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Indicator

Overview

The indicator trace type is used to create key performance indicator (KPI) visualizations, allowing you to display single or aggregated values in a gauge or numeric format. Indicators are great for showing metrics like progress, performance, or key values at a glance.

You can customize the gauge, delta values, colors, and text annotations to represent your data effectively. Indicator plots are widely used in dashboards and reporting.

Common Uses

  • KPI Dashboards: Displaying key metrics, progress, or performance indicators.
  • Gauges: Visualizing values as a gauge to track goals or targets.
  • Highlighting Change: Showing the difference between two points in time.

Check out the Attributes for the full set of configuration options

Examples

Common Configurations

Here's a simple indicator plot displaying a single numeric value:

You can copy this code below to create this chart in your project:

models:
  - name: indicator-data
    args:
      - echo
      - |
        value
        75
traces:
  - name: Simple Numeric Indicator
    model: ref(indicator-data)
    columns:
      val: value
      sign: case when value > 0 then '<sup>+</sup>' else '<sup>-</sup>' end
    props:
      type: indicator
      mode: "number"
      value: column(val)[0]
      number: 
        suffix: '<sub>hrs</sub>'
        prefix: column(sign)[0]
        font: 
          size: 100
charts:
  - name: Simple Numeric Indicator Chart
    traces:
      - ref(Simple Numeric Indicator)
    layout:
      title:
        text: Simple Numeric Indicator<br><sub>Displaying a Single Value</sub>
    margin: 
      l: 0
      r: 0
      b: 50

This example shows a gauge indicator to represent a value and its progress toward a goal:

Here's the code:

models:
  - name: indicator-data-gauge
    args:
      - echo
      - |
        value
        65
traces:
  - name: Gauge Indicator
    model: ref(indicator-data-gauge)
    columns: 
      val: value
    props:
      type: indicator
      mode: "gauge+number"
      value: column(val)[0]
      gauge:
        axis:
          range: [0, 100]
        bar:
          color: "#17becf"
charts:
  - name: Gauge Indicator Chart
    traces:
      - ref(Gauge Indicator)
    layout:
      title:
        text: Gauge Indicator<br><sub>Progress Towards a Target</sub>

This example demonstrates an indicator plot with delta values, comparing the current value to a previous value:

Here's the code:

models:
  - name: indicator-data-delta
    args:
      - echo
      - |
        sort,value
        3,85
        2,75
        1,65
        0,55
traces:
  - name: Delta Indicator with Comparison
    model: ref(indicator-data-delta)
    columns: 
      val: value 
    props:
      type: indicator
      mode: "number+delta"
      value: column(val)[0]
      delta:
        reference: column(val)[1]
    order_by: 
      - query(sort desc)
charts:
  - name: Delta Indicator with Comparison Chart
    traces:
      - ref(Delta Indicator with Comparison)
    layout:
      title:
        text: Delta Indicator with Comparison<br><sub>Showing Change from Previous Value</sub>

Attributes

These attributes apply to traces where trace.props.type is set to indicator. You would configure these attributes on the trace with the trace.props object. 

