Explore recipe: Working with stacked charts

<div class="body">
<div class="article-banners">
<div id="docs-wmp-link"><a href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5411234991258-plan" rel="noopener" target="_blank">What's my plan?</a></div>
<div class="article-banner" id="suite_pee">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>All Suites</strong>
</td>
<td>Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="article-banner" id="support_with_explore_pe">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Support with</strong>
</td>
<td>Explore Professional or Enterprise</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
<p class="p">A <em class="ph i">stacked</em> chart breaks down each bar or column in a chart into subsections of the total. For example, if you've created a column chart displaying tickets by ticket type, you could further break each column down by ticket priority. This can be particularly useful when you want to see a visual representation of which items are having the most influence on a category total.</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Tickets by ticket type column chart</strong></p>
<p class="p"><img alt="" class="image img-screenshot" id="Explore_recipe_stacked_chart__image_mmr_qjv_3jb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_recipe_stacked_1.png" width="850"></p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Tickets by ticket type column chart broken down by ticket priority</strong></p>
<p class="p"><img alt="" class="image img-screenshot" id="Explore_recipe_stacked_chart__image_m1k_fkv_3jb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_recipe_stacked_2.png" width="850"></p>
<p class="p">In this recipe, you'll learn how to create stacked charts and work through an example.</p>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_axz_lz5_3jb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">What you'll need</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p" dir="ltr">Skill level: <em class="ph i">Easy</em></p>
<p class="p" dir="ltr">Time Required: <em class="ph i">5 minutes</em></p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_axz_lz5_3jb__ul_snd_wqx_4fb">
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Zendesk Explore Professional or Enterprise</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Editor or Admin permissions (see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836002970-Adding-users-to-Explore" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Giving agents access to Explore</a>)</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Ticket data in Zendesk Support</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested1" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title3">Creating a stacked chart</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">In this example, you'll create the stacked column chart from the introduction of this recipe. The chart shows the number of tickets by type (question, incident, problem, or task) and then breaks this down further by the ticket priority (low, normal, high, or urgent).</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">To create the stacked chart</strong></p>
<ol class="ol" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__ol_rlj_wlv_3jb">
<li class="li" dir="ltr">In Explore, click the reports ( <img alt="" class="image" height="16" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__image_vnd_wqx_4fb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_query_icon.png" width="16">) icon.</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">In the Reports library, click <strong class="ph b">New report</strong>.</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">On the <strong>Select</strong> <strong class="ph b">a dataset</strong> page, click <strong>Support</strong> &gt; <strong>Support - Tickets</strong>, then click <strong class="ph b">Start report</strong>. The report builder opens.</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Next, add your metrics, the things you want to measure; in this case, the number of tickets created. In the <strong class="ph b">Metrics</strong> panel, click <strong class="ph b">Add</strong>.</li>
<li class="li">From the list of metrics, choose <strong class="ph b">Tickets</strong> &gt; <strong class="ph b">Tickets</strong>, then click <strong class="ph b">Apply</strong>. Explore displays the number of tickets in your Zendesk Support instance.</li>
<li class="li">In the <strong class="ph b">Columns</strong> panel, click <strong class="ph b">Add</strong>.</li>
<li class="li">From the list of attributes, choose <strong class="ph b">Ticket</strong> &gt; <strong class="ph b">Ticket type</strong>, then click <strong class="ph b">Apply</strong>. Explore displays the number of tickets broken down by ticket type. If the chart is not displayed as a column chart, you can change this from the visualization type menu ( <img alt="" class="image" height="16" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__image_vnd_wqx1_4fb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_visualization_type.png" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;" width="16"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">).</span>
</li>
<li class="li">In the <strong class="ph b">Rows</strong> panel, click <strong class="ph b">Add</strong>.</li>
<li class="li">From the list of attributes, choose <strong class="ph b">Ticket</strong> &gt; <strong class="ph b">Ticket priority</strong>, then click <strong class="ph b">Apply</strong>. Explore displays the number of tickets broken down by ticket type. Using the row selector, you can select which ticket priorities to display though often, you'll click the row selector heading to select all rows. Each priority displays as a separate column on the chart. Next, you'll group these priority columns together to create a cleaner looking stacked column chart.
<p class="p"><img alt="" class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__image_hmd_3dw_3jb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_recipe_stacked_3.png" width="850"></p>
</li>
<li class="li">From the Chart configuration menu ( <img alt="" class="image" height="16" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__image_dwv_kdw_3jb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_chart_configuration.png" width="16">) , click <strong class="ph b">Chart</strong>.</li>
<li class="li">On the <strong class="ph b">Chart</strong> page, enable <strong class="ph b">Stacked</strong>. Make sure the other options on this page are not selected.
<div class="p">
<div class="note note">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> To find out more about the other stacking options, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408833603482" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Using stacked charts to display results</a>.</div>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
<p class="p">Explore displays the column chart with the values for ticket priority stacked together.</p>
<p class="p"><img alt="" class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_xrl_mz5_3jb__image_fgq_bqw_3jb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/Explore_recipe_stacked_2.png" width="850"></p>
</div>
</div>
<script id="docs-schema-markup" type="application/ld+json">{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408820356122",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408820356122-Explore-recipe-Working-with-stacked-charts",
"headline": "Explore recipe: Working with stacked charts",
"description": "You can create stacked charts to visually break down data categories by subsections, such as ticket type and priority, to analyze their influence on totals in your reports.",
"articleSection": "Other reporting recipes",
"datePublished": "2021-10-16T03:29:35+00:00",
"dateModified": "2025-09-06T00:07:07+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408820356122"
},
"author": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com"
},
"isPartOf": {
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Zendesk Help",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/"
},
"about": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Zendesk",
"@id": "https://www.zendesk.com",
"softwareAddOn": {
"@type": "SoftwareApplication",
"name": "Explore",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/4405298856346"
}
}
}</script>