The information in a report can be presented in a graphical format, such as a bar chart, line graph, pie chart, etc., providing a quick visual summary of the information.
Permissions are required to work in the Setup and with Reports.
Charts are optional when creating a report. A report does not require a chart to work, and charts can be added to reports later on. Charts are defined on the Chart Type tab, which will come up when creating a report, or is present when editing an existing report.
Since a chart is simply a graphical display of the information in a report, you start by creating the underlying report. All chart creation and options are done on the Chart tab for a report.
Start from the Chart tab when creating a new report or when editing an existing report.
Select the Chart Type from the list. An example of that chart type will appear at the bottom of the page.
Enter a descriptive Title for the chart.
Enter a Header and Footer. These can be used to label the chart to give a description of the information in the chart, such as "Items Sold" and "Daily Sales".
Select the Summary Field. Charts require that there be at least one summary field, which is selected from the Summary tab in Reports.
If needed, select the Grouping. If the report has groups, these can be reflected in the chart. This is only available for charts with grouping options (Summary and Matrix). You need to select a chart that has grouping as well. Grouping allows information to be categorized and presented together, such as showing for each Customer, all their sales grouped together.
If needed select the Sub Grouping. This is another level of grouping below the first, for example, for all Sales, grouped by each customer, then grouped by each item, show the sales. So on a chart it would show for Customer One, for Item One, 5 sales; for Item Two, 3 sales; then for Customer Two, for Item One, 3 sales, for Item Two, 8 sales, etc.
Select where the Legend for the chart will be displayed. The legend shows what the chart elements represent, so yellow could be the color used to show Customer One, blue for Customer 2, etc.
When finished, you can continue to the Preview tab to view the results, add more detail to the chart using the Presentation features (see below), or Click Save to save the new report or changes, or click Cancel to return to the reports list without saving any work or changes.
The Presentation section allows you to make some adjustments to appearance of the report, and in particular for those values for which there may be a lot of very low numbers which would make for a crowded graph. For example, image a pie chart where five items make up 95% of the chart, but another fifteen items make up the remaining 5%. You can arrange those 15 items as an "Other" category, so they only take up one slice of the chart instead of fifteen tiny slices.
Select a Sort By option to order the information on the chart.
Field Name: This will arrange the information by it's name, for example making it easier to find where a particular item or customer may be in the chart.
Field Value: This arranges the information by its value, adding another element to the presentation by showing for example all sales by item from the best selling to the least sold.
Max. Group Records: How many groups will be created for the "Other" category.
Group Records Less Than %: If a record falls below the set percentage, it gets placed into the "Other" group as being too small to have or need it's own item on the chart.
Min. Value / Max. Value: Set a lowest value and highest value for the chart to use. For example, instead of the chart displaying from 0 to 100, it could show from 40 to 90. This prevents large parts of the chart from showing empty space (such as from 0 to 40) if there is no information.
Show Breakpoint Value: If your chart will be using Breakpoint Values, and you want to see those on the chart, select this option. Breakpoint values are used if your chart has a lot of information with lower values, and a lot with much higher values, the chart can adjust to show some more contrast between all the lower values and the higher values (almost like grouping the low and high values together), and show the breakpoint at which this happens. For example, if you had five items with values between 5 and 30, and five items with values between 80 and 95, rather than use a scale of 0 to 100, the chart would scale in such a way as to not display all the values from 40 to 70 (the low and high breakpoints - stop at 40, continue on at 70), so that the chart does have to be excessively long or high to show the whole entire higher value items since the values from 40 to 70 are understood to belong to the high value items anyway, and there are no items with those values to be displayed.
Low / High Breakpoint: Set the values where you want the chart to stop showing information and start again. Essentially it is like cutting out that part of the chart since the values are understood to be there. See Show Breakpoint Value above.
Low / Middle / High Color: This sets the color scheme for the chart, whether it is the lines, bars, or slices of a pie chart. You set the range of colors you want to use for the values (green, yellow, red; shades of blue, etc.) and the chart will color the line, bars, or slices accordingly.
When finished, you can continue to the Preview tab to view the results, or Click Save to save the new report or changes, or click Cancel to return to the reports list without saving any work or changes.
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