Conditional Colors

Make your KPIs stand out. Improve the look of your dashboard and get a better visual overview of your performance with conditional colors.

Last updated: Feb. 7, 2023

What are conditional colors?
How to add conditional colors?
Change the widget background color
Custom conditional colors

What are conditional colors?

Conditional colors are a set of three colors – red, yellow and green – that help you identify your progress with visual cues. Add conditions such as milestones or targets to your formulas and see the dashboard widgets change color based on your performance.

If the widget is green, it means you've reached your target. If yellow, you still have to work on it... you get the idea. You determine the conditions. Make sure you know the milestones and your business targets to create the most accurate setup.

How to add conditional colors?

You can add the conditional colors in the formula editor. Read about the formula editor here. Once added, the conditional colors will appear automatically and update along with your progress.

Go to Formulas in Plecto.
Create a new or open an existing formula.
Here you can set your own conditions and choose the color they should match. You don't have to use all three colors; add just one or two, depending on your needs.

Examples of adding different conditional color options in the formula editor.

You can add both numbers and text in the conditional fields. The values you add depend on the field values in your data sources and the number format set in the formula editor. If you want to add conditional colors to a duration format (for example, to see if you subscribe to a good average call handling time), make sure to type in the condition in seconds.

Conditional color fields are case-sensitive

The conditions must be typed out exactly the same way they appear in the data source. This is more relevant to the text conditions. For example, if the fields in your data source say CLOSED, you must add the same word, all capitalized, in the conditional color field.

You can use the conditional colors as widget background on number box and speedometer widgets. Enable the Use conditional colors as background option and see what happens.

Custom conditional colors

Custom conditional colors are supported on number box and speedometer widgets. Enable the Use custom conditional colors option in the widget settings. This allows you to customize the widget without adding conditional colors to the entire formula.

Two functionalities

Custom conditions work in two ways, depending on if you only add actual value (one formula) or actual and target values (two formulas) to the widget.

1) Widgets showing only the actual value

If you add only one formula to the widget, the custom conditional colors will work as custom targets. It is essentially the same as adding them in the formula editor.

Conditional and Custom Conditional colors are separate

Custom conditional colors override any conditional colors added to the formula, but they don't update the conditional colors in your formulas. You can have conditional colors in your formula and still use the custom conditional colors on the widget.

2) Widgets showing the actual and target values

If you have two formulas, actual and a target value, you have something to measure by. The custom conditional colors will then convert to thinking in percentages and display the default parameters: 0% (red), 80% (yellow), and 100% (green). You can edit the numbers according to your needs.

For example, you have achieved 186 new leads during the current week, and your target is 200. With the custom condition set to 0%, 80%, and 100%, you will see the number 186 in yellow since 186 is 90% of 200, and the margin for displaying yellow is 80%.