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Building Widgets (CX)


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About Building Widgets

Widgets dynamically present data in graphs, charts, and tables.

assorted charts and tables in a dashboard

There are over 20 widget types, broken out into several categories in the widget selection menu:

  • Chart: Insert plots and graphs.
  • Table: Show tables and grids.
  • Analysis: Identify relationships with key driver correlations.
  • Static Content: Add images and fixed text.
  • Other: Display open-ended text, region selections, and distribution data.

Clicking the add widget button at the bottom of the dashboard opens a menu of widget types to choose from

Learn More About Each Widget

To learn the details for each widget:

  1. Open the Widgets section on the Support Site menu to the left and choose a widget from the list.
    Navigating support pages using the menu and search bar
  2. Or, enter the name of any widget in the search bar.

Adding Widgets

To add widgets to any dashboard page:

  1. Click Edit Page.
    Selecting the edit page button
  2. Click Add Widget.
    Clicking the add widget button at the bottom of the dashboard opens a menu of widget types to choose from

    Qtip: In addition to adding widgets at the bottom of your dashboard, you can hover over the spot in your dashboard where you want to add a widget, click Add, and select Widget.
  3. Select a widget type.
Attention: You may have up to 100 widgets on a single page.

Editing Widgets

While every widget type is unique, a few basic editing features can be demonstrated with a simple chart.

To edit a widget:

  1. Hover over the 3 dots next to the widget you want to edit.
    3 dot menu on a widget
  2. Click Edit.
  3. The widget editing pane will appear to the left of the widget.
    Viewing the widget editing pane

Titles & Descriptions

To add titles and descriptions:

  1. Click the Title box to name a widget. If you don’t want a title, clear the entry box.
    Editing widget titles and descriptions
  2. Add a Description. This will appear when a viewer clicks on the information ( i ) icon.
  3. Click the checkbox to Show [the total] number of responses in the widget.

Once these options are set, dashboard viewers will be able to click on the widget title to see details about the widget.

viewing additional information about a widget. pane appears on the right of the widget

The sidebar shows the widget title, widget description, number of responses, and widget filters.

Qtip: If any of these fields were not configured in the widget options, they will not be displayed.

Widget Style

Widget styles can also be set in the dashboard theme. These settings effect whether the widget has a white background or displays its title.

To change an individual widget’s style:

  1. Click the Widget Container dropdown to edit the border around the widget. Your options include:
    • On: The widget will have a border around it. The widget will also have a white background, which can be useful to keep the widget readable if you’ve set a custom dashboard background color.
    • Off: The widget will not have a border around it, and its background color will match whatever is set for the dashboard.
    • Use dashboard default: The widget border will match what is set in the dashboard theme options.options within the widget styles section when editing a widget's display
  2. Select the Widget Header dropdown to edit the widget’s title appearance. Your options include:
    • Always show: Always display the widget’s title.
    • Show on hover: Display the title when a dashboard viewer hovers their mouse over the widget.
    • Never show: Do not display the widget’s title.
Qtip: Display options vary by widget. See specific widget support pages for more details on each display option.

Labels & Colors

Colors can be changed for various settings in the widget’s Display tab.

  1. Go to the Display tab.
    display tab of widget editor is open, and from the dropdown lists of settings, legends is expanded, showing a list of widget items and their associated colors
  2. Find the setting you want to change. Often, these can be found under Legends or Axes.
  3. Click the color next to any label.
    a color palette appears
  4. Choose a new color from the palette.

Filtering Widgets

You can add filters directly to specific widgets. For detailed steps, see Adding Widget Filters.

Dashboard viewers are able to view a widget’s filters by clicking on the widget title or filter icon.

a widget title

The sidebar shows viewers all filters that have been added to the widget. They can also click on individual filters and apply different values to the widget.

selecting different filter values in the sidebar of a widget

Grouping Widgets

Grouping widgets combines multiple widgets into a single unit. This allows you to apply widget display options to all widgets in the group.

Creating Widget Groups

To create a widget group:

  1. Click the edit button. This button will turn into the Done editing button.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Click Add group at the bottom of your dashboard page. You can also hover over the spot within your dashboard where you want to add a group, click Add, and select Group.
    a new widget group within a dashboard page
  3. Drag existing widgets from the page into the group.
    Qtip: You can adjust the size and position of your widgets within the group.
  4. To move the group, click the dot grid at the top and drag and drop it to your desired location on the page.

