Build waffle charts with Kibana

Waffle charts display data as a 10x10 grid of small squares, where each square represents 1% of the whole. They are ideal for showing percentages, visualizing survey results, and making proportions intuitive by representing data as discrete units. They work best with fewer than 10 categories.

Like pie charts, waffle charts show part-to-whole relationships. However, waffle charts make it easier to compare similarly-sized proportions (for example, 23% vs. 27%) because areas in a grid are easier to distinguish than angles in a circle. Choose a pie chart when you have a small number of slices (2-4) with clearly different sizes, or when you want to use a donut layout.

You can create waffle charts in Kibana using Lens.

Before you start, make sure you have data indexed into Elasticsearch or install sample data. By default, Lens uses data views to access your Elasticsearch data. Data views are created automatically in most cases when you ingest data. You can also create one manually to select just the data that you want. Alternatively, you can use the ES|QL query mode to query your Elasticsearch data directly.

To build a waffle chart:

You can use Multiple metrics to show progress toward a goal, with filled squares for completed work and empty squares for remaining work.

This example uses the Kibana Sample Data eCommerce data set. If you haven't installed it yet, refer to Sample data for instructions.

1. Create a Waffle chart using the Kibana Sample Data eCommerce data view.
2. Open Layer settings:
   • Select Layer settings.
   • Select , then select Layer settings.
3. Select Multiple metrics, then close the layer settings.
4. Add two metrics:
   • Revenue earned: Set to Sum of taxful_total_price. Name it "Revenue earned" and assign a green color.
   • Remaining to goal: Set to a formula: 500000 - sum(taxful_total_price). Name it "Remaining to goal" and assign a gray color.
5. The chart shows how close revenue is to the $500,000 target. Each green square represents 1% of the goal achieved.

Customize your waffle chart to display exactly the information you need, formatted the way you want.

The Group by dimension defines how the waffle is divided into colored sections. Waffle charts support a single Group by dimension.

Data

The Group by dimension supports the following functions:

• Top values: Create sections for the most common values in a field.
  • Field: Select the field to group by. You can add up to 4 fields to create multi-term sections. When multiple fields are selected, each section represents a unique combination of values across those fields. You can reorder the fields by dragging them to change their priority.
  • Number of values: How many top values to display.
  • Rank by: Specifies the dimension the top values are ranked by. Available options:
    • Count of records: Rank by the number of documents containing each value. This is the default when a metric is defined.
    • Alphabetical: Rank by the term key alphabetically. This is the default when no metric is defined.
    • Rarity: Find terms that appear in very few documents, using a rare terms aggregation. You can configure the Max doc count to set the maximum number of documents a term can appear in to be considered rare (default: 1, max: 100). Only available for non-numeric fields and single-field terms.
    • Significance: Find statistically unusual terms compared to the overall data set, using a significant terms aggregation. Only available for keyword fields and single-field terms.
    • Custom: Define a custom metric aggregation to rank by (for example, rank by the sum of a numeric field rather than by count).
  • Rank direction: Ascending or descending order. Disabled when Rank by is set to Rarity or Significance.
  • Collapse by: Aggregate values into a single number using Sum, Average, Min, or Max.
  Advanced settings

  Several advanced options allow you to refine the behavior of the breakdown:

  • Include documents without the selected field: Off by default.
  • Group remaining values as "Other": On by default.
  • Enable accuracy mode: This option improves results for high-cardinality data, but increases the load on the Elasticsearch cluster.
  • Include values: Values from the breakdown dimension to always show a tile for.
  • Exclude values: Values from the breakdown dimension to always exclude from the displayed tiles.
• Date histogram: Group data into time-based buckets.
  • Field: Select the date field to use for the time-based grouping.

  • Include empty rows: This option is on by default. Turn it off to exclude empty rows from the data.

  • Bind to global time picker: Associate the selected field to the Lens or dashboard main time selector.

  • Minimum interval: Define the time interval for aggregating the data. For example, 30s, 20m, 24h, 2d, 1w, 1M

  • Drop partial intervals: Exclude incomplete intervals from the data. This option is off by default.

  • Collapse by: Aggregate values into a single number using Sum, Average, Min, or Max.
• Intervals: Create numeric ranges for continuous data.
  • Field: Select the numeric field to create intervals from.
  • Include empty rows: Include intervals with no matching documents.
  • Collapse by: Aggregate values into a single number using Sum, Average, Min, or Max.
• Filters: Define custom KQL filters to create specific sections.
  • Collapse by: Aggregate values into a single number using Sum, Average, Min, or Max.

Appearance

• Name: Customize the legend label.
• Color mapping: Select a color palette or assign specific colors to categories. Refer to Assign colors to terms for details.

The Metric dimension defines the value for each category, determining how many squares each section occupies.

Data

The value that determines how many squares each category fills. When you drag a field onto the chart, Kibana suggests a function based on the field type. You can use aggregation functions like Sum, Average, Count, Median, and more, or create custom calculations with formulas.

Advanced settings

Depending on the data you defined, several options allow you to apply additional filtering to the data taken into account to compute the final value to show.

Based on the type of visualization you're creating, only some of the following options can be available:

• Normalize by unit: Normalize the metric values to show per unit of time.
• Filter by: Specify a query.
• Reduced time range: Reduce the time range specified on the dashboard's time filter by the specified duration.
• Time shift: Shift the time range by the specified duration. This is useful if the value should use a different time range than the one selected on the dashboard.
• Hide zero values: Don't show values equal to zero. This option is on by default.

Appearance

• Name: Customize the metric label displayed in tooltips and legends.
• Value format: Control how numeric values are displayed (number, percent, bytes, and more).
• Series color: When using multiple metrics without a Group by dimension, assign a specific color to each metric.

When creating or editing a visualization, you can customize the legend from the Legend menu.

Visibility

Specify whether to automatically show the legend or hide it:

• Auto: Show the legend when there are multiple categories.
• Show: Always show the legend (default).
• Hide: Never show the legend.

Width

Control the width of the legend panel: Small, Medium (default), Large, or Extra large.

Show value

Toggle whether to display the numeric value alongside each legend entry. This is enabled by default.

Label truncation

Toggle whether to truncate long legend labels. When enabled, set the Line limit to control how many lines to display before truncating (1-5, default: 1).

The following examples show various configuration options for building impactful waffle charts.

Response status breakdown

Visualize the proportion of successful and failed HTTP requests at a glance:

• Example based on: Kibana Sample Data Logs
• Group by: Filters
  • "Success (2xx/3xx)": response.keyword >= "200" AND response.keyword < "400"
  • "Client errors (4xx)": response.keyword >= "400" AND response.keyword < "500"
  • "Server errors (5xx)": response.keyword >= "500"
• Metric: Count
• Color mapping: Green for success, yellow for client errors, red for server errors

OS distribution

Show the distribution of operating systems used by your website visitors:

• Example based on: Kibana Sample Data Logs
• Group by: machine.os.keyword (Top 5 values)
• Metric: Count