Dashboard widgets - Charts

Angie Hatfield

I just want to tell everyone that with the additions of the chart widget, I am really loving our dashboards.

 

I do wish the legends were editable and the selections didn't have to be side by side.

I got around this by creating a second sheet and linking cells to the needed data. I could then create the labels I need and use one sheet to put data side by side into columns. I do have to repeat columns to get the data to be used for other charts, but having this new widget is worth it.

THANKS A MILLION!

Sasan

Angie,

Very much appreciated!  Thank you for your feedback on legend and data selection and will consider for future enhancements.  

Sincerely,

Sasan

Chuck Muirhead

Yes...loving the charts update...we can finally present a dashboard that is not just full of text....and numbers.....I can now cancel my subscription to the other software I was using to facilitate BI Dashboards.  Still needs some growth, but it solves 95% of my needs. 

Sasan

Thank you Chuck, very much appreciated and a pleasure.

Sasan

Jeremy Lindsey

Angie...

Could you post (or send direct) a screenshot of your work around for labels? I'm looking to get Task/Project names from the Primary Column as the labels for the X or Y axis. Is this what you were able to accomplish?

Thanks!

Jeremy

Angie Hatfield

Hi Jeremy,

Attached is a copy of the data sheet I set up.

You can see the first set of rows are set up 2017, then 2018, alternating columns.

I then set up columns for 2018 months and set a formula to pull the info from the year columns in order to set up the comparison charts.

Jeremy Lindsey

Thanks for the info! I did something similar (not as extensive) to pull in needed info to be side by side. But the thing I'm wondering is if this gave you labels on the horizontal axis. I have a good number of projects that are pulling into the chart, and I want to able to label them somehow, pulling from the Primary Column would be best. Some kind of text where the green marks are in the attached image.

Were you able to do this?

Angie Hatfield

It did show them, but the chart had to be stretched vertically quite a bit. I also was not able to figure out how to get the column colors contrasting. They are all blue.

Because of these two, I have scraped this particular chart (for now) although I know it will be useful to us.

I admit I have not yet gone and watched any videos on this. I am a hands on-figure it out myself person so I'm probably missing something vital by not yet doing so.

What not as extenstive way did you use to get the data into yours?

 

 

Jeremy Lindsey

Ah, I see. So your sheet that pulled everything adjacent to each other works the best. It has to build around the columns.

I have a couple different project management sheets, one for general data, organized one row per project, and then one sheet for project budget information. I used VLOOKUP to add the 'contract' and 'spent' columns to the general sheet from the budget sheet, then I was able to generate the chart in the previous image. Obviously this is where the two colors come from. The other reason I couldn't generate it from the budget sheet was that I had children rows under each project row, and the charts have to have everything expanded. It can't focus on parents only.

I wanted to be able to have all the row by row data to help discern what each of those red/blue bars are describing. But it looks like columns get the hierarchy so looks like I'll have to tackle it a different way.

Thanks for sharing information! And stay with the hands-on approach...test it till you break it is the best way

Sasan

Jeremy,

That's very odd.  Would you be able to provide a screenshot of your data range.  There is also a check box called "Use first column as labels".  Is that box checked?

 

Thanks

Sasan

Angie Hatfield

I agree, charting from parent rows would be helpful. Having the ability to do so  would eliminate one of my needs for another sheet linking the month to month data.

I'm confident SS won't make us wait too long before providing the ability to chart data from different sheets, non-consecutive columns or rows.

They are pretty good about enhancements.

 

Jeremy Lindsey

Hi Sasan...

Yes, I did play with that option, but it seems to have some limits on the size, meaning that not all my project names get listed below the bar graph.

This also comes after I move the desired contract/spent columns next to my primary column, which is not where I want them. Once I move them back after creating the chart, the data selection ends of being all the columns between my primary and desired columns. That's why I only selected the two columns shown below. And when I do this, the "first column" option doesn't give me the project names I'm looking for.

I do agree with Angie in that I'm sure it will get worked out. Conceptually, this request comes from a system where we are trying to manage quite a few layers of work for a number of projects, so much of this would be a non-issue once charts can be created from Reports.

 

Sasan

Jeremy,

I see, thanks for sharing screenshot.  The range does have to be in a contiguous format at this time.  Thanks also for your feedback and we will take your desired capability into consideration for future enhancements.

Sincerely,

Sasan