Show how a quantity flows between categories. Link width represents the measure moving from a source to a target. Use it for transitions, allocations or transfers; use a hierarchy chart when the relationship is simply parent and child.

Prepare source, target and weight

1. Add Components → Charts → Flow & breakdown → Sankey (a new Sankey is 480 × 320 px) and choose an Analysis model in Data.
2. Put the origin dimension in Source, the destination dimension in Target, and the flow quantity in Measure. Each group takes one field.
3. Set Filters to the required population and period.
4. Inspect a source-target table with the same measure before relying on the diagram.

To reverse the direction, drag the field from Source onto Target: the two fields swap and keep their settings.

For example, a channel-transition dataset could contain Previous Channel, Current Channel and Customer Count. These are illustrative field roles; use the equivalent fields in your own model. Each source-target pair needs a meaningful, non-negative weight.

Do not use percentages with different denominators as if they were additive flows. Decide whether one customer can contribute to several links; repeated transitions and unique-customer counts answer different questions.

Make paths readable

Option (Style)	Effect	Default
Data labels → Show	Node names.	On
Data labels → Font	Font of the node names.
Data labels → Display units, Decimal places	Unit and decimals of the values; see Display units and decimal places.	Auto for new Sankeys; Follow measure format in reports from earlier versions
Tooltip → Show Tooltip	Hover tooltip with the exact value; see Tooltips.	On

There are no settings for node width, node gap, orientation or link colors, and nodes are not reordered to reduce crossings. Give the chart enough width for the stages and enough height for the node count. Filter low-value paths or focus on one part of the process when labels and links overlap.

Keep names distinguishable when the same label can occur at different stages. A Source named Other and a Target named Other may be hard to interpret without stage context.

Hover and click

• Hover a link or node to emphasize only that link or node; the rest of the diagram does not fade.
• Click a node to fade every node and link not connected to it and filter the other components on the page by it; see Cross-filtering.

Read the flow

Follow a few paths from left to right and verify that their direction matches the business definition.

Incoming and outgoing amounts need not balance if the dataset covers only part of the process or uses different populations. Investigate the scope before describing missing flow as loss. If the diagram cannot form a useful flow, check self-links, cycles, missing endpoints and negative values, then simplify the model or use a table.

Opening reports made before 10.00

• Hovering no longer fades the other flows, and the hover highlight no longer stays after the pointer leaves the chart.

Use Funnel for a sequential stage-total comparison, Sunburst for a hierarchy, and Decomposition tree for interactive dimensional breakdowns.