Advanced settings

Users have the option to customise elements of a graph's look and feel through the Advanced settings field. This can perform several tasks:

Change the graph and axis titles
Change the font size, colour, and style
Modify the legend position and style

Please note that a number of advanced graph customisations are not currently available with ChartJS.

As of Totara 13, the advanced settings field for Totara graphical reports is written in JSON format to specify custom settings that will work across all charting libraries. If you had specified INI settings in Totara 12 or below, a compatible version of your settings should already be present.

These settings are not specific to a charting library and will work when using both ChartJS and SVGGraph graphs.

Title settings

Setting	Description
text	The title text to show on the graph. Example: "Course Completion Report"
position	Where on the graph to display the title. Allowed values: "top", "left", "bottom", "right"
font	Font to use for the title. Only works if the user has the font installed. Example: "Times New Roman"
fontSize	Size of the text in the title in pixels. Example: 16
fontStyle	Text style to apply to the title Example: "bold"
color	Colour for title text in hexadecimal or rgb Example: "#f0f0f0"
padding	Amount of space around the title text in pixels Example: 5

Example

{
	"title": "Example Graph Title"
}

OR

{
	"title": {
		"text": "Example Graph Title",
		"position": "top",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 16,
		"fontStyle": "bold",
		"color": "#fff",
		"padding": 5
	}
}

Legend settings

Setting	Description
display	Whether to show the legend. Example: true
position	Where on the graph to display the legend. Allowed values: "top", "left", "bottom", "right"
font	Font to use for the legend items. Only works if the user has the font installed. Example: "Times New Roman"
fontSize	Size of the text in the legend in pixels. Example: 16
fontStyle	Text style to apply to the legend. Example: "bold"
color	Colour for legend text in hexadecimal or RGB. Example: "#f0f0f0"
padding	Amount of space around the legend text in pixels. Example: 5

Example

{
	"legend": {
		"display": true,
		"position": "left",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 16,
		"fontStyle": "bold",
		"color": "fff",
		"padding": 5
	}
}

Tooltip settings

Setting	Description
display	Whether to show tooltips. Example: true
backgroundColor	The colour to set the tooltip background. Example: "#dad4da"
font	Font to use in tooltips. Only works if the user has the font installed. Example: "Times New Roman"
fontSize	Size of the text in the tooltip in pixels. Example: 16
fontStyle	Text style to apply to the tooltip. Example: "bold"
color	Colour for tooltip text in hexadecimal or RGB. Example: "#f0f0f0"
borderRadius	The roundness of the edges of the tooltip (in pixels). Example: 2
borderColor	The colour of the tooltip border. Example: "#0a7b92"
borderWidth	The thickness of the tooltip border (in pixels). Example: 2

Example

{
	"tooltips": {
		"display": true,
		"backgroundColor": "#ddd",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 16,
		"fontStyle": "bold",
		"color": "#fff",
		"borderRadius": 5,
		"borderColor": "#0a7b92",
		"borderWidth": 3
	}
}

Axis settings

Axis settings need to be applied to either the "x" or "y" axis. The settings between each axis are identical.

Setting	Description	Notes
display	Whether to show the line for this axis. Example: true	-
title	Axis label for the graph. These use the same settings as the Graph Title.	-
grid	Settings to control the axis grid.	-
grid → display	Whether to show the lines for the axis grid. Example: true	-
grid → color	Colour of the axis grid lines. Example: "#0ff000"	-
max	This is the maximum value of either axis. This value will depend on the values used on your axis, so it could be numerical or alphanumerical, e.g. if the x axis contained a list of months you could set the max to 'April' so that it would not show content past this value, if you wanted to restrict it to the current financial year for example.	If you are using a text value as your maximum this must be a value with data associated to it. For example, if one of your axes is labelled with days of the week and your data includes the values Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then you would not be able to use the setting "max":"Wednesday". This is because there is no Wednesday data in the graph. A numerical value doesn't have this same issue.

Example

{
	"axis": {
		"x": {
			"display": true,
			"max": "April",
			"title": {
				"text": "Horizontal Axis Label",
				"font": "Times New Roman",
				"fontSize": 22,
				"fontStyle": "bold",
				"color": "#fff000",
				"padding": 10
			},
			"grid": {
				"display": true,
				"color": "#fff000"
			}
		},

		"y": {
			"display": true,
			"title": {
				"text": "Vertical Axis Label",
				"font": "Times New Roman",
				"fontSize": 22,
				"fontStyle": "bold",
				"color": "#f0f0ff",
				"padding": 10
			},
			"grid": {
				"display": true,
				"color": "#3a4f3a"
			}
		}
	}
}

Graph colour settings

As of Totara 13.2 it is possible to specify graph colours using both ChartJS and SVGGraph.

