Gauge charts at a glance
In the dashboard image below, the gauges are showing sales rep performance. 'Bert' is significantly ahead of target and, while 'Jimmy' is ahead of target, he has some work to do to catch up with Bert's sales performance. These gauges have been set up in the grid and added to the dashboard.
You can also save a gauge as a favorite.
Example: Create to show how a sales rep is tracking against budget
In this example, we want to show whether a sales rep is ahead of or behind budget.
Step 1. From a Sales database, prepare your grid as follows:
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The Gauge and Summary charts have similar configuration options. See Gauge and summary chart configuration page for more information. |
Gauge charts can be used for many reasons, such as:
To view data containing a comparison or variance, for example, sales vs. budget or profit this year vs. last year.
To count a number of something.
To track performance against a target, such as Sales Rep performance, as illustrated in the dashboard image below.
Example: Create a Gauge chart
In the Sales database, create a Gauge chart to visualize whether a Sales Rep is tracking against the budget.
Prepare the data in the grid:
Select the Sales Rep dimension, then select and focus on a particular
Step 2: Select Chart view, and configure as shown below.
You can see in the chart below that Bert is over 76% so you are comparing sales with budget.
Bert's sales performance against budget will appear in variance columns on the grid.
Stream > Sales and Variance Stream > Budget.
Click the Chart
button, then click the Line chart category button on the left of the chart and select the Line option.
The default Gauge chart displays but it is meaningless as you have not yet configured the chart settings.
Configure the chart (see the Gauge and summary chart configuration page for more information):
Select Summary > % Variance.
Select the Show stream values checkbox.
Enter the Range as -100 to 100, Red as -100 to 15, Yellow as -15 to 15 and Green as 15 to 100 (see image below).
The chart updates; it now compares Bert’s sales performance against budget. You can see that Bert is over 80% ahead of his budget.
Control the detail in your gauge
Selecting Show current/previous (gauge only) in variance and period variance mode allows you to include extra detail. With this selected, the actual and variance or target values are displayed underneath the chart. This is particularly useful on a dashboard, as you can see the figures behind an improvement or decline in performance without needing to open the widget. Untick it to see a basic gauge displaying only the variance amount.
In the image below, you can see what makes up an 8% improvement.