align: 'enumerated , one of ( "left" | "center" | "right" )' #(1)!
customdata: 'data array' #(2)!
delta:
  decreasing:
    color: 'color' #(3)!
    symbol: 'string' #(4)!
  font:
    color: color
    family: 'string' #(5)!
    size: number greater than or equal to 1
  increasing:
    color: 'color' #(6)!
    symbol: 'string' #(7)!
  position: 'enumerated , one of ( "top" | "bottom" | "left" | "right" )' #(8)!
  prefix: 'string' #(9)!
  reference: 'number' #(10)!
  relative: 'boolean' #(11)!
  suffix: 'string' #(12)!
  valueformat: 'string' #(13)!
domain:
  column: 'integer greater than or equal to 0' #(14)!
  row: 'integer greater than or equal to 0' #(15)!
  x: 'array' #(16)!
  y: 'array' #(17)!
gauge:
  axis:
    dtick: 'number or categorical coordinate string' #(18)!
    exponentformat: 'enumerated , one of ( "none" | "e" | "e" | "power" | "si" | "b"
      )' #(19)!
    minexponent: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(20)!
    nticks: 'integer greater than or equal to 0' #(21)!
    range: 'array' #(22)!
    separatethousands: 'boolean' #(23)!
    showexponent: 'enumerated , one of ( "all" | "first" | "last" | "none" )' #(24)!
    showticklabels: 'boolean' #(25)!
    showtickprefix: 'enumerated , one of ( "all" | "first" | "last" | "none" )' #(26)!
    showticksuffix: 'enumerated , one of ( "all" | "first" | "last" | "none" )' #(27)!
    tick0: 'number or categorical coordinate string' #(28)!
    tickangle: 'angle' #(29)!
    tickcolor: 'color' #(30)!
    tickfont:
      color: color
      family: 'string' #(31)!
      size: number greater than or equal to 1
    tickformat: 'string' #(32)!
    tickformatstops:
      dtickrange: 'array' #(33)!
      enabled: 'boolean' #(34)!
      name: 'string' #(35)!
      templateitemname: 'string' #(36)!
      value: 'string' #(37)!
    ticklabelstep: 'integer greater than or equal to 1' #(38)!
    ticklen: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(39)!
    tickmode: 'enumerated , one of ( "auto" | "linear" | "array" )' #(40)!
    tickprefix: 'string' #(41)!
    ticks: 'enumerated , one of ( "outside" | "inside" | "" )' #(42)!
    ticksuffix: 'string' #(43)!
    ticktext: 'data array' #(44)!
    tickvals: 'data array' #(45)!
    tickwidth: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(46)!
    visible: 'boolean' #(47)!
  bar:
    color: 'color' #(48)!
    line:
      color: 'color' #(49)!
      width: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(50)!
    thickness: 'number between or equal to 0 and 1' #(51)!
  bgcolor: 'color' #(52)!
  bordercolor: 'color' #(53)!
  borderwidth: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(54)!
  shape: 'enumerated , one of ( "angular" | "bullet" )' #(55)!
  steps:
    color: 'color' #(56)!
    line:
      color: 'color' #(57)!
      width: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(58)!
    name: 'string' #(59)!
    range: 'array' #(60)!
    templateitemname: 'string' #(61)!
    thickness: 'number between or equal to 0 and 1' #(62)!
  threshold:
    line:
      color: 'color' #(63)!
      width: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(64)!
    thickness: 'number between or equal to 0 and 1' #(65)!
    value: 'number' #(66)!
ids: 'data array' #(67)!
legendgrouptitle:
  font:
    color: color
    family: 'string' #(68)!
    size: number greater than or equal to 1
  text: 'string' #(69)!
legendrank: 'number' #(70)!
legendwidth: 'number greater than or equal to 0' #(71)!
meta: 'number or categorical coordinate string' #(72)!
mode: 'flaglist string. any combination of "number", "delta", "gauge" joined with
  a "+"' #(73)!
number:
  font:
    color: color
    family: 'string' #(74)!
    size: number greater than or equal to 1
  prefix: 'string' #(75)!
  suffix: 'string' #(76)!
  valueformat: 'string' #(77)!
title:
  align: 'enumerated , one of ( "left" | "center" | "right" )' #(78)!
  font:
    color: color
    family: 'string' #(79)!
    size: number greater than or equal to 1
  text: 'string' #(80)!
type: indicator
uirevision: 'number or categorical coordinate string' #(81)!
value: 'number' #(82)!
visible: 'enumerated , one of ( true | false | "legendonly" )' #(83)!
  1. Sets the horizontal alignment of the text within the box. Note that this attribute has no effect if an angular gauge is displayed: in this case, it is always centered
  2. Assigns extra data each datum. This may be useful when listening to hover, click and selection events. Note that, "scatter" traces also appends customdata items in the markers DOM elements
  3. Sets the color for increasing value.
  4. Sets the symbol to display for increasing value
  5. HTML font family - the typeface that will be applied by the web browser. The web browser will only be able to apply a font if it is available on the system which it operates. Provide multiple font families, separated by commas, to indicate the preference in which to apply fonts if they aren't available on the system. The Chart Studio Cloud (at https://chart-studio.plotly.com or on-premise) generates images on a server, where only a select number of fonts are installed and supported. These include "Arial", "Balto", "Courier New", "Droid Sans",, "Droid Serif", "Droid Sans Mono", "Gravitas One", "Old Standard TT", "Open Sans", "Overpass", "PT Sans Narrow", "Raleway", "Times New Roman".
