Reworked Empty Chart State to replace "Unable to display chart" in Dashboards

meagans

I wish I could give this idea multiple votes! It's a pain to enter in dummy data (and remember to delete it) for donut and pie charts to be configured properly. This would be a much appreciated improvement.

Charles_M

Hey, uh Smartsheet? You're a project and data analytics software company that specializes in dashboards and you have a broken chart widget that everyone hates…… just saying…

tcer

An empty chart with no error message would be nice… The best would be to ALWAYS show the title so I do not need to waste dashboard space by adding a title bar above it.

Ice98

I prepared a dashboard for a customer showing issues raised based on an intake form. Came back from break to find that my "issues raised in the last week by type" chart widget wasn't accessible or was deleted! I would need to "select a new source". It didn't even display the report name anymore. Obliterated. Yikes!

Of course, it had not been deleted, and it was accessible. It just had no data matching the filter. I added a fake row in the source sheet, saved, and the dashboard populated properly. What an alarmist error message for such a simple explanation. Really glad I only sent screenshots to the customer when the data was populated and didn't share it to have them experience the same alarm I did and then escalate to me.

There is a significant and fundamental difference between there being no data to display from the source and the source having been deleted or made inaccessible. It's not just "new users building dashboards from templates" who find this off-putting. I did not use a template, for instance. Anyone who expects to have a quality product and who is expected to provide a end-user experience to dashboard consumers will find this off-putting. I'm glad to hear this is being addressed - I just hope it's being fully addressed. I'd love to hear more about the timeline and progress to date.

Kyle Chipman

Well summarized @Ice98. We're closing in on four months from the last product team update, in response to an item originally flagged May 2023. I'm also hoping to better understand both the solution and the timetable to implement.