Setting	Description
colors	Colours used for the main content of a graph (e.g. different bars on a bar chart). See examples below.

Examples

The default colours used for graph contents are shown here:

{"colors" : [
"#3869B1",
"#DA7E31",
"#3F9852",
"#CC2428",
"#958C3D",
"#6B4C9A",
"#8C8C8C"
]}

You can outline as many colours as you require in the following way:

{"colors": ["#ff0000", "#00ff00", "#0000ff"]}

Progress donut settings

Setting	Description
totalsSupplied	Enable if the second column contains totals.
percentageValues	Enable if the first column contains percentages instead of count.
colorRanges	This setting allows for assigning colours to value ranges. Define an array of percentage values as boundaries for the next colour in the colour set.
backgroundColour	Set the colour of the 'empty' part of the pie chart (i.e. total minus progress value).

Example 1

{
"colors" : ["red", "yellow", "green"],
"colorRanges": [20, 100],
"type" : {
  "progress": {
    "totalsSupplied": true,
    "percentageValues": true
  }
}
}

Progress donuts based on the code example above.

Example 2

{
"colors" : ["red", "yellow", "green"],
"colorRanges": [20, 100],
"type" : {
  "progress": {
    "totalsSupplied": true,
    "percentageValues": false
  }
}
}

Progress donuts based on the code example above.

Example 3

{"colors" : ["green"],
"type" : {
  "progress": {
    "totalsSupplied": true,
    "backgroundColor": "red"
  }
}
}

Progress donuts based on the code example above.

Dataset settings

Setting	Description
fill	Determines whether or not the element is filled, such as the area under the line on an area chart. Example: true
borderDash	The dash style for the stroke of an element. The two numbers provided control the length of each dash and the length of each gap. Example: [15, 5]
borderColor	The stroke colour of the data element (e.g. point, line, bar). Example: #CCFFCC
borderWidth	The stroke width for the element. Example: 3
backgroundColor	The fill colour of the data element (e.g. point, line, bar). Example: #CCFFCC
pointStyle	The appearance of each point on a graph. Example: circle

The settings listed above are just a selection of useful settings

You can find the full list of settings in the ChartJS documentation.

Note that these settings are only available in the ChartJS library, not SVG Graph.

Example

{
    "data-settings": {
         "0": {
             "fill": true,
             "borderDash":[15,5],
             "backgroundColor": "#CCFFCC"
          }
     }
}

A line graph based on the code example above.

Library-specific settings

If you want to write more advanced settings to take advantage of some of the extended capabilities of your charting library, you may use the "custom" settings field to pass settings directly to the library. These will not be cross-compatible.

Official documentation for SVGGraph

Official documentation for ChartJS

SVGGraph Example

{
	"custom": {
		"legend_columns": 3,
		"legend_title_font_weight": "italic",
		"legend_draggable": false
	}
}

ChartJS Example

{
	"custom": {
		"axis": {
			"scales": {
				"yAxes": [{
					"gridLines": {
						"display": false
					}
				}]
			}
		}
	}
}

Full example

{
	"title": {
		"text": "Graph Title",
		"position": "top",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 22,
		"fontStyle": "bold",
		"color": "#ea22a9",
		"padding": 10
	},

	"legend": {
		"display": "true",
		"position": "top",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 16,
		"fontStyle": "italic",
		"color": "#ee22a9",
		"padding": 5
	},

	"tooltips": {
		"display": true,
		"backgroundColor": "#eaeaea",
		"font": "Times New Roman",
		"fontSize": 16,
		"fontStyle": "bold",
		"color": "#1f1f1f",
		"borderRadius": 5,
		"borderColor": "#ee22a9",
		"borderWidth": 1
	},

	"axis": {
		"x": {
			"display": false,
			"title": {
				"text": "Horizontal Axis",
				"font": "Times New Roman",
				"fontSize": 16,
				"fontStyle": "italic",
				"color": "#ea22a9",
				"padding": 10
				"max": "April",
			},
			"grid": {
				"display": true,
				"color": "#eaeaea"
			}
		},

		"y": {
			"display": false,
			"title": {
				"text": "Vertical Axis",
				"font": "Times New Roman",
				"fontSize": 16,
				"fontStyle": "italic",
				"color": "#ea22a9",
				"padding": 10
			},
			"grid": {
				"display": true,
				"color": "#eaeaea"
			}
		}
	}
}