KPI traffic lights: detailed rules

This page gives the detailed rules behind the light in the Status column of a KPI scorecard: what counts as nothing registered, what an empty boundary does, exactly how boundaries are scaled through the year, and how sub-rows get their lights. The main rules (direction, green, yellow and red, the target) are in Calculations and traffic lights in a KPI scorecard, and a step-by-step check is in Why is a traffic light red, yellow or missing?.

What counts as nothing registered

Row	Rule
Manual row	A manual row has nothing registered when none of its month cells has a value; it then shows no light. A typed 0 counts as a value, so a manual row whose filled months are all 0 gets a light.
System row	A system row is never treated as having nothing registered. A system row with no matching documents, or with an empty Sum column, is compared as if its sum were 0.

Example: a system row counts nonconformities with Count, green 24 and red 48 (lower is better). In a year with no nonconformities so far, the sum 0 is at or below the scaled green boundary, so the system row shows green. With green higher than red (higher is better), the same empty system row shows red.

A boundary left empty

Situation	How the row is compared
Only the green boundary is filled in	The empty red boundary counts as 0. A row with green 10 and no red boundary is compared as green 10 and red 0, so higher is better.
Only the red boundary is filled in	The empty green boundary counts as 0. A row with red 10 and no green boundary is compared as green 0 and red 10, so lower is better.
Neither boundary is filled in	Both count as 0, so green and red are equal, and a row with equal boundaries shows no light.

The Target field in the row dialog stays disabled until both boundaries are filled in, so a row with only one boundary shows “-” in the scorecard’s Target column even when it shows a light.

Exact scaling of the boundaries

Each year of a scorecard is a separate copy; see KPI year copies and access: detailed rules.

Row, calculation type and year	Scaling factor applied to both boundaries
System row with Sum, Count or Show last registration, in the copy for the current year or for a later year	Today’s day number in the year divided by 365. On 1 February the factor is 32/365. In a leap year the factor is 366/365 on 31 December, so the boundaries are then slightly above their full value.
System row with Sum, Count or Show last registration, in the copy for an earlier year	No scaling; the full boundaries apply.
Manual row with Sum or Count, in the copy for any year	The month number of the latest month that has a value, divided by 12.
Manual row with Show last registration, in the copy for any year	No scaling; the full boundaries apply.
Manual or system row with Average or Average - Sum on months, in the copy for any year	No scaling; the full boundaries apply.

Two consequences:

The scaled boundaries of a system row with Sum, Count or Show last registration grow a little every day. Its light can therefore change from one day to the next without any new document.
On a manual row with Sum or Count, only the latest filled month counts, not how many months are filled. A manual row with a value only in March is compared against 3/12 of its boundaries, even though January and February are empty. This also applies in the copy for an earlier year.

Sub-rows

Rule	Detail
Own light	Each sub-row has its own light, decided by the sub-row’s own sum and the sub-row’s own green and red boundaries, with the same rules as a row.
Scaling on a manual row	On a manual row with Sum or Count, a sub-row’s boundaries are scaled by the latest month that has a value in that sub-row, not in the row above it.
Row and sub-rows are separate	The light of a row does not take its sub-rows’ lights into account, and a sub-row’s light does not affect the row.

Next step

Why is a traffic light red, yellow or missing?