Trend Line Charts: Compare a Time Window With the Same Window in Previous Weeks
A Trend Line chart draws a metric over the time window you pick, then lays the exact same window from previous weeks on top of it, on the same axis. Pick Monday and you see this Monday hour by hour next to the Mondays before it, so you can tell straight away whether today's spike is unusual or just what Mondays look like.
It is the chart version of the Trend Number and Trend Horizontal Bar widgets: all three compare a window with the same window in earlier weeks.
Before you start
Trend Line works on basic charts, the widget type that charts one metric over time (for example Tickets created over time).
The window must be 7 days or shorter. A wider date range has no "same window last week" to compare against, so the chart falls back to a plain line with a Trend unavailable notice.
You need permission to edit the dashboard to add or change a widget.
Set up a Trend Line chart
Open the dashboard, click Edit, then add a widget (or open an existing basic chart's settings).
Choose Basic chart and pick your metric, for example Tickets created over time.
Under Chart Types, choose Trend Line. Three more settings appear:
Weeks in moving average: how many previous weeks to compare against, from 1 to 13. On a Trend Line this is also how many previous weeks are drawn.
Show previous weeks as: how the chart opens. Each week as its own line draws every previous week; Moving average of the weeks draws one line averaging them.
Include weeks with 0 values: leave it unchecked to keep weeks with no data out of the average (the default), or check it to count them.
Save the widget, then set the time window with the dashboard's date filter, for example Yesterday, Today (to date) or a single date. A one-day window is charted by the hour.
Any other filters on the widget or the dashboard, such as a queue, queue collection, group or channel, apply to every week drawn. Each line compares the same slice of your operation.
Read the chart
Each week as its own line
The selected window is the solid line. Each previous week is a dashed line, labelled 1 wk ago, 2 wks ago and so on, with older weeks drawn fainter. Hover over any point to see every week's own date, time and value at that point.
Moving average of the weeks
The previous weeks collapse into one dashed line, their average at each point. Hovering shows the average, how far the selected window is above or below it (for example Avg of 3 wks: 24.67 · selected window +78.38%), and each week's value underneath, so you can see what went into the average.
Switch views at any time with the switch icon (Switch chart view) in the widget's top bar. It flips between the two views straight away, without reloading the data.
Comparing "today so far"
With the date filter set to Today (to date), the chart compares midnight to now with midnight to the same time on the same weekday in previous weeks. Earlier weeks are cut off at the same time of day, so a partial day is never compared with a full one. The same applies to a Trend Number widget, if you want the comparison as a single figure.
Good to know
"Trend unavailable" instead of a trend: the dashboard's date range is longer than 7 days. Pick a shorter window.
A gap in the average line: none of the previous weeks had data at that point, and weeks with 0 values are left out by default. Check Include weeks with 0 values to count them as zero instead.