One of the frequent confusions arising after setting up timeline visualization is missing data from the visualization or timeline visualization page not opening up.
Before we set out debugging the missing data its important to understand the key terms involved with timeline visualizations as documented here.
These are the key columns in the timeline visualization setup table (roadmap_page)
Column Name | Description |
Panel table | This is the primary table from where data is retrieved to be shown in the visualization |
Panel name | This is a field of the panel table and the selected field's value be displayed in the panel (or cards) |
Panel date | This is a Date/DateTime field in the panel table and dates in this column are used to place panels in the lanes |
Max items per lane | The number in this field determines number of records fetched from the panel table for 3D view. (This field is hidden in the form layout, you have to personalize to bring it out) |
Max items per lane 2d | The number in this field determines number of records fetched from the panel table for 2D view. (This field is hidden in the form layout, you have to personalize to bring it out) |
Max lanes per road | The number of lanes displayed in the visualization (This field is hidden in the form layout, you have to personalize to bring it out) |
Relationship field | This is also a field from the Panel table. The lanes in 3D view are values of this field. |
Let's take an example to setup a visualization on Incident table with incident states as lanes and panels appearing in the timeline by Opened date as shown below.
The setup for this would be like this
Column Name | Value |
Panel table | Incident |
Panel name | Short description |
Panel date | Opened |
Relationship field | State |
Now you can start viewing the visualization. If there are multiple incidents opened on same date then the panel would display the incident count. For example in the above figure on May 27, 2015 you can see the panel body text as 2 incidents.
In addition to the above columns there are two more columns in the setup which are of our interest
Column Name | Description |
Lane condition | To filter the lane values on some condition or apply sorting on lane |
Panel condition | To filter the panels on some condition or apply sorting on panels |
The following are the frequently faced issues with Timeline Visualizations:
1. Data missing in panel
Check your panel condition — is it removing the records
Is the number of records going above Max Items per lane? We seed 500 items for 3D view per lane and 99 items for 2D view. So if you have more than 500 incidents in a lane they may stop appearing after a certain date.
2. Data missing in lane
Check your lane condition — is it invalid. Ideally Lane condition should be based on Relationship field to be effective filter for the lanes.
Also watch out for the Max lanes per road value. We seed 8 as the default, so if you have more than 8 lanes it will not appear.
3. CIO Roadmap doesn't open
The CIO Roadmap is a timeline visualization created based on Projects and Portfolios. So first thing to have is the portfolios created for project or existing portfolios associated with the project. If your projects have portfolios setup the CIO Roadmap page should open.
4. Projects missing in CIO Roadmap
Project — Portfolio relation is an m2m relation as explained in this post. So for the Roadmap to work each project should have the Project Portfolio record created and the Project Portfolio should be associated with the Portfolio through the m2m table Portfolio status. Check if the data is properly mapped between Project, Project Views and Portfolios.
5. Timeline not working for certain users
Timeline visualization has a feature under Settings > Configure to Personalize the timeline configuration for a user.
So a user can personalize the Panel condition or Lane condition for his view. User can also personalize the number of lanes or number of panels to be displayed. If timeline doesn't work for a user the first place to check for that would be the roadmap_user_page table for any entries for the user and timeline visualization setup. Check if anything is missing or invalid conditions in the personalized setting for the user. Note once a user has personalized a timeline setup any changes to the setup won't reflect for the user. For instance User A personalize the Incident timeline above and if the admin changes the max items per lane to 8000, User A would still be having the default seeded value of 500.
6. What roles are needed to view timeline visualization
There are two roles shipped with the timeline visualization plugin — timeline_user and timeline_admin. For viewing timeline pages user should be granted at least timeline_user role. For creating new timelines timeline_admin role should be granted for the user. The timeline_admin role contains the timeline_user role.
