Automatic Updating, Duplicate & Modify, and Extensibility

Displayr increases the efficiency with which people work by:

Being complete. One app for all aspects of data storytelling.
Ease of use.
Automatic updating.
The Duplicate & Modify workflow.
Extensibility by writing code.

The first two of these points are addressed in the earlier articles in this section (have a look to the left). The last three are the focus of this article.

Automatic Updating

When performing data analysis and reporting, a lot of time is typically spent updating things. If data is filtered, weighted, cleaned, or new data is collected, then it is necessary to update all your analyses and reporting. Displayr entirely automates this process.

As a simple example, consider the page below. On the right side, it shows a table. The nested pie chart on the left plots the percentages in the table, and groups them into three groups: Promoters (green), Neutrals (orange), and Detractors (red). The number in the top-left corner shows the difference between the percentage of promoters and the percentage of detractors. The footer at the bottom right describes the sample and shows the sample size.

As the recording below shows, when the page is filtered using the combo box filters above the table, everything updates automatically. The numbers in the table change. The visualization, which is based on the table, automatically changes, as do the NPS score in the top-left and the sample size description.

Automatic updating allows you to create an entire document, refresh the underlying data, and then have the entire document update. This is a game-changer for updating tracking study reports! In the example below, the update is performed manually, by the user choosing a new data file. Documents can also be set to update on a schedule (e.g., 9 AM every Monday). You'll even be notified of any major differences or problems in your updated data set.

Duplicate & Modify

The ability of Displayr to automatically update means that rather than create things from scratch, you can instead find things that you like, duplicate them, and then modify the new version. As a simple example, the animation below shows a page in a document that is first duplicated, and then has the data swapped out.

This approach works for just about everything. You can duplicate and then modify categories on tables, variables, filters, variable sets, pages, folders, code, and even whole documents (via the ... menu on the Documents page).

Extensibility for writing code

Although Displayr is designed so you can perform all your analysis and reporting by pointing and clicking, it also enables multiple ways in which code can be used to create additional functionality, including:

Variables can be created in the R and JavaScript languages.
Calculations can be performed in R, as well as in Python and C++ (from within R).
The appearance of outputs can be customized using HTML and CSS.
Additional options can be added to menus (Displayr Enterprise only).
QScript, which allows users to write code to automate routine tasks. For example, to automate standard data cleaning techniques (Displayr Enterprise only).
The API, which allows Displayr to be controlled by another app (Displayr Enterprise only).

Articles in this section