Changelog: notable changes

DevLab

The DevLab serves as a link between BStreams and the data visualization community, providing users with new charting options.

The new “DevLab” section  in BStreams charts allows data visualization enthusiasts to present their complex data in more engaging and interesting ways. Currently, the DevLab section offers charting options such as Parallel Sets, Radial Stacked, and the Voice map. Each of these charts has its own unique way to represent data, and bringing the highest accessibility and user experience. A Parallel sets chart is a type of data visualization used to display multidimensional data by plotting lines that connect points on each axis. A Radial stacked bar chart is a circular layout used to compare values for a single variable and to visualize how different variables interact with each other. The Voice map, lets you explore geospatial data using voice commands and obtain real-time insights on the move.

BStreams aims to continuously develop more innovative charts and features for data visualization, and the DevLab serves as an experimental ground for testing and refining these new charting options. The main objective behind the DevLab is to provide users with new and improved charting options for their data. To achieve this goal, BStreams has embedded a voting system within the charts available on DevLab. Users can vote on their preferred chart designs, and the most popular ones will be integrated into the main chart options. Additionally, users can share their new chart designs and ideas for the DevLab or other features they would like to see improved by writing to us. At BStreams, we value your engagement and strive to provide the best features for data visualization.

Voice Map

Interact and communicate with your map through voice!

Voice Map is a cutting-edge geospatial data visualization and manipulation tool developed through a research collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and the Federal University of Parana on BStreams platform. This innovative application enables users to geocode globally and navigate through different places using voice commands, making it a unique and user-friendly solution for exploring the world through the power of voice.

One of the key features of Voice Map is its cartographical representation and customization capabilities. Users can easily customize the appearance of the map with voice commands. These features include color palettes, map styles, and other customizations that suit their preferences and make the geospatial data more visually appealing and meaningful. Additionally, Voice Map allows users to query and filter geospatial data using voice commands, making it a powerful tool for easily extracting relevant information and insights from vast datasets.

Voice Map prioritizes the user experience and continuously improves its features based on user feedback since it is developed under the DevLab criteria in BStreams. With regular updates and revisions, the application strives to deliver a seamless and intuitive user interface, enhanced voice recognition capabilities and advanced querying and filtering functionalities. This ensures that users can easily navigate, interact, and manipulate geospatial data using voice commands, making it a convenient and efficient solution for various use cases, such as travel planning, data analysis, and decision-making.

Dive into the world of new user interfaces, for data visualization with Voice Map. Voice Map is a groundbreaking geospatial data visualization and manipulation tool that leverages the power of voice commands for a seamless and intuitive user experience. 

SVG export

Export your charts, graphs, and maps in the format of “SVG“!

This new feature enables you to download your visualization without losing the quality since this format is resolution-independent. In addition, one of the key advantages of SVG is its flexibility, which allows the file to be edited and modified using various graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, and other similar tools. This is particularly useful when the SVG file needs to be integrated into a larger project that requires different design elements to be brought together. This allows designers and developers to create highly customized and visually appealing charts that are tailored to their specific needs.

Once you finished your visualization, hover over your charts, and on the upper right corner, you can see buttons. Click on icon and your chart will be downloaded in SVG format.

Max and Min operators

The new method for filtering the data is available now!

The quantitative fields now can be filtered by the two new methods: Max, and Min. These two new methods as indicated by their names can filter the maximum and minimum values. But there is a trick for using them in an intelligent way, to apply advanced filters on the visualization. Filtering with max or min value can helps to identify extreme values, provides a clearer picture of the data distribution, simplifies data interpretation, and can improve the accuracy of statistical analyses.

The smart approach for using these two new operators is to combine them with other methods available in the filter feature. You can select other methods such as Greater than, Less than, Not equal, etc. And instead of choosing values from your selected field, you can use =$max and =$min. Using the two operators min or max with $, instead of values let you break your data from the minimum or maximum value, and depending on the selected methods the rest of the can be excluded or included by filtering.

The bar chart below shows the top 10 richest Men by their Net worth based on the US dollar. Mukesh Ambani has the lowest position. You can exclude the minimum values, by using this filter, instead of typing the value:

And the result is:

Advanced metric

The new update of metrics enables you to apply the advanced mathematical formula on the quantitative fields from your dataset and derive your desired values. You are able to enrich your dataset and provide deeper insights within your visualization with advanced metrics.

Advanced metrics can help uncover patterns and relationships that may not be visible through traditional metrics. It can provide a more accurate analysis of the data accounting to outliers, trends, and other factors that might be missed with traditional metrics. Moreover, it can help to create a more complete picture out of your data, which leads to identifying the potential risks, opportunities, and better decision-making.

Let’s reveal the capability of this new update with an example:

The Sales Margin indicates the profit of a business, and generally, the formula is  “(Revenue – Cost of goods sold)/Revenue = %Sales margin”. With the advanced metrics, you can easily, calculate this indicator for your datasets, and visualize a trend of the profit. Based on the formula:

1. you need to determine the subtraction (-) of the revenue and the cost
2. and then divide (÷) the results by the revenue, in order to estimate the percentage of sales margin.

The parentheses are used to prioritize the subtraction (-), and make sure that the results of subtraction will be divided by the revenue! If your formula is not correct from a mathematical perspective or you used not acceptable characters in the editor area, the sign will appears. And on the other hand, the sign can reassure the validity of your formula.  Note that you are able to insert these types of characters for calculating your complex metrics:

• The fundamental arithmetic operations (+,−,×,÷)
• Parentheses: ()
• Space
• Numbers

Subscription for Professional users.

The Professional plan unlocks new features and provides more facilities for the users. 3Gb of space for the datasets, No watermark, Linked google sheet, and many other unique features added to the Professional plan. For more details, check the Pricing page or contact us.

Two new charts combo and K.P.I. are available.

The Combo chart is suitable for demonstrating the trends, while the K.P.I. visualizes data in the context of numbers, comparisons, and percentages.

Copy and Paste BStreams’ charts and maps

This important new feature will save a lot of time, while you are developing your bstreams.

On the left panel, the Clipboard hosts the list containing all your reusable assets, which are, all your copied charts or maps. Each item, within the clipboard, can be dragged on any bstream and reused many times.
You can copy any visualization of interest, by simply clicking on the copy button and the object will be added to the clipboard.

Name the bstreams’ objects

Now you can name bstream objects.
This makes it easier to identify charts on the Clipboard or which charts to link for drills.
Try it at the top of the right panel.

Sizing, positioning, and ordering individual bstream’s objects

In the past, you could customize the bstream’s visualizations into a 3 columns row, in which their width was equal and the height was defined by the type.
This way of visualization was efficient enough, as long as you did not focus on styling the objects independently.
As an example, if you added a logo beside a title you had no way to increase the width of the title’s object or resize the logo’s or the author’s width. The final layout was rigid and unbalanced.

Now we increased the number of columns in a row up to 6, in order to host more objects.
Moreover, we added an edit button on each row to adjust the width and height of the inner objects.
To enter the editing mode click the icon on the right of the row.
Then resize the columns’ width by clicking on the icon and dragging to the left/right of the borders.

Finally, insert new values for controlling the height of each object.
However the “auto” is the default height for each object, the overall row’s height will be defined by the column with maximum height.

The final result is significantly better than before.

Feel free to try it by yourself!