Editing Widget Groups

Once a widget group has been created, you have several options to modify the group. To edit a widget group:

  1. Hover over the 3 horizontal dots in the top-right corner of a widget group.
    additional options for widget groups
  2. Select Edit group.
  3. Select the desired Grouped widget behavior from the dropdown.
    • Combine widgets: Widgets will be displayed within the same container.
    • Keep widgets separate: Widgets will be separated in their own containers. Containers are the white space behind your widgets. This means if you choose a dashboard background color, that color fills in the background on your widget, not just the spaces between widgets.

    widget group customization options

  4. Select the desired Group container from the dropdown.
    • On: The widget group will be within a container.
    • Off: The widget group will not be within a container.
    • Use dashboard default: The container settings in your dashboard theme will apply.

To ungroup the widgets in the group, hover over the 3 horizontal dots and select Ungroup. The widgets will remain in the same position on the dashboard page, but will no longer be grouped.

To delete a widget group, hover over the 3 horizontal dots and select Remove group. This will also remove all widgets from the group.

Widget Metrics

Many dashboard widgets require you to pick a metric.

Number Chart with Metric settings open in the widget editing pane

The available metrics are:

  • Count: Display response counts from the selected fields (i.e., number of respondents who answered the question).
    Qtip: Line, horizontal bar, and vertical bar charts let you customize how counts are displayed in even more ways than other widgets allow. See Count Metric Options.
  • Average: Exhibit the average value for a selected field.
  • Minimum: Show the minimum value of a selected field.
  • Maximum: Present the maximum value for a selected field.
  • Sum: Pull in the sum of all values for a selected field.
  • Net Promoter Score: Identify the detractors, passives, and promoters from NPS questions.
  • Correlation: Select 2 fields to determine their correlation. The result will be given as a correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r), which is represented as a number from -1 to +1. The strongest possible negative correlation is -1, and the strongest possible positive correlation is +1.
  • Standard Deviation: Show the standard deviation of the responses in the field.
    Qtip: The standard deviation metric is compatible with number chart, gauge chart, pie chart, lines, bars, and table widgets.
  • Top Box / Bottom Box: Display the percentage of responses that fall into a specified range of values. Top box is the percentage of respondents who fit into the highest ends of the scale. Bottom box is the percentage of respondents who fit into the lowest ends of the scale.
  • Subset Ratio Metric: The number of people who selected a specific brand divided by the number of respondents aware of the brand. It can be used as an alternative to custom metrics when you are looking to visualize a proportion. See Subset Ratio Metric for more information.
    Qtip: This metric is available on the bar, line, and table widgets. For these widgets, we recommend using the subset ratio metric instead of custom metrics.
  • Percentile: Percentiles contain a set of 100 values (or buckets) for a particular field. A value for a field, such as an average, is calculated from the response data and then the value is looked up in the percentile list to see what percentile bucket (one of the 100 in the list) it falls in. When you select a percentile metric, you are showing what value is considered the 50, 75, 80, etc. percentile. You can show the following percentiles:
    • 50% (Also known as the median)
    • 75% (Also known as the third or upper quartile)
    • 80%
    • 90%
    • 95%
    • 99%
      Example: NPS is an 11 point scale of values 0 to 10. Here are the percentiles for NPS.
      A bar chart that says 0 is the minimum value, 5 is 50 percent, 8 is 75 and 80 percent, and 10 is the 90, 95, and 99 percentile, while also being the maximum value
      The median (50% percentile) is 5 because 50% of the values on the scale are equal to or smaller than 5 (1, 2, 3, 4), and 50% of the values on the scale are greater than 5 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
      The 75% percentile is 8 because 75% of the answers are less than or equal to 8, and 25% are greater than 8. With a small enough scale, values will repeat themselves, so 8 also falls under the 80% percentile.
      Qtip: This metric is only available on the bar, line, and table widgets.
  • Custom Metrics: Include any custom metrics you have created. For more information, visit the page on Custom Metrics.
  • Saved benchmarks: Any benchmarks you’ve created. However, this only adds the benchmark to the widget, no other data; to showcase your own data alongside a benchmark to see how well your data measures up, we advise following the instructions in the Comparisons and Benchmarks section below instead.
  • One-time Benchmarks: Configure a one-time benchmark for the widget. You can select the benchmark dataset, version, and field to display in the widget, and add benchmark-specific filters.
Qtip: Newly added metrics are initially set to Count.

Editing Metrics

Qtip: To add a new metric, click Add under the Metrics heading. A default Count metric will be added to your widget. Click on the new Count metric to make the changes as described below.

clicking a metric and making edits in the small dialog box that appears

  1. Click the metric.
  2. By default, you’ll be in the Metric tab.
  3. Click Metric to choose the metric type.
  4. In the Label field, write how you want the metric’s name to appear in the widget.

You may have additional options based on how you set up your widget or your dashboard. See Response Weighting in CX Dashboards, Rolling Calculations in Widget Metrics, and Significance Testing in Dashboard Widgets.

Options Tab

The Options tab lets you change the displayed decimal places and the numeric style of a metric.

Options Tab in a widget metric

There are three metric formats:

  • Number: Display the metric as a direct numeric value.
  • Percent: Convert the metric value to a percentage (e.g., 0.10 becomes 10%).
  • Currency: Show the metric as a currency value prefixed by a selected currency symbol (e.g., 50 becomes $50).

Filters Tab

The final tab in the metric settings window is Filters. Under this tab, you can add filters to your metric.
Filters tab in a widget

Filters on the metric will restrict the data that is represented by the metric on the widget. For example, if a filter to include only values 1-3 of a 5 point satisfaction scale is applied to a metric with type “count,” only responses that fall into this range will be included in the counts on the widget.

Adding a filter directly to a metric instead of the widget itself can be useful if there are multiple metrics that should have different filters added to a single widget. You can also use filters if you’ve configured a one-time benchmark.

To remove a filter from a metric or change the field being filtered, click the field name at the top.

Metric on a widget is opened up, filters tab opened. click a filter and select remove from the dropdown

Qtip: For more on configuring date filters, see the Filtering CX Dashboards support page.

Removing Widgets

To delete widgets:

  1. Make sure you’re in edit mode.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Hover over the 3 dots in the top-right of a widget.
    Remove option on a widget
  3. Click Remove.
  4. You may also delete a widget while editing it, by clicking the trash icon at the bottom of the editing pane.
    widget editing pane opened on the left, trash can button always on bottom of pane
  5. Confirm your deletion by selecting Yes, delete this widget.
    Confirming widget removal
Warning: After you remove a widget, you cannot recover it.

Resizing & Positioning Widgets

To resize your widgets and arrange them on the page:

  1. Make sure you’re in edit mode.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Hover over the sides or the bottom-right corner of a widget. When the sizing arrow appears, click and drag your widget to the desired size.
    Dragging the corners of a widget to re-size
  3. Hover over a widget. When the widget is grayed out, you can click any part of it and drag it around the screen.
    gif of a widget being dragged and dropped around the dashboard
Qtip: Moving a widget automatically shifts all the other widgets into new positions on a page.

Duplicating Widgets

To make an exact copy of a widget:

  1. Make sure you’re in edit mode.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Hover over the 3 dots in the top-right of a widget.
    Duplicate option on a widget
  3. Click Duplicate.
  4. Select where you want the duplicated widget to be placed.
    • Below: Create a copy directly below the original widget.
    • Bottom of page: Create a copy at the bottom of the dashboard page.

Moving Widgets to Other Pages

Qtip: You can only move widgets on private pages to other private pages. Likewise, you can only move widgets on public pages to other public pages. If you want to switch the privacy of a widget, you’ll have to make a public or private copy of the entire page instead.
  1. Make sure you’re in edit mode.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Hover over the 3 dots in the top-right of a widget.
    Move to page option on a widget
  3. Hover over Move to page.
  4. Select your target page from the list of previously created pages.

