Showing a trend with a line chart is very useful if you want to show data over more than two periods. In some cases, all this historical information is unnecessary and you only want to display the direction of the trend—up, down, or no change. The trend icon component delivers this functionality. This recipe will show you how to use it.
Open a new SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards file and enter the data, as shown in the following screenshot, into the spreadsheet:
The trend icon component can only be bound to a single cell. If this cell has a positive value, the component will be shown in positive state (arrow up). If the value is negative, the component will turn into its negative state (arrow down). If the value is zero, a neutral state is shown (flat line icon):
We used the formula to calculate whether the change in trend is positive, negative, or neutral.