The Micro Chart Suite is an extensive set of small charting components by Inovista. It includes a micro version of most of the chart types that are part of the standard SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards components: Bar Chart, Area Chart, Stacked Bar Chart, Bullet Chart, Column Chart, Line Chart, and Pie Chart. In addition, there are components to show micro versions of a plot chart, win/lose chart, shape alerts, a traffic light, and a text/number indicator.
While you can use these components separately, a nice feature by Inovista is the Tree Grid component in which we can present micro charts in a hierarchical format. This recipe shows you how to set up the Tree Grid component with a few micro charts.
Go to the Inovista website (http://www.inovista.com/), browse for the trial downloads section, and download the Micro Chart Suite. Install the components with the Add-On Manager.
Status
as a title for this chart and set the Width Ratio to 10
.Monthly sales trend
in the Header Text column. Also set the Width Ratio to 40
.Market Share
as the title for this column. Also set the Width Ratio to 40
.250
and the Opening Indentation to 0
.As we have seen in this recipe, the Inovista Micro Chart Suite offers a good solution to present numerous data visualizations in a compact way. The MicroChart Tree Grid component gives us a framework to display these micro charts in a structured and hierarchical way.
To use the MicroChart Tree Grid component, we have to define the spreadsheet in the right way. We first created a hierarchical structure with three levels—global, continents, and countries. Next, we added all the data for the graphs in the columns, where each node has its own row of data.
If you don't want or don't need to show a hierarchical structure in your dashboard, you can use the MicroChart Table component as another container to present the micro charts in. The only difference is that this component doesn't have the Tree Column and Tree Row Colors sub-tabs.
The following screenshot shows the MicroChart Table component:
Visit the Inovista website (http://www.inovista.com/) for more information on the Tree and Data Grid components and the individual components in the Micro Chart Suite. Here you can also find the other add-ons Inovista offers.