Creating a Chart

• Creating a Chart
  • Chart Designer
• Applying Functions on Columns
  • Advanced Summarizing Options
• Choosing Chart Type

Creating a Chart

You can create a chart in Zoho Advanced Analytics by following one of the below methods:

Method 1:

To create a chart, follow the steps given below:

1. From the Zoho Advanced Analytics homepage, click Create button from the menu bar and select Chart View.
   
2. In the Select Base Table dialog box that opens, select the required table on which you want to create the chart and click OK.
   
3. The Chart Designer opens as shown below.
   

Method 2:

You can create a new chart by opening the corresponding data table on which you want to create the chart and invoking the New > New Chart View option in the toolbar.

Method 3:

You can also create a new chart from the Reports button in the menu bar. A shortcut link Create New Reports will be available inside the Reports button in the menu bar. After clicking the Create New Reports link, a drop-down listing all the View types will be displayed. Click on Chart View and select the required base table. You will be navigated to the Chart Designer page.

Chart Designer

On the left-hand side is the Column List pane, listing all the columns available in the table. On the right-hand side, you can see the Design Area with Shelves to drop the columns and a Preview Area below to view the chart created.

You must drag and drop the required columns listed in the Column List pane into the respective shelves to create a chart. You can also select the check box adjacent to each column listed to auto-place the columns into the appropriate shelves. After dropping the columns click the Click here to Generate Graph link to create the new chart. 

Given below is a brief description of each of the shelves in the Graph tab.

• X-Axis: Column dropped in this shelf appears horizontally across X-axis.
• Y-Axis: Column dropped in this shelf appears vertically across Y-axis. You can drop multiple columns in this shelf to create charts with multiple Y-axes.
  
  Here is an example to illustrate how to create a simple bar chart. We will create a chart to display the Monthly Order Status using the Orders data. Drag and drop the Created At and Orders ID columns to X and Y-Axis and click the Click here to Generate Graph link. A bar chart will be generated.

  

• Color: When a column is dropped in this shelf, the chart will be further categorized showing each data point in this column in different colors (different data series) in the chart.
  
  Building up on the already created chart, let us drag and drop the Fulfillment Status column into the Color shelf to add further meaning. Now, the chart will be color-coded and categorized based on Orders Fulfillment Status, as shown in the below screenshot.

  

• Text: Includes the corresponding value of the dropped column as a data label in the chart, according to the function applied on the column. Here, we will display order count as text in the chart.
  

The following screenshot displays the final chart, after applying filters and customizing settings, in the chart View Mode.

You can also include the following columns,

• Size: Includes the corresponding value of the dropped column to denote the size.
• Include columns for Tooltip: Includes the corresponding value of the dropped columns in the chart tool-tip, according to the function applied on the column. 
• In Edit Design mode, you will notice that a menu appears on the mouse over the top right corner of the Columns List pane. You can expand, sort, and filter the list of columns using the options available in this menu. The available options are: 
  • Expand All and Collapse All: The 'Expand All' allows you to expand the field`s list, the 'Collapse All', collapses the table.
  • Apply Sort: You can sort the column either by name or by type, you may also further sort it in ascending or descending order.
  • Apply Filters: This option is useful when you need to filter the columns based on the data type. 
  • Show Involved columns: Lists the columns involved in creating the report.
    

Applying Functions on Columns

Zoho Advanced Analytics allows you to apply aggregate/categorical functions like Sum, Count, Average, Min, Max, etc., on the data columns to a group and summarize data in charts. When you apply a function on a column, a single value will be returned which is derived based on the values in the column. The default function for a Numeric (including Currency) data type is Sum and for a Date data type is Year. If the data type of the column is a string (Categorical/Dimension column) and not numeric, then the default function applied is Actual Values.

To change the default function applied, after dropping the column, select the required function (aggregate/categorical) from the drop-down list present in the column. The drop-down list displays all the applicable functions based on the data type of the column, as shown in the screenshots below.

String Data Type

Numeric Data Type

Date Data Type

For instance, if you want to plot the sales average for each month based on source, select the Average function from the drop-down list for Total Price (Y-Axis) column, Month & Year function for Created At (X-Axis) column, and select Actual Values function for Source Name (Color column) and click on the Click here to Generate Graph link.

The following tables list all the functions along with the description of their functionality.

Numeric and Currency Data Types:

Date Data Type - Actual Value Functions:

Date Data Type - Seasonal Value Functions:

Date Data Type - Aggregate Function:

String(Categorical/Dimension) Data Type:

Advanced Summarizing Options

When creating a chart, Zoho Advanced Analytics provides advanced summary functions, apart from the basic functions such as Sum, Max, Min, or Average. This allows you to summarize data values in that column based on the values in other columns. Using this you will be able to do some powerful calculations on a chart like running total of sales over years or calculate the difference in sales from the previous year etc.,

Following are the advanced summarizing options: 

The following screenshot illustrates a few sample charts with different advanced summary functions applied.

Choosing Chart Type

After creating a chart, you can easily change it to another chart type by simply clicking on a button without changing the plotted data. For example, you have created a Bar chart, but then decide that you want the data to be displayed as a Pie chart. You can do this by changing the chart type using the toolbar or you can use the Other Charts button on the toolbar.

The toolbar provides you with the options to choose between Pie, Bar, Stacked Bar, Line, Scatter, and Table chart types at the top level. If you do not find the chart type that you are looking for, then click on the Other Charts button in the toolbar and select the chart type that you want to apply from the Chart Options dialog box that appears. You can view a brief description of each chart type at the bottom of the dialog box by clicking on the specific chart type. Notice that chart types that are not applicable/unsupported for the combination of columns that you are using to create the chart will appear disabled. 

The below table describes the various Chart types supported by Zoho Advanced Analytics. For a detailed understanding of the chart types and the combination of columns used to create them, refer here.