Exporting Widgets as JPG, PDF, CSV, XLSX, or TSV

Widgets can be downloaded into several formats:

  • JPG/JPEG: The Joint Photographic Experts Group’s compressed digital image format.  Select JPG if you need an image for PowerPoints, social media uploads, or printed documents.
  • PDF: The Portable Document Format from Adobe. Select PDF to capture a widget as a document independent of CX Dashboards or other software application. View in a PDF viewer. PDFs are  printable.
  • CSV: A Comma-Separated Values format. Pick CSV if you need to extract a widget’s data and pull it into a spreadsheet or database.
  • XLSX: An Excel file format. Select XLSX if you need to extract a widget’s data and pull it into an Excel spreadsheet.
  • TSV: A Tab-Separated Values file format.  Choose TSV to generate a simple text file presenting your data in a tabular structure. Commonly used to exchange information between databases.

To export widgets:

  1. Make sure you’re not in editing mode. That means you see the pencil icon, not the Done editing button.
    dashboard isn't in editing mode, and 3 dots menu shows an export option
  2. Hover over the 3 dots in the top-right of a widget.
  3. Select Export.
  4. Choose a file type.
    Exporting your widget as a file
  5. Click Export.

Widget Dividers

Widget dividers allow you to divide your dashboard pages to create clear sections.

To add a divider:

  1. Click the editing button. This button will turn into the Done editing button.
    dashboard editing button
  2. Click Add divider at the bottom of your dashboard page. You can also hover over the spot within your dashboard where you want to add a group, click Add, and select Divider.
    options to add a widget divider at the bottom of the page
  3. To move the divider, click the dot grid at the top and drag and drop it to your desired location on the page.
  4. To edit the divider, hover over a widget group and select the 3 horizontal dots in the top-left corner.
  5. Select Edit.
    Qtip: To remove a group, hover over the 3 horizontal dots and click Remove.
  6. Choose your desired divider color by selecting one of the existing colors or entering the hex code for a particular color.
    additional customization options for the widget divider
  7. Select the divider thickness.

View Widget Data

Some widgets allow you to view the data that’s displayed in them in a table format. To see this format, hover over the dots in the upper-right, then select View data.

Image of a bar chart with the three horizontal dots expanded; bottom of the menu that appears is an option for view data

Qtip: Your dashboard must be in viewing mode, not editing mode, to see this option.

An image of a new window over the dashboard displaying the data as the count broken out by department and NPS group

Example: The table widget shows the count of people who belong to each group, broken out by department. Because there are 3 groups (passive, promoter, and detractor) and 4 departments (customer success, engineering, marketing, and sales), the “View data” window shows us the count for every possible combination of group and department (12 rows of data total).

“View data” is available to any user on the dashboard, regardless of whether they have viewing or editing permissions. This is another way of viewing the same data from the columns and fields displayed in the widget, and will not show any additional information to dashboard users.

Widgets that allow you to view data

Not all widgets have the “View data” option. See the following for a list of compatible widgets:

Qtip: Viewing data on a key drivers widget will show the driver, performance, importance, sample size, and quadrant. To understand these concepts, see the Interpretation section of the Key Drivers Widget page.

Deprecated Widgets

While you’re adding a new widget, you may notice a section of the menu named Deprecated Widgets. In this section, we list widgets that you can still create, but that we have replaced with better, upgraded widgets or features.

Add widget button is clicked, expanding the list of widgets available. They are separated into sections, one of which is named Deprecated widgets

Widgets listed as “deprecated” in this menu can still be used. However, they will eventually be removed from the platform. The timeline of each widget’s removal will vary. Widgets will not be removed until users have been told in advance. All deprecated widgets will automatically be migrated to the new version when they are removed from the platform, and will be fully functional throughout the migration process.

Please note that even if a type of widget is deprecated, existing widgets of that type will not stop working or be removed from your dashboard. However, we recommend switching to new widget types to ensure maximum dashboard performance.

Deprecation schedule

The following is a schedule of when widgets will be removed from the widgets menu. This means you will not be able to create new widgets of this type. Existing widgets of this type that are in your dashboard will not be removed from your dashboard.

Please keep in mind that these dates are subject to change. We will be sending communications in advance of these deprecations.

Date of Deprecation Widgets Removed from Menu
July 2023 Trend chart

Legacy word cloud

Legacy pie chart

Date of Deprecation Widgets Being Deprecated
October 2023 Pivot table

Record grid

Recommended widget replacements

Qtip: Would you like to keep up-to-date with the latest product updates, including new widgets and deprecated features? Subscribe to our weekly product release notes in the XM Community.

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