Tiles

Single-value KPI cards — named constants and computed metrics that every formula can reference.

A tile is a named single value on the canvas — a 1×1 cell promoted to a first-class object. Tiles play two roles:

  • A KPI card: Revenue = SUM(Sales.Amount), formatted as currency, sitting at the top of your dashboard and updating live.
  • A named constant: TaxRate = 0.08. Any formula in the document can then use @Amount * (1 + TaxRate) — no hidden cell full of magic numbers.

Tables and tiles share one namespace, so a tile's name works anywhere a table name would.

Creating and editing

Insert → Tile, or drag a small rectangle on empty canvas and choose Tile. With a tile selected, just start typing (or press Enter / F2) to edit its value. A tile's value can be:

  • A literal — number, text, yes/no, or date.
  • A formula — the full formula language, evaluated live: SUM(Sales.Amount), Revenue - Costs, LOOKUP("West", Regions.Name, Regions.Target).
  • Rich text — formatted text for labels, notes, and headings on the canvas. Formatting is per character: select text in the tile editor and use the B / I / U buttons — or Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I / Ctrl+U — to bold, italicize, or underline just that run.
  • A link — the 🔗 button in the tile editor asks for text and a web address, and the tile becomes a clickable link (a support page, a runbook, a dashboard). A tile whose value simply is a URL or email address links itself with no setup. Only web, mailto: and tel: addresses open.

Formatting

Tiles take the same display formats as columns (number, currency, percent, date, yes/no), plus per-tile styling: font family and size, alignment, text color, background color, or even a background image. The title has its own style and can be hidden entirely — a borderless, title-less tile makes a clean text label or section heading for a dashboard.

Conditional formatting works on tiles too. Open the tile's editor and expand Conditional formatting to add the same threshold, text, and Formula is true rules a column takes (color scales and data bars are column-only — a single value has no range). A rule paints the whole card and beats the tile's own background, so a red-when-negative tile shows red. The formula rule is document-scoped: Revenue < Target compares two tiles by name, and SUM(Sales.Amount) > 1000 reads a table directly — the KPI card that goes red below target with no export step.

To point at another tile by its title rather than its value, write Revenue.Title (quoted if the name has spaces: 'Grand Total'.Title) — ="See " & Revenue.Title & " for details". Renaming the tile updates the reference.

Sizing a tile

Right-click a tile → Size to Fit (or Alt+Shift+F with it selected) snaps the card to its own text, so the value and description sit with no scrollbar: Width and Height, Width Only (Alt+Shift+W), or Height Only (Alt+Shift+H). Width is capped — past that the text wraps and the height absorbs it. A tile holding an image, video or audio clip is skipped: its media scales to the card, so there's nothing to fit to.

To collapse and expand a tile in place, open it and check Minimize/maximize controls (off by default). The card then gets − and + buttons: − shrinks it to just its title and pulls the cards below it up; + grows it to fit its content (like Size to Fit, never smaller) and moves the cards below out of the way until you restore it. Minimized is saved with the document; maximized is just a view.

Tiles in formulas

Referencing a tile is just using its name:

@Amount * (1 + TaxRate)        a calc column reading a constant tile
Revenue / Headcount            one KPI computed from two others
IF(Actual > Target, "✓", "✗")  status derived from two tiles

When you rename a tile, every formula referencing it is rewritten automatically. Lineage arrows on the canvas show which tables feed each tile.

Good patterns

  • Assumptions block: a cluster of constant tiles (TaxRate, GrowthRate, FXRate) at the top of a model. Every scenario change is one visible edit.
  • KPI header: formula tiles above the data tables — total, average deal size, count of open items — instead of a "summary" table with one row.
  • Import notes and callouts: rich-text tiles document the sheet right on the canvas (the Excel importer creates one of these listing anything it kept static).
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