Traffic Lighting
Highlight metric performance by applying traffic colors to your visual.
Overview
Traffic lighting is a monitoring system that uses the colors red, amber, and green to indicate the performance of a metric against set targets. You set targets by applying simple conditional formatting rules to the chart so that the metric appears:
- Green to indicate good performance, the metric is on or above target.
- Amber to indicate concerning performance, the metric is off target but in an acceptable range.
- Red to indicate bad performance, the metric is off target and in a range that requires attention.
Add traffic lighting to your charts to show how your company is performing and immediately identify where you need to focus your review.
Tip: Watch this video to learn how to add traffic lighting to your visual.
For example, the following illustration shows a Breakdown of Headcount grouped by Organization Hierarchy. To monitor the performance of the Headcount metric, the following traffic lighting rules were applied:
- Metric value is greater than 500, traffic light as Good.
- Metric value is greater than or equal to 250, traffic light as Concerning.
- Metric value is less than 250, traffic light as Bad.
Traffic lighting rules can be set by comparing a metric to one of the following:
Note: The examples in the following table build off the previous example where traffic lighting is being applied to a Breakdown of Headcount by Organization Hierarchy. In this example, the visual items consist of the groupings: Operations, Sales, Finance, and more.
| Rule Type | Description | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Metric value | The metric value for each visual item is compared to a target value. |
Rule: If the metric value is less than 250, traffic light as Bad. For example, the Headcount for Sales is compared to the target value of 250 in the selected period. If the Headcount value for Sales is less than 250, then the visual item will be highlighted in red. |
| Change in metric value | The metric value for each visual item in the selected time period is compared to the metric value from a previous time period. |
Rule: If the change from February 2020 is less than 5%, traffic light as Good. For example, the Headcount for Marketing is compared to the Headcount for Marketing in February 2020. If the percentage change from the previous time period is less than 5%, then the visual item will be highlighted in green. |
| Difference from group | The metric value for each visual item is compared to the metric value of another population. |
Rule: If the difference from Women is greater than 20%, traffic light as Bad. For example, the Headcount for Marketing is compared to the Headcount for Women in Marketing. If the percentage change from the other population is greater than 20%, then the visual item will be highlighted in red. |
| Difference from another metric | The metric value for each visual item is compared to another metric. |
Rule: If the difference from Employee Exit Count is greater than 500%, traffic light as Bad. For example, the Headcount for Finance is compared to the Employee Exit Count for Finance. If the percentage change from the other metric is greater than 500%, then the visual item will be highlighted in red. |
| Difference from metric overall | The metric value for each visual item is compared to the overall value of another metric. |
Rule: If the difference from Employee Exit Count is greater than 200%, traffic light as Concerning. For example, the Headcount for Finance is compared to the Employee Exit Count for the entire organization. If the percentage change from the overall value of the other metric is greater than 200%, then the visual item will be highlighted in amber. |
Traffic lighting can be added to the following visual types:
- Breakdown
- Trend (with no groupings)
- Trend breakdown (with no groupings)
- Table (with one metric)
To add traffic lighting to your visual, click the Traffic light button 
on the Visual Actions menu. For more information, see Add Traffic Lighting Rules and Traffic Lighting Examples.
How traffic lighting rules are evaluated
The traffic lighting rules are evaluated in the order they appear in the Info panel from top to bottom. Once a rule is met, the remaining rules are not evaluated.
For example, you applied the following traffic lighting rules to the Breakdown of Headcount grouped by Organization Hierarchy:
- Metric value is greater than or equal to 250. Traffic light as Concerning.
- Metric value is greater than 500. Traffic light as Good.
- Metric value is less than 250. Traffic light as Bad.
As shown in the following illustration, the headcount for Operations is 550 and its metric value is highlighted as concerning (amber) and not good (green).
In this case, the headcount for Operations meets the first condition, so the remaining rules are not evaluated. To put your traffic lighting rules in the correct order, see Reorder Traffic Lighting Rules.