Comments

With the commenting functionality of TRUECHART you can directly link all relevant information with a chart via a formattable comment. This dynamic link remains intact even after applying selections.

Comments can be configured to depend on a variety of factors, like a specific time period. This way data and their describing annotations (comments) can be permanently linked with each other.

TRUECHART features different ways to create comments on sheets.

Perspective comments (with optional references)
Inline comments, see Commenting fields in tables

Editing comments

In Edit Text mode (changeable via right-click menu), every comment can be edited by clicking on it.

The editor features various means of formatting the text, such as font settings, color, alignment, etc. In addition to regular text editing features, it offers the following:

Ok: Close the editor. The same can be achieved by clicking anywhere on the page outside the comment editor.
Variables: Insert a variable.
Brush: Copy formatting. To use, highlight a formatted text, click on the brush icon, and highlight the text to apply the formatting to. This only works inside the same comment, it cannot be applied to another one.
T_x: Remove all formatting of highlighted text.

Perspective comments

Creation

Perspective comments can be linked to specific data points on your chart. A new area for perspective comments in your extension can be created by selecting Comment from the cell type selector on an initial cell or in the settings editor.

Through the settings editor, various capabilities can be defined.

Variable dependency: When a variable is defined here, the comments will be linked to that variable. If the value of the variable changes, so will the displayed comments. This can be used to only show comments for the current year for example.

The following are Boolean dependencies. Aside from the Always and Never keywords, they also support variables. If their value is either 1 or "true", the comment will allow that option. Otherwise it will not.

Show: Show the comment. If this is false, the comment will not be visible.
Edit: Allow editing of comments.
Add comment rows: Allow to add new comments below a highlighted one.
Add comment numbers: Allow the creation of reference numbers. These numbers can be dragged around to show the comment’s relation to specific points of interest.

The check boxes cannot be bound to a variable.

Default value: When no comment has been added so far, the text "No comments" will be shown.
Auto save: The comment will be saved whenever the comment is edited.

Store comments with future-proof keys

In addition to using the general table dimensions as lead columns, you can use variables to add further information to the data keys for comments. In view of the planned further developments of TRUECHART in the area of commenting and the goal of being able to automatically recognize comments and your linked data, when defining these data keys, you must make sure that it is possible later to migrate these keys or conditions automatically to the new mapping logic if you adhere to a few general rules.

The following best practice rules should be considered as far as possible, otherwise automatic mapping will not be possible for cross-platform commenting. In this case, the comments can only be displayed individually on the respective platform.

Best Practice Rules for Comment Keys

For each value, dimension or key figure names must always be prefixed, so that these elements can be identified more easily later.
Splitter between dimension & dimension value: ##.
Splitter between key figure & key figure value: $$.
Splitter between dimensions: ยงยง
Splitter between dimensions and key figures: %%.

Editing

The comment toolbar contains two additional buttons regarding comment linking:

Circled 1: Add a new reference. This creates two numbers. One will be attached to the comment itself while the other can be dragged freely on the page. References can be linked to TRUECHART visualizations by dragging the number on top of one.
Crossed out 1: Remove all references of this comment.

When hovering over comment cells, a plus and trash bucket icon appears. These icons allow you to remove and add new perspective comments.

Plus icon: Inserts a new comment cell below the highlighted one.
Trash bucket icon: Deletes the highlighted comment.