You can create visualizations for your church or ministry’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Trends AI. After configuring a KPI chart to suit your ministry needs, you can save it as a Chart or add it to a Board to increase its visibility.
When you search for a single measure or attribute, such as Giving or Date, Trends AI automatically generates a KPI chart displaying the top, or most recent, value for that column. If you search for multiple terms, you can still configure which column is visualized in your KPI chart. To align the KPI visualization with your specific ministry use case, you can add time comparison keywords, like weekly or monthly, to change the KPI's aggregation, use the chart configuration menu to control the amount of information displayed, or apply conditional formatting.
Configure Visualized Column
If your search includes multiple measures or attributes, the KPI chart automatically defaults to displaying only the first search term. To create a KPI chart based on a different measure or attribute from your search, follow these steps:
Select the chart configuration icon.
Drag and drop the currently visualized column to the Not visualized section.
Select the new measure or attribute from the Not visualized section and drag and drop it into the Visualized section.
If your search includes a time column (Date, Datetime, Timestamp, or Time types) or a time period keyword (Hourly, Daily, Weekly, etc.), that element appears in the Time axis section.
Time-series Aggregation in KPIs
If you search a measure using a keyword that compares across time periods, such as Giving Weekly, your KPI visualization will display the data corresponding to the most recent date bucket associated with your search, along with the percent increase or decrease from the previous data point.
In a typical scenario, the total giving for the latest available week might show a value, and the percentage next to it (e.g., WoW) would indicate the change compared to the week before. “WoW” signifies that the percent change is calculated week-over-week. You can also search a measure by day (DoD), month (MoM), quarter (QoQ), or year (YoY).
To create a KPI chart that specifically displays the change between two designated date buckets, simply define the time periods for comparison directly in the Chart Builder. For instance, to compare the change in attendance between this quarter and the previous quarter, search for Attendance quarterly this quarter last quarter.
Conditional KPI charts can only be created using data arranged in ascending, or chronological, order. You cannot create a KPI chart from any query that uses "date descending" as a filter.
You can also use time keywords to alter the sorting when generating an attribute KPI. For example, searching for Campuses displays the 'top' value for that column. If you search for Campuses Weekly, your KPI instead displays the top campus by date ascending, or the most recent result in chronological order.
Sparkline Visualization for Time-series KPIs
When you search for a measure with a time-series keyword, such as Amount weekly, your KPI chart automatically includes a sparkline visualization showing all the data points defined by your query. For quick comparison, the two most recent data points are highlighted within the sparkline visualization. When the date bucket defined by your query is still active (for example, if you consult an Amount weekly KPI on a Wednesday), your sparkline visualization displays a dotted line connecting the last recorded data point to the accumulated value up to the latest date.
Hover your mouse over the sparkline visualization to see the exact metric value and corresponding date for any specific data point.
Custom Comparison Points
You can configure your KPI chart to display a percentage change comparison between the most recent data point and a custom comparison point of your choosing.
Custom comparison points are dependent on the time-based keywords you use in your search, such as monthly or weekly. When you search using one of the following time buckets, you can choose to compare the most recent data point with the corresponding options:
Hourly: Previous available data point, previous hour
Daily: Previous available data point, previous day, previous week (same day), previous month (same day), previous quarter (same day), previous year (same day)
Weekly: Previous available data point, previous week, previous month (same week), previous quarter (same week), previous year (same week)
Monthly: Previous available data point, previous month, previous quarter (same month), previous year (same month)
Quarterly: Previous available data point, previous quarter, previous year (same quarter)
Yearly: Previous available data point, previous year
The default comparison point is "previous available data point," which compares your most recent data point to the last recorded one.
In cases where there is missing data between the most recent data point and your selected comparison point, use "previous available data point" to accurately reflect the percent change from the last documented data point.
Configure KPI Display Options
When you create a KPI chart using a time period keyword, you can customize its display options before saving it as a Chart or pinning it to a Board.
Click the chart configuration icon and select Settings to apply the following display modifications:
Show date label: Toggle this option to display or hide the date label.
Show Sparkline: Toggle this option to display or hide the time-series visualization.
Show Comparison: Toggle this option to display or hide the percentage change since the last selected period.
Positive change color: Use this option to change the color of the percentage increase label.
Negative change color: Use this option to change the color of the percentage decrease label.
You cannot create a KPI chart using a group aggregation function