Traffic lighting is a monitoring system that uses the colours red, amber, and green to indicate the performance of a metric against set targets. You set targets by applying conditional formatting rules to the chart so that the metric appears:
Green - Indicates good performance: the metric is on or above target.
Amber - Indicates concerning performance: the metric is off target but in an acceptable range.
Red - Indicates bad performance: the metric is off target and in a range that requires attention.
Traffic lighting can be added to the following visual types:
Breakdown.
Trend - with no groupings.
Trend breakdown - with no groupings.
Table - with one metric.
Traffic lighting rules can be set by comparing a metric to one of the following.
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |