Graphical information is always useful when analyzing data. Dynamics NAV offers various ways of viewing data in a graphical way.
The Show as Chart option
Whenever the information shown on the screen can be viewed as a chart, the Home tab of the ribbon will contain a section called View where users can switch the view of the information from List to Chart and vice versa.
Let's see an example of how to build a chart based on the customer list.
Type Customer in the search box of the Dynamics NAV Windows client.
Select Customers. The Customers list will be shown.
Click on Show as Chart. An empty chart will be shown. We will have to select a measure and the dimensions we want to use to build our chart.
Select Sales (LCY) as the measure.
Select Country/Region Code as the dimension on the right of the chart.
The chart will be drawn.
We can quickly see that GB is the country where our sales are concentrated.
Adding charts to the Role Center page
Dynamics NAV has a set of predefined, generic charts that can be added to the Role Center page.
To add a chart to the home page, follow the given steps:
Click on Home.
Click on the Application [] icon, choose Customize, and then Customize This Page. The Customize the Role Center window will open.
Select Chart Part from the Available parts field and click on the Add button.
A Blank Chartwill appear in the Role Center layout field.
Select the Blank Chart and click on the Customize Part button. A list of available charts will appear.
Select the Customer Sales and Profit chart.
Click on OK.
Click on OK to close the Customize the Role Center window.
The selected chart will be displayed on the Role Center page.
Note
The data in this chart is displayed after the customers on the My Customer list. If you have no customers on the My Customer list, this chart will show no data.
Creating and configuring charts
If the predefined generic charts are not enough for you, you can define other generic charts and make them available to all users, so that they can add your chart to their Role Center page.
To create and define a generic chart, follow the given steps:
Type Generic Charts in the search box of the Dynamics NAV Windows client.
Select Generic Charts. The Generic Charts list will be shown.
Click on New to create a new generic chart.
Give the new generic chart an ID (MYCHART) and a name (My Chart).
Select Table as Source Type.
Select 18 as the Source ID.
In the Required Measure row, select Sales (LCY) in the Data Column field, Sum as Aggregation, and Column as Graph Type.
In the Optional Measure row, select Profit (LCY) in the Data Column field, Sum as Aggregation, and StepLine as Graph Type.
Select Country/Region Code in X-Axis Field. The entire configuration of the generic chart is shown in the following screenshot:
Click on OK.
A new chart is now created and configured. Follow the steps in the previous section to add this new chart to your Role Center page. The following screenshot shows the defined chart: