Tag: Excel charts

How to gauge data through charts – Creating Gauge Charts

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation

A common question that comes up in support for XL Cubed is how to add charts that look like a dial, or a gauge. Something like the below:

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These are actually very easy to make and publish to the web, plus they have the further bonus of adding something different to make your reports look more professional.

Once you have your data ready, add a new doughnut chart and configure it to show the information you want it to.

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This will give you a simple doughnut chart.

 

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Next up, pick the cell that contains the information you want to show in the middle of the doughnut chart and reference it in another cell. For example, in the below example we have the two numbers that make up our doughnut chart in cells B3 and B4. Cell E3 contains the information we want to show in the middle of the doughnut chart.

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As you can see, the formatting is different in E3 to the other cells. This is because we have formatted the cell to show the data how we want it to appear in the chart.

Once we are at this stage, it is just a case of transferring the number to the middle of the doughnut chart. You can do this by selecting the formatted cell, in our case E3, copying it and then paste special as a ‘Linked Picture’ anywhere in the worksheet (we will move it into the chart in the next step).

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The ‘Linked Picture’ appears as a cell but it actually acts like a picture so, lastly, move the picture into the middle of the doughnut chart so it looks how you want it, then, right click on the new picture and select ‘Send to Back’

 

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As the cell is a ‘Linked Picture’ Any changes you make to the cell you copied, formatting or data, will update the image.

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Your Gauge Chart is complete! These charts also look good when published to the web.

 

Heatmap Tables with Excel – Revisited

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation

We’ve revisited one of our more popular guides Heatmap Tables with Excel as they can be a very effective way of presenting data on a dashboard, and have now updated it for Excel 2010…

This Heatmap Table is designed to show you the revenues and the discounts of a company over the course of one year per product group. The size of a bubble shows the revenue made in a particular month and the bubble color shows the discount rate given. The discount rate has been encoded as a range of green colors, ranging from a light green, for low discounts to a dark green for high discounts. The years and product totals are shown at the right and bottom as an integrated part of the table.

Tufte often talks about the integration of numbers, images and words; I think he’s quite right. A way to achieve this in Excel is to integrate charts into tables, so called graphical tables, a very effective means to show “More Information Per Pixel“.

The heatmap table is based on a regular Excel bubble chart. To integrate a bubble chart into a table the bubbles are positioned in a matrix that has the same row and column layout as our table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our case we generate a data series table with one column for the X-Series going from 1-12 for January – December and one column for our Y-Series going from 1-8 for our 8 product groups and one column for revenue.

In the sample spreadsheet we’ve setup some simple excel formula to translate data from the classic grid layout:

to the required format:

Now we can insert the bubble chart:

 

To ensure that the charts fit exactly into the table grid we set Min/Max for the X axis to 0.5/12.5 and for the Y axis to 0.5/8.5. Excel would calculate much larger auto scales otherwise. Also set the Major units to 1 so we can use that later to set some grid lines.

 

Now we remove the legend, the X and Y axis, maximize the plot area and align the chart with the Excel table. As the bubbles are initially too large we have to make them smaller. To control the bubble size go to Data Series Options and scale the bubble size to 50%:

 

This already makes a nice bubble table you could use to reproduce the Twitter Charts.

For the grid lines format your table headers and grid lines with light gray grid lines. Resize the plot area, remove the border and re-position the chart so that the chart and the table grid lines align.

To create the heatmap with different colored bubbles we use the fact that by default Excel does not plot data points for #NA values.  For the heatmap we overlay 8 bubble series, one  series per green shade, and show a revenue bubble only if the value fits into the value range that corresponds with a green shade of our color ramp, otherwise we show #NA.

We divide the range MAX(Discount)..0 into 8 groups to define the colours.

The data series columns use the following formula to test if a discount value corresponds with an interval / colour shade:

=IF(AND($E7>I$6-Step,$E7<=I$6),$D7,NA())

The formula returns the revenue, if the discount values is in the interval defined in the column header I$5.

 

 

Now create the eight data series so that the bubble size refers to the eight columns in the data table:

 

And use the Excel chart styles to pick a colour range – make sure you  remove the border from the chart area.

 

 

And you could use the chart styles to quickly switch between different colours – or customise each series to refine the colors.

You can download a starting point for these files here: HeatmapSample.xlsx. Most of the formulae should adapt to data values that you can feed into the data sheets, including data straight from Analysis Services if using XLCubed grids or formulae.

You can see an interactive version of the Heatmap here – we added a link to some cube data, some Slicers for driving the parameters and then published to XLCubedWeb.

 

 

Flexible time-series graphing from a slicer

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation

We are often asked how to drive a chart from a slicer in XLCubed and how to plot days/months for a month or year. Base case this is fairly straightforward, you can set up a grid which is based on the previous ‘x’ months of a slicer selection for example. The difficulty can be where you want to vary the behaviour depending on which level of the hierarchy the user chooses. This is particularly true where the hierarchy contains semesters or quarters.

The example below shows a technique to handle this complexity and display the chart in a way meaningful to the user in each case. The report is based on a slicer that allows the user to switch between showing the graph data based on quarters, months or days.

You can download the Excel spreadsheet that is used in the example here TimeSeriesGraphFromSlicer

This connects to the Adventureworks demo database which ships with Analysis Services.

The diagram below shows the flow of data from each worksheet showing the final result in the sheet Chart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workbook Sheet – Chart

This sheet shows the graph based on the data chosen in slicer above it. This switches the graph data between quarters, months and days depending on the slicer selection.

 

Workbook Sheet – GridForChart

This shows the data that will be graphed, depending on the choice made by the slicer selection. In this example it is months July 2001 – June 2002. FY2002 has been selected by the user (in this example Financial Year 2002 runs from July 2001 – June 2002).

Note that cells A10 – A21 contain the value ‘TRUE’ – these cells contain an XL3RowVisible statement as follows:

=XL3RowVisible(B10<>””)

This statement hides rows with no data so that they are not plotted on the graph.

Workbook Sheet – SlicerToMonthDay

This sheet contains the data that is returned by the choice of the slicer in workbook sheet Chart.

User selects a month

The data will be graphed as days. For example, if the user selects July 2002 then the graph will be displayed with each day in July along the x-axis. These are defined in XLCubed as ‘Children of’ the slicer.

User selects a quarter year

The data will be graphed as months in a three month period. For example, the user selects Q1 FY 2003 and the data displayed is for three months from July 2002 – September 2002 as below. These are defined in XLCubed as ‘Descendants of’ the slicer at month. This will be the same when the user picks year, semester or quarter.

User selects a half-year

The data will be graphed as months in a six-month period. For example, the user selects H1 FY 2003. The screenshot below shows the data that will be graphed.

However, it can be seen that the values Q1 FY 2003 and Q2 FY 2003 should not appear on the graph.

Using the Edit Member functionality it is possible to remove these so that they do not appear as points on the graph.

To do this, edit the Date.Fiscal member and click on Advanced tab.

Click on the drop down next to first member – that member set is the resulting data when the user selects H1 FY 2003 and shows the data that is in cells B10 – B43 in sheet SlicerToMonthDay.

 

The screenshot below shows the data that will be subtracted – it is in effect the actual value selected by the user via the slicer alongside the two Fiscal Semester values Q1 FY 2003 and Q2 FY 2003.

 

The GridForChart sheet now shows just the six months that should be graphed. As explained earlier further manipulation using the XL3RowVisible functionality removes blank rows.

 

The screenshot above shows the graph with six months of data for H1 FY 2003 for months July 2002 – December 2002, and the quarters have been dynamically excluded.

The end result is a flexible time selector where the user can choose dates at different levels in the hierarchy, and will always get a meaningful and in-context time series chart.

 

 

Heatmap Tables with Excel

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation

The following article shows how to create Heatmaps in Excel 2003, for Excel 2007 & 2010 please see the updated article “Heatmap Tables with Excel – Revisited”

This Heatmap Table shows you the revenues and the discounts of a company over the course of one year per product group. The size of a bubble shows the revenue made in a particular month and the bubble color shows the discount rate given. The discount rate has been encoded as a range of green colors, ranging from a light green, for low discounts to a dark green for high discounts. The years and product totals are shown at the right and bottom as an integrated part of the table.

image

Tufte often talks about the integration of number, images, and word, and I think he’s quite right. A way archive this in Excel is to integrate charts into tables, so called graphical tables, a very effective means to archive More Information Per Pixel. I already wrote about graphical tables here, here, and here.

 

Continue reading “Heatmap Tables with Excel”

Hyperlink Legends to Highlight a Series

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation, Reporting & Analytics

So I picked up Jon’s idea and tried to combine it with ParamLink. In  The Missing Link I introduced the (free) ParamLink Add-In. It implements a new hyperlink formula ParamLink(). When the hyperlink is followed the formula can set cell values or define names.

Continue reading “Hyperlink Legends to Highlight a Series”

Small charts are beautiful

XLCubed/ / Charting & Visualisation

Well, since you are reading this, I’ll assume that you took the red pill, so let’s keep moving and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

We saw that people usually design charts larger than they need to be. Why? Is it because we can’t fit the data into a smaller space? No, it isn’t. It is because in smaller charts there is no room for non-data elements, like title, legend, grid lines. In the dominant “Excel chart defaults” school of thinking data is not a priority.

This is a simple exercise that you can try safely at home and demonstrates it clearly. Start by creating a line chart in Excel, like this one:

Excel line chart

You can see the data, right? Now make the chart smaller:

Excel line chart

Here is a fierce territorial competition, and guess who’s winning? Make the chart a little smaller:

Excel line chart

The title and the legend win, as usual. The data must be here somewhere, but who cares?

This chart size is not large enough. Or so it seems. But what happens when we remove some non-data elements? Since we don’t need the legend, and we can put the title somewhere else, we can remove both:

Excel line chart

We are getting our data back! Let’s just leave the data and a simple grid line:

Excel line chart

I used MicroCharts to display the same data using both a line and a column chart:

Sparklines

With MicroCharts, you can add a “normal band” or a reference line that helps you to understand how the data departs from the expected values.

The above charts show percentage change on previous period GDP at market prices in the US (1980-2009). Here is the same data for some selected countries in the EU:

Sparklines

Michelangelo said: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free“. Like him, keep carving your chart until you set your data free. The essence of a chart is the patterns you discover, buried under all the junk. By making your charts smaller you are force to remove that junk.

Finding this “essence” is what sparklines is all about.