  6. Sets the color for increasing value.
  7. Sets the symbol to display for increasing value
  8. Sets the position of delta with respect to the number.
  9. Sets a prefix appearing before the delta.
  10. Sets the reference value to compute the delta. By default, it is set to the current value.
  11. Show relative change
  12. Sets a suffix appearing next to the delta.
  13. Sets the value formatting rule using d3 formatting mini-languages which are very similar to those in Python. For numbers, see: https://github.com/d3/d3-format/tree/v1.4.5#d3-format.
  14. If there is a layout grid, use the domain for this column in the grid for this indicator trace .
  15. If there is a layout grid, use the domain for this row in the grid for this indicator trace .
  16. Sets the horizontal domain of this indicator trace (in plot fraction).
  17. Sets the vertical domain of this indicator trace (in plot fraction).
  18. Sets the step in-between ticks on this axis. Use with tick0. Must be a positive number, or special strings available to "log" and "date" axes. If the axis type is "log", then ticks are set every 10^(n"dtick) where n is the tick number. For example, to set a tick mark at 1, 10, 100, 1000, ... set dtick to 1. To set tick marks at 1, 100, 10000, ... set dtick to 2. To set tick marks at 1, 5, 25, 125, 625, 3125, ... set dtick to log_10(5), or 0.69897000433. "log" has several special values; "L", where f is a positive number, gives ticks linearly spaced in value (but not position). For example tick0 = 0.1, dtick = "L0.5" will put ticks at 0.1, 0.6, 1.1, 1.6 etc. To show powers of 10 plus small digits between, use "D1" (all digits) or "D2" (only 2 and 5). tick0 is ignored for "D1" and "D2". If the axis type is "date", then you must convert the time to milliseconds. For example, to set the interval between ticks to one day, set dtick to 86400000.0. "date" also has special values "M" gives ticks spaced by a number of months. n must be a positive integer. To set ticks on the 15th of every third month, set tick0 to "2000-01-15" and dtick to "M3". To set ticks every 4 years, set dtick to "M48"
  19. Determines a formatting rule for the tick exponents. For example, consider the number 1,000,000,000. If "none", it appears as 1,000,000,000. If "e", 1e+9. If "E", 1E+9. If "power", 1x10^9 (with 9 in a super script). If "SI", 1G. If "B", 1B.
  20. Hide SI prefix for 10^n if |n| is below this number. This only has an effect when tickformat is "SI" or "B".
  21. Specifies the maximum number of ticks for the particular axis. The actual number of ticks will be chosen automatically to be less than or equal to nticks. Has an effect only if tickmode is set to "auto".
  22. Sets the range of this axis.
  23. If "true", even 4-digit integers are separated
  24. If "all", all exponents are shown besides their significands. If "first", only the exponent of the first tick is shown. If "last", only the exponent of the last tick is shown. If "none", no exponents appear.
  25. Determines whether or not the tick labels are drawn.
  26. If "all", all tick labels are displayed with a prefix. If "first", only the first tick is displayed with a prefix. If "last", only the last tick is displayed with a suffix. If "none", tick prefixes are hidden.
  27. Same as showtickprefix but for tick suffixes.
  28. Sets the placement of the first tick on this axis. Use with dtick. If the axis type is "log", then you must take the log of your starting tick (e.g. to set the starting tick to 100, set the tick0 to 2) except when dtick="L" (see dtick for more info). If the axis type is "date", it should be a date string, like date data. If the axis type is "category", it should be a number, using the scale where each category is assigned a serial number from zero in the order it appears.
  29. Sets the angle of the tick labels with respect to the horizontal. For example, a tickangle of -90 draws the tick labels vertically.
  30. Sets the tick color.
  31. HTML font family - the typeface that will be applied by the web browser. The web browser will only be able to apply a font if it is available on the system which it operates. Provide multiple font families, separated by commas, to indicate the preference in which to apply fonts if they aren't available on the system. The Chart Studio Cloud (at https://chart-studio.plotly.com or on-premise) generates images on a server, where only a select number of fonts are installed and supported. These include "Arial", "Balto", "Courier New", "Droid Sans",, "Droid Serif", "Droid Sans Mono", "Gravitas One", "Old Standard TT", "Open Sans", "Overpass", "PT Sans Narrow", "Raleway", "Times New Roman".
