Tile Tool Sort Direction

[J_son]

When using the equal sum option in the Tile tool, you have the choice to sort by a column. However, it's not clear from the tool whether the data is being sorted in ascending or descending order.

Confusingly, the data is sorted in descending order, compared to the default of ascending in the Sort tool. This seems counterintuitive, as a user would expect the same defaults across tools (we did! and it caused some consternation when we worked out it wasn't) and also because in most of our use cases, you want the highest tile to be the highest rank, e.g., if you were sorting households by income.

I have two possible suggestions:

     1. Update the tool properties so that it reads "Sort column (descending)". (Probably the easiest change!)

     2. Allow the user to specify a direction with another drop down that becomes active when you select a sort field (similar to the sort tool).

I know that the functionality of suggestion 2 is available by adding a Sort tool before the Tile and sorting the data in ascending order. However, having to do that every time seems to defeat the point of being able to sort in the Tile tool.

Thanks for reading!

Jason

Standard Tile configuration:

Option 1 (mock-up):

 

Option 2 (mock-up):

[KylieF]

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