Understanding Highlights vs. Unique Data Points in Charts

Marianne H. · 2025-09-18T13:26:30.167Z

Hello everyone, I love the chart feature but I don't understand what's the difference between `Number of highlights` and `Unique data points`. Can someone help me out here?

Dovetail Champions

Understanding Highlights vs. Unique Data Points in Charts | Dovetail Champions

3 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Jazmin
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Hi Marianne, Thanks for reaching out. 👋 Happy to help out! By default, the chart metric will be Number of highlights count. You can choose one of three metrics for your chart: ** Number of highlights: This shows the total count of highlights created on notes. For example, if you have 6 notes and added 14 highlights across these, the count would show 14. ** Notes by tag (Unique data points): This is very similar to highlights by tag however it will only count a highlight at most once per note. Using the example above, the count would show 6 rather than 14. ** *Word count: This count shows the total character count per highlight. If your data is customer interview transcripts or user feedback, this metric can be useful to help you get an understanding of how much importance the subject places on this topic. The help center article can be found here.
Marianne H.
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Cool. Makes sense. But what exactly is considered a note? In my case I got a page filled with different tables. Is the page considered as one note? Or the table? I'm not sure if I use it correctly. What I am actually interested in is to see how often I used a certain tag in a distinct time frame to make a proper reporting for my long term survey. As I understand it, highlights and tags are not the same so what is the correct setting to use?
Jazmin
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Hi Marianne, You'll see "Data" and "Note" used interchangeably throughout our documentation, as it used to be called "Note" but is now called "Data". So, in this case, your entire page is considered a Data (note). You can filter your chart by tag. To do this, click Add filter. You can filter your chart by specific data or insight fields, highlight text content, or tags. Filter by a tag to see commonly co-occurring themes in your tags. Instructions can be found in the article I shared earlier. We also have an article here on how Dovetail is organized that may be helpful to you. Let us know if there is anything else we can help with. Have a great day! 😊

Jazmin
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·
Hi Marianne, Thanks for reaching out. 👋 Happy to help out! By default, the chart metric will be Number of highlights count. You can choose one of three metrics for your chart: ** Number of highlights: This shows the total count of highlights created on notes. For example, if you have 6 notes and added 14 highlights across these, the count would show 14. ** Notes by tag (Unique data points): This is very similar to highlights by tag however it will only count a highlight at most once per note. Using the example above, the count would show 6 rather than 14. ** *Word count: This count shows the total character count per highlight. If your data is customer interview transcripts or user feedback, this metric can be useful to help you get an understanding of how much importance the subject places on this topic. The help center article can be found here.
Marianne H.
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·
Cool. Makes sense. But what exactly is considered a note? In my case I got a page filled with different tables. Is the page considered as one note? Or the table? I'm not sure if I use it correctly. What I am actually interested in is to see how often I used a certain tag in a distinct time frame to make a proper reporting for my long term survey. As I understand it, highlights and tags are not the same so what is the correct setting to use?
Jazmin
·
·
Hi Marianne, You'll see "Data" and "Note" used interchangeably throughout our documentation, as it used to be called "Note" but is now called "Data". So, in this case, your entire page is considered a Data (note). You can filter your chart by tag. To do this, click Add filter. You can filter your chart by specific data or insight fields, highlight text content, or tags. Filter by a tag to see commonly co-occurring themes in your tags. Instructions can be found in the article I shared earlier. We also have an article here on how Dovetail is organized that may be helpful to you. Let us know if there is anything else we can help with. Have a great day! 😊