  32. Sets the tick label formatting rule using d3 formatting mini-languages which are very similar to those in Python. For numbers, see: https://github.com/d3/d3-format/tree/v1.4.5#d3-format. And for dates see: https://github.com/d3/d3-time-format/tree/v2.2.3#locale_format. We add two items to d3's date formatter: "%h" for half of the year as a decimal number as well as "%{n}f" for fractional seconds with n digits. For example, "2016-10-13 09:15:23.456" with tickformat "%H~%M~%S.%2f" would display "09~15~23.46"
  33. range ["min", "max"], where "min", "max" - dtick values which describe some zoom level, it is possible to omit "min" or "max" value by passing "null"
  34. Determines whether or not this stop is used. If false, this stop is ignored even within its dtickrange.
  35. When used in a template, named items are created in the output figure in addition to any items the figure already has in this array. You can modify these items in the output figure by making your own item with templateitemname matching this name alongside your modifications (including visible: false or enabled: false to hide it). Has no effect outside of a template.
  36. Used to refer to a named item in this array in the template. Named items from the template will be created even without a matching item in the input figure, but you can modify one by making an item with templateitemname matching its name, alongside your modifications (including visible: false or enabled: false to hide it). If there is no template or no matching item, this item will be hidden unless you explicitly show it with visible: true.
  37. string - dtickformat for described zoom level, the same as "tickformat"
  38. Sets the spacing between tick labels as compared to the spacing between ticks. A value of 1 (default) means each tick gets a label. A value of 2 means shows every 2nd label. A larger value n means only every nth tick is labeled. tick0 determines which labels are shown. Not implemented for axes with type "log" or "multicategory", or when tickmode is "array".
  39. Sets the tick length (in px).
  40. Sets the tick mode for this axis. If "auto", the number of ticks is set via nticks. If "linear", the placement of the ticks is determined by a starting position tick0 and a tick step dtick ("linear" is the default value if tick0 and dtick are provided). If "array", the placement of the ticks is set via tickvals and the tick text is ticktext. ("array" is the default value if tickvals is provided).
  41. Sets a tick label prefix.
  42. Determines whether ticks are drawn or not. If "", this axis' ticks are not drawn. If "outside" ("inside"), this axis' are drawn outside (inside) the axis lines.
  43. Sets a tick label suffix.
  44. Sets the text displayed at the ticks position via tickvals. Only has an effect if tickmode is set to "array". Used with tickvals.
  45. Sets the values at which ticks on this axis appear. Only has an effect if tickmode is set to "array". Used with ticktext.
  46. Sets the tick width (in px).
  47. A single toggle to hide the axis while preserving interaction like dragging. Default is true when a cheater plot is present on the axis, otherwise false
  48. Sets the background color of the arc.
  49. Sets the color of the line enclosing each sector.
  50. Sets the width (in px) of the line enclosing each sector.
  51. Sets the thickness of the bar as a fraction of the total thickness of the gauge.
  52. Sets the gauge background color.
  53. Sets the color of the border enclosing the gauge.
  54. Sets the width (in px) of the border enclosing the gauge.
  55. Set the shape of the gauge
  56. Sets the background color of the arc.
  57. Sets the color of the line enclosing each sector.
  58. Sets the width (in px) of the line enclosing each sector.
  59. When used in a template, named items are created in the output figure in addition to any items the figure already has in this array. You can modify these items in the output figure by making your own item with templateitemname matching this name alongside your modifications (including visible: false or enabled: false to hide it). Has no effect outside of a template.
  60. Sets the range of this axis.
  61. Used to refer to a named item in this array in the template. Named items from the template will be created even without a matching item in the input figure, but you can modify one by making an item with templateitemname matching its name, alongside your modifications (including visible: false or enabled: false to hide it). If there is no template or no matching item, this item will be hidden unless you explicitly show it with visible: true.
  62. Sets the thickness of the bar as a fraction of the total thickness of the gauge.
  63. Sets the color of the threshold line.
  64. Sets the width (in px) of the threshold line.
  65. Sets the thickness of the threshold line as a fraction of the thickness of the gauge.
  66. Sets a threshold value drawn as a line.
