When looking at a column chart, we might want to see which items are below or above a particular threshold. In this recipe, you will learn how to add alerts to a column chart. Our example will consist of a column chart with a list of regions and their sales. Each region column will be colored appropriately, depending on its sales value versus threshold.
Make sure you set up the sales data and threshold values as shown in the following screenshot. You'll also need to insert a Column Chart component into the canvas.
- First, bind the sales data to the chart as shown in the following screenshot:
- Go to the Alerts section of the chart properties and ensure that Enable Alerts is checked.
- Select alerts By Value as we will be comparing our sales data to the threshold values.
- In the Alert Thresholds section, click on the Use a Range checkbox. Bind the data to the threshold data that was set up in the Getting ready section.
- In the Color Order section, select the radio button High values are good.
- In the following screenshot, you will then see that the bars on the chart are now colored according to the sales thresholds:
In this recipe, binding the initial data is straightforward, but the part you'll want to take note of is setting up the alerts.
In step 4, we bind the threshold range to cells D3 and E3 prepared in the Getting ready section. Anything that is equal to or greater than the yellow threshold value but less than the green threshold value will be colored as yellow. Anything that is equal to or greater than the green threshold value will be green.