With the report planning phase completed, an essential task of the report author is to choose the visual(s) best suited to gain insight into the particular questions within the scope of the report. The choice of the visualization type, such as a column chart or a matrix visual, should closely align with the most important use case, the message to deliver, and the data relationship to represent.
Visualization types have distinct advantages in terms of visual perception and types of data relationships such as part-to-whole and comparisons. Additionally, although several formatting options are common to all visuals, certain options such as the line style (solid, dashed, dotted) of a line chart are exclusive to specific visuals.
A standard visual selection process is as as follows:
- Plan and document the business question(s) and related measures and dimension columns.
- Determine whether a table, a chart, or both will be needed to best visualize this data.
- If a chart is needed, choose the chart visual that's best aligned with the relationship (for example, trend, comparison, correlation).
Following these three steps helps to ensure that effective reports are developed with efficient resources. Many other visualization and analysis features can be used to further enhance reports but these should only supplement report planning and design.