  67. Assigns id labels to each datum. These ids for object constancy of data points during animation. Should be an array of strings, not numbers or any other type.
  68. HTML font family - the typeface that will be applied by the web browser. The web browser will only be able to apply a font if it is available on the system which it operates. Provide multiple font families, separated by commas, to indicate the preference in which to apply fonts if they aren't available on the system. The Chart Studio Cloud (at https://chart-studio.plotly.com or on-premise) generates images on a server, where only a select number of fonts are installed and supported. These include "Arial", "Balto", "Courier New", "Droid Sans",, "Droid Serif", "Droid Sans Mono", "Gravitas One", "Old Standard TT", "Open Sans", "Overpass", "PT Sans Narrow", "Raleway", "Times New Roman".
  69. Sets the title of the legend group.
  70. Sets the legend rank for this trace. Items and groups with smaller ranks are presented on top/left side while with "reversed"legend.traceorder` they are on bottom/right side. The default legendrank is 1000, so that you can use ranks less than 1000 to place certain items before all unranked items, and ranks greater than 1000 to go after all unranked items.
  71. Sets the width (in px or fraction) of the legend for this trace.
  72. Assigns extra meta information associated with this trace that can be used in various text attributes. Attributes such as trace name, graph, axis and colorbar title.text, annotation text rangeselector, updatemenues and sliders label text all support meta. To access the trace meta values in an attribute in the same trace, simply use %{meta[i]} where i is the index or key of the meta item in question. To access trace meta in layout attributes, use %{data[n[.meta[i]} where i is the index or key of the meta and n is the trace index.
  73. Determines how the value is displayed on the graph. number displays the value numerically in text. delta displays the difference to a reference value in text. Finally, gauge displays the value graphically on an axis.
  74. HTML font family - the typeface that will be applied by the web browser. The web browser will only be able to apply a font if it is available on the system which it operates. Provide multiple font families, separated by commas, to indicate the preference in which to apply fonts if they aren't available on the system. The Chart Studio Cloud (at https://chart-studio.plotly.com or on-premise) generates images on a server, where only a select number of fonts are installed and supported. These include "Arial", "Balto", "Courier New", "Droid Sans",, "Droid Serif", "Droid Sans Mono", "Gravitas One", "Old Standard TT", "Open Sans", "Overpass", "PT Sans Narrow", "Raleway", "Times New Roman".
  75. Sets a prefix appearing before the number.
  76. Sets a suffix appearing next to the number.
  77. Sets the value formatting rule using d3 formatting mini-languages which are very similar to those in Python. For numbers, see: https://github.com/d3/d3-format/tree/v1.4.5#d3-format.
  78. Sets the horizontal alignment of the title. It defaults to center except for bullet charts for which it defaults to right.
  79. HTML font family - the typeface that will be applied by the web browser. The web browser will only be able to apply a font if it is available on the system which it operates. Provide multiple font families, separated by commas, to indicate the preference in which to apply fonts if they aren't available on the system. The Chart Studio Cloud (at https://chart-studio.plotly.com or on-premise) generates images on a server, where only a select number of fonts are installed and supported. These include "Arial", "Balto", "Courier New", "Droid Sans",, "Droid Serif", "Droid Sans Mono", "Gravitas One", "Old Standard TT", "Open Sans", "Overpass", "PT Sans Narrow", "Raleway", "Times New Roman".
  80. Sets the title of this indicator.
  81. Controls persistence of some user-driven changes to the trace: constraintrange in parcoords traces, as well as some editable: true modifications such as name and colorbar.title. Defaults to layout.uirevision. Note that other user-driven trace attribute changes are controlled by layout attributes: trace.visible is controlled by layout.legend.uirevision, selectedpoints is controlled by layout.selectionrevision, and colorbar.(x|y) (accessible with config: {editable: true}) is controlled by layout.editrevision. Trace changes are tracked by uid, which only falls back on trace index if no uid is provided. So if your app can add/remove traces before the end of the data array, such that the same trace has a different index, you can still preserve user-driven changes if you give each trace a uid that stays with it as it moves.
  82. Sets the number to be displayed.
  83. Determines whether or not this trace is visible. If "legendonly", the trace is not drawn, but can appear as a legend item (provided that the legend itself is visible).