Using Word Clouds

Use word clouds as an engaging way to display how often a word is used in relation to other words in a dataset. For example, you can show word or phrase frequency and identify trending items or actions.

Each word in a word cloud represents one or more values in a dimension. The size of the word represents the frequency of a value in a selected dimension, in proportion to the occurrences of other values in the same dimension.

To create a word cloud, use one dimension in the Group by field well. Optionally, you can add a metric to the Size field well.

Word clouds usually look better with 20–100 words or phrases, but the format settings offer a wide range of flexibility. If you choose too many words, they can become too small to be legible, depending on the size of your display. By default, word clouds display 100 distinct words. To show more, change the format setting for Number of words in the Properties panel.

To create a word cloud:
  1. Click Dashboards tab, the Dashboards tab.
  2. Click Dashboard Designer, in the bottom-left corner.
  3. On the Analyses dialog, click New analysis or click Options button, the Options button, next to an existing analysis and select Edit.
  4. On the analysis page, click , the Add visual button, on the toolbar.
    Analysis page - Create a visual
  5. Click the Word cloud icon.
    Word cloud icon
  6. Add data to the visual by dragging fields from the Data panel to the appropriate field wells in the Visuals panel:
    1. Drag a dimension to the Group by field well.
      Word clouds are limited to 500 unique values for Group by. To avoid displaying the word Other, click Menu options button, the Menu options button, in the corner of the visual, and select Hide "other" categories.
    2. Drag a measure to the Size field well.
    3. Add drill-down layers by dragging one or more additional fields to the Group by field well.
  7. Customize the appearance of the visual in the Properties panel on the right.
    1. Under Display Settings, format the title and subtitle.
      For more information, see Formatting Titles and Subtitles in Visuals.
    2. Under Word cloud, customize the layout of the word cloud and specify whether to include vertical words and whether to use lowercase. You can also set the size of the padding and the maximum string length.
    3. Under Group by, configure sorting options and set the word limit.
      • To remove or display the quick sort icon, click Hide quick sort icon icon, the Hide quick sort icon icon, or Show quick sort icon icon, the Show quick sort icon icon, next to Sort.
      • Under Number of words, enter the maximum number of words to include in the word cloud.
Parent topic: Creating Visuals