Guides 15 pages, all live in your browser
Guides
Two kinds of guide. Chart guides build one chart step by step in Tableau and SQL, running live on the xmetric engine. Buyer's guides answer which tool to pick for a specific job, with every vendor fact linked to its source and dated.
Build a chart
Each chart assembles itself as you scroll, with Tableau's shelves for the finished version.
- Chart guideHow do I build a waterfall chart?Build a waterfall (bridge) chart from a running total and a negative-size Gantt bar. Watch it assemble step by step, then run it on your CSV.
- Chart guideHow do I build a KPI card that compares this month with last month?Build a KPI card that compares this month to date with the same days of last month or last year, anchored to the latest date in your data.
- Chart guideHow do I build a small multiples chart?Split a crowded line chart into a grid of small panels that share an axis. Wrap any dimension into rows and columns with INDEX(), step by step.
- Chart guideHow do I plot latitude and longitude from a CSV on a map?Turn latitude and longitude columns into a point map, fix the single-dot and (0, 0) problems, then bin points into a grid to find the real hotspot.
Choose a tool
The verdict first, then a sourced comparison and a live demo on a real-shaped file.
- How do I open a Tableau .twbx file without a Tableau license?For someone who was emailed a .twbx, or inherited one from a colleague who left, and has no Tableau seat
- Which free BI tool should a small nonprofit use?For the one person at a small nonprofit who owns the donor spreadsheet and has to report to the board
- Which free BI tool should I use for my data class?For a student in an intro data visualisation or statistics course with an assignment due and a laptop that won't run the course software
- Which free BI tool should a freelance data consultant use?For a freelance analyst handed a client's order export on Monday with a question due Friday
- Which BI tool should a startup on MacBooks use?For a founder or first ops hire at a seed-stage startup, on a MacBook, with a Stripe export and a board meeting on Thursday
- Which BI tool should an agency use to report to its clients?For an agency account lead who sends six clients a monthly performance report and gets asked why CPA moved
- Which BI tools actually run in the browser, and which just run in the cloud?For an operations analyst on a locked-down work laptop who can't install software and wants real analysis on an export
- What's the best way to explore a local Parquet file visually?For a data engineer with an events.parquet from a pipeline who wants to look at it properly before trusting it
- Which data analysis tools work on a confidential file without uploading it?For an HR or finance lead with a payroll file who has been told it must not leave the company laptop
- Is there a ChatGPT data analysis alternative that doesn't upload my file?For a finance or revops analyst who would normally drop the subscription export into ChatGPT, but the file holds customer revenue
- xmetric, Metabase or Data Studio: which BI tool fits a small team?For the founder or ops lead of a 10-person online shop who answers the revenue questions from Shopify exports
- Use xmetric in ChatGPT and ClaudeConnect the public file-app server and see what a local report shares.
- Box plot makerMedians, quartiles and whiskers from your own file.
- Bullet chart makerActuals against targets with threshold bands.
- Heat map generatorA colored grid of two categories and a measure.
- Slope chart makerTwo points in time, one line per category.
- Gantt chart makerTasks against time from a start and end column.
- Dual-axis chart makerTwo measures on one chart with their own axes.