Summary
Displays current snapshot or data over time? Current snapshot
Source data: Field (or metric)
Description: A basic table view of "top x" (or "bottom x") records - similar purpose to Top List Bar
Use case example: Top 5 Companies by ARR
Who is this article for?
Planhat Users who are designing Dashboard and Presentation Pages (e.g. CS Ops)
What are Top List Tables?
Top List Tables are a type of "Table Widget".
They are simple tables designed specifically to show the "top x" (or "bottom x") records of a model, sorted by your choice of property - e.g. top 5 Companies by ARR, as shown in the example below.
You can choose to add in additional columns (i.e. other properties) for added context. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that our third biggest customer (Company) by ARR has a really low CSM Score - we should look into that so they don't churn!
In this simple data table, the data is not interactive - you can't click on or change the data like you could in a live Data Table.
If you wanted to display the "top x" (or "bottom x") in a graphical form, you could use a Top List Bar Chart rather than a Top List Table.
Like the other Table Widgets, Top List Tables show a snapshot of the current data.
Why use Top List Tables?
Top List Tables are a quick, concise way to rank records (e.g. Companies) based on a single property.
For example:
Top 10 Companies by ARR
Top 20 End Users by Total Beats
Top 5 Licenses by MRR
... you get the idea! These help you identify the "most important" records of a model.
Although the default is to rank in descending order, making a "top list" like the name, it's also possible to sort the data in ascending order, effectively making a "bottom list" instead. This could be useful to visualize data such as:
Companies ranked by "Renewal (in days)" in descending order, meaning that the Companies who will renew the soonest (or who are the most overdue!) will be at the top
End Users ranked by "Courses completed last 30 days" (or your choice of Calculated Metric related to usage) so you can see who hasn't been using your product
... this can be used to help you decide where you should focus your attention.
So as you've seen, Top List Tables are a clear, simple view if you want to show ranking of a single property. But you also have the option to display additional properties as columns, although they would not be ranked in the same way. They can be useful as references/context though - we show an example of this in the screenshot above, where we rank Companies by ARR and then show CSM Score as additional info alongside.
How to set up a Top List Table
The main steps are:
Choose a data model (object) - e.g. Company
Choose a "Property" on that data model to rank by - e.g. ARR
Choose a number to limit results by - e.g. 5 (for the top 5)
Within a Dashboard or Presentation Page, click on "Table Widgets" and then "Top List"
You'll see a form that looks like this:
In the "Setup" tab
Choose an "Object" (i.e. data model), e.g. Company
Choose a "Property" (field or metric) on that model, e.g. ARR
📌 Note: Health Score is called "Hlth" in the dropdown
In "Limit results (max no. of items)", specify the maximum number of rows - e.g. 10 if you want to display a top 10
Optionally, if you would like to add a reference property (column), under "Reference Props", click "+ Column" and select your choice of property
Repeat this step if you would like to add an additional reference property/column
📌 Note: Health Score is called "Hlth" in the dropdown
In "Name", you can optionally enter a title for your Widget, which will display within the Widget
An alternative, particularly relevant for Presentation Pages, is to use a separate simple Text Widget if you would like different formatting options
In "Description", you can optionally add a description for your Widget
This will show in the Widget as a tooltip on an "i" icon
An alternative could be to use a simple Text Widget alongside your Top List Table
In the "Customization" tab, you'll see checkboxes that you can select or deselect
If selected, "Sort ascending" arranges the records so the top row is the lowest value (rather than the highest value) - i.e. it turns your Top List Table into a bottom list instead
Click "Add filters" in the top right of the chart preview if you'd like to add a filter
Here you can select a filter so that the Top List Table shows specific data (e.g. only Companies in the Enterprise Tier rather than all Companies)
You can either select from an existing "Company Filter" ...
... or build an "Advanced Filter" from scratch
When you've finished configuring your Top List Table, click the orange "Add widget" button in the bottom right
If you want to go back and edit your Top List Table later on, it's easy to do so. While viewing the Page in Edit mode, mouse over the Widget (Chart), and click on the pencil icon to open up the Widget setup form again.
Pro tips
As we have mentioned elsewhere in this article, you can use the "Sort ascending" checkbox in the "Customization" tab to turn your Top List Table into a "bottom list table" instead. This is great for a variety of use cases where you want to highlight records (e.g. Companies or End Users) with the lowest values for a property, rather than the highest values - e.g. when the renewal is the fewest number of days away.
Comparison with other Widgets
Top List Tables are most closely related to Top List Bar Charts and Data Table Widgets.
Top List Bar Chart
Here's the same data displayed in a Top List Table and a Top List Bar Chart.
The Top List Bar Chart has the advantage that it makes relative sizes more obvious to see - e.g. it's easier to see in the Top List Bar Chart above that the top Company, Samsung, has a much bigger ARR than the next three highest Companies, who all have similar ARR.
The Top List Table has the advantage that you can display additional properties as references (additional columns) if you like (example shown here), great for additional context, and this isn't possible in a Top List Bar Chart. Top List Bar Charts can display reference values (horizontal lines), which is good for targets, and that isn't possible in a Top List Table.
Data Table
Here's the same data displayed in a Top List Table and a Data Table Widget.
The Top List Table is designed specifically for ranking based on one property, and it's very simple to set up and shows this data in a streamlined way.
Data Tables are much more flexible in that they can be used to display a wider variety of data, but it's possible to configure them to show data equivalent to a Top List Table, like in the example above. This takes a little more setup than a Top List Table.
Data Tables have the advantage that the data is live and interactive - so, taking the examples above, in the Data Table you could actually change the CSM Score, or open a Company Preview or full-page Profile, but you couldn't interact with the data in the Top List Table.
If you will be automatically sharing PDFs of Pages by email, described here, note that any Data Tables would show as blank in a PDF because they are for live data only, so in this case, a Top List Table would be the better option.