls from "Customers" subject area. The "Current Score Name" is the Hex code for each color. Example: #c53536 = red





You do have to set the expectation that on a report that has a hex code, the color is actually the color. 



Here's how we've worked around in GonG. This is not a catch-all solution for editing colors in Report Builder. This just lets you edit colors for Custom Fields that summarize scorecard values across your customer base.





Go to 


Administration > Scorecard > Step 2: Grading Scheme





This is the global configuration for the instance's Scorecard. Any changes made here will impact the LabelRange, and Color for all scorecards in the Gainsight instance. So it's an area to be careful :)





By setting the Label for our light green measure to "Lime," the Report Builder knows to use Color selected for any situation where a string field value = "Lime". 


https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=99b3d2c5b2&view=fimg&th=1527fa589e5f598e&attid=0.2&disp=emb&realattid=ii_1527f994a99399bb&attbid=ANGjdJ_2RYdPTLPtEW8I-_LEmTblbrH6RvTas3QgZ3zPvVb8ZNHfpDqq5UDD8LXmrYy6ERpjqCkmKKVf-Ochp3Anglt5az6WtYAGpQpmC3mmcDV6qJVOjxuBV0UaenQ&sz=w958-h576&ats=1459362514494&rm=1527fa589e5f598e&zw&atsh=1





So for our Habits Scorecard, where we group by "Habits Score Group" (a custom text field loaded by Rules), the report builder will use each of the colors above for the Green, Lime, Yellow, Orange and Red values.





https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=99b3d2c5b2&view=fimg&th=1527fa589e5f598e&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_1527fa0e7110d594&attbid=ANGjdJ-C3aweVeDWaj2TjBgHNTGC8456mxJEs_T2JbqEf1z34QRKFH-hsUX5RvYzs54OKjEJaIq73WRLv98AqfWHMs101rj6rc48tFl6PMVh9SqkZnkwBejx76XpSZY&sz=w958-h438&ats=1459362514494&rm=1527fa589e5f598e&zw&atsh=1
Hey Will, It looks like your images didn't populate. Can you try to add them again?
Hi Lane,





Try #2! Please LMK if this doesn't work and I can email them to you directly :)





Here's how we've worked around in GonG. This is not a catch-all solution for editing colors in Report Builder. This just lets you edit colors for Custom Fields that summarize scorecard values across your customer base.





Go to 


Administration > Scorecard > Step 2: Grading Scheme





This is the global configuration for the instance's Scorecard. Any changes made here will impact the Label, Range, and Color for all scorecards in the Gainsight instance. So it's an area to be careful :)





By setting the Label for our light green measure to "Lime," the Report Builder knows to use Color selected for any situation where a string field value = "Lime". 


https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=99b3d2c5b2&view=fimg&th=1527fa589e5f598e&attid=0.2&disp=emb&realattid=ii_1527f994a99399bb&attbid=ANGjdJ_2RYdPTLPtEW8I-_LEmTblbrH6RvTas3QgZ3zPvVb8ZNHfpDqq5UDD8LXmrYy6ERpjqCkmKKVf-Ochp3Anglt5az6WtYAGpQpmC3mmcDV6qJVOjxuBV0UaenQ&sz=w958-h576&ats=1459362514494&rm=1527fa589e5f598e&zw&atsh=1





So for our Habits Scorecard, where we group by "Habits Score Group" (a custom text field loaded by Rules), the report builder will use each of the colors above for the Green, Lime, Yellow, Orange and Red values.





https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=99b3d2c5b2&view=fimg&th=1527fa589e5f598e&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_1527fa0e7110d594&attbid=ANGjdJ-C3aweVeDWaj2TjBgHNTGC8456mxJEs_T2JbqEf1z34QRKFH-hsUX5RvYzs54OKjEJaIq73WRLv98AqfWHMs101rj6rc48tFl6PMVh9SqkZnkwBejx76XpSZY&sz=w958-h438&ats=1459362514494&rm=1527fa589e5f598e&zw&atsh=1
Thank you all for the feedback on this thread and for those who were able to attend a call to discuss this topic in more details. Based on your feedback; we plan to address 2 use cases





For May/July release - we will let you apply a custom color palette globally, so all reports across dashboards, c360, success snapshot and PPT export use these colors instead of the default Gainsight one. In the future, happy to do this at a per dashboard or snapshot level if really required. See mockup. You can access this setting from report landing page. 








For July / Aug release - we will let you specify a color for specific value of any column in MDA / SFDC. There maybe some limitation on types of columns (e.g. doesn't make sense to apply comment to a free text field like comment, but most likely the logic will be only allow color setting for any fields where distinct value < 20). See a rough wireframe below. Hopefully this conveys what we plan to do. Essentially like report builder, you can select any SFDC or MDA object, then select fields. Once you select fields, it lists distinct values for those fields, and you can apply color to for any value. This will globally applied to every report and will override the default colors in Gainsight or via the palette above. While you can select any color, will show the palette colors as 'frequently used'. It's a bit similar to what we have today for a handful of standard salesforce objects but just a much more global solution. 











By the way, I think 2nd more important than 1st. We prioritizing this way since 1st is a lot less work and want to get something out sooner. 





Appreciate any feedback. 
Hi Gaurav, thanks for the update. It's great to know the customized color scheme is not the roadmap. Maybe I didn't read thoroughly of this thread. Just want to add that the automatedly generated label color is inconsistent across charts even the by filter is by and large is the same (e.g. try a pie, then a trending line, and then a stacked bar chart, somehow the chart type select will change the label color on the same grouping field, making it really counterintuitive to digest). Will your 2nd suggestion (targeting for July/Aug release) resolve this pain point? Thanks. 
Similar to the inconsistencies in Annie's comment, true/false values do not always return the same color. On a dashboard of Features Licensed for example, one feature report shows True=Green and False=Yellow, and on another feature report, True=Yellow and False=Green. These random changes are visually confusing. Will this be addressed in the first release at all? It appears it will be in the second.
They will be addressed directly in 2nd release not in 1st release (planned in June). That having said more control over pallette in 1st release should provide some control in addressing. I am going to write up a doc after Pulse to elaborate how colors work today, tomorrow and day after
and so i don't forget here is a placeholder link that will be updated 🙂 - https://support.gainsight.com/hc/en-us/articles/218007208-Color-Settings-in-Reports-How-it-Works
Gaurav, just curious if you were able to put together the document you spoke about and where we could find it?  We are also experiencing the inconsistency with which color is being selected to show for which metric.  Even from user to user, I see blue for a specific metric while a coworker sees red.  It would be nice just to know the logic being used to select the color from the palette.
Meliassa, link is here - https://support.gainsight.com/hc/en-us/articles/218007208-Color-Settings-in-Reports-How-it-Works. It's currently empty but will have content on July 7, when we push out capability to customize the data. but here are some snippets, of how color works today which should provide more insight. 





Gainsight reports support various visualization types such as pie, bubble, bar, and line charts. The colors in these graphs are based on a default palette of 20 colors.





This pallette works similar to the color palette in Microsoft Powerpoint. Here are some examples:









  • For bar charts, if plotting a single value, then all of the bars will display in the first color on the palette. For example TODO (will be in doc)







  • For bar charts or stacked bar charts, when plotting multiple values, you will see groups of multiple bars. The first bar in each group (based on sort order) will follow the first color in the palette, followed by other colors.







  • For pie charts, the first pie section (based on sort order) will show the first color, followed by other colors. If there are more than 20 pie sections, it will start from the first color again.







  • Since the colors depend on the order of values and not the value itself, reordering the values (or reordering the By fields) will change the color of a value or field in report.




This is helpful, thank you!
Hey Gaurav,





Does this affect heat maps at all?
Hi Alex. It does not affect heat maps. We decided not to do it for this given the type of visualization. What is your use case / expected functionality?
Gaurav, the customers want it to behave like this:


Higher the count, more heat;less count, moves towards green.