Allow to plot custom variable values (or any rows) by searching & plotting - JS Graphs

[anonymous-matomo-user]

At the custom variable section, when you select to show them as graphs, there is only one graph that shows the name of the variables used.

What I suggest is to generate one graph for each custom variable, so the data shown will be from its values.
Keywords: custom variables, graphs

[luto]

Any news on this? I would love to have this feature!

[mattab]

Workaround available to plot custom variable values

• If you'd like to plot the custom variable values for a particular name, you would first "Flatten the report" using the new feature accessible from the Cog icon on the right, in the footer of reports with sub tables.
• The report will then show $name - $value for each custom variable, "flattening" the report;
• Then, user could click on the "Graph" icon to plot only these rows in a graph.

Things to do to implement this ticket

To make this use case nice and useful, we would need to:

• Bug: When a search was made and graph icon clicked, the search term should be kept in the URL. Currently the search term is not forwarded at all.
  • Bug: it seems the API does not return the values properly: index.php?filter_sort_column=nb_visits&filter_sort_order=desc&viewDataTable=graphVerticalBar&module=CustomVariables&action=getCustomVariables&filter_column=label&filter_column_recursive=label&idGoal=-1&filter_offset=0&date=yesterday&period=day&idSite=1&idDashboard=1&enable_sort=1&controllerActionCalledWhenRequestSubTable=getCustomVariablesValuesFromNameId&landed=&flat=1&columns=nb_visits&rows=&disable_generic_filters=0
• UI: Finally, the search term should be displayed below the graph, in the search box. However the search box should only be displayed when there was a term, not all the time.
• Graph: it would be nice to display, in the graph footer, the currently applied filters: "Custom Variables names containing '$FILTER'".
  • Later we could also write "Custom Variables names containing '$FILTER'. $SEGMENT_NAME" which would append "All visits from mobile devices" for example.

[anonymous-matomo-user]

I'm also after this feature.
I've added a blog post with a possible UI flow for this.
http://forum.piwik.org/read.php?3,112980,113223

[mattab]

see also #3165
refs #3110

[mattab]

Feedback from @rugk in #8507

The custom variables are all in one graph - no matter what you do. In the table view this may be okay, because you can unfold the name of the variable and see the results.
But if you select a graph (e.g. a pie chart) at the bottom it at first displays the percentage of the variable names (so the 'category'). E.g. if you have two variable names gender and category (like it's shown on the dev page) both of them will be placed in the pie chart and you will e.g. get: 45% gender, 55% category. That's useless!

However you can make the report 'flat' so you won't have these foldings. After this you can also see the category values, but it's still in one chart. In the example it would be: 30 % gender - male, 30 % gender - female, 15% Category - Europe, 25% Category - Sports.
It even does not matter in what slot/index the variable is saved. It's still all in one graph.

This makes pie charts of specific variables practically useless.

I cannot see a direct relation to these issues, but maybe they are related: #6762, #6031

[mattab]

note: with custom dimensions available from the Marketplace https://plugins.piwik.org/CustomDimensions it is now possible to plot values of any custom dimensions as Pie chart or bar plot. Another benefit of using custom dimensions over custom variables.

[mattab]

As we will deprecate custom variables in #11524, closing this issue as Won't fix.

We now recommend to use Custom Dimensions instead.