I have been very derelict in my blogging responsibilities for Customer FX.  Lately, during my commute, I have been trying to figure out why.  I have come up with two reasons for my hesitation in writing blogs:

First - We at Customer FX have been extremely busy.

Second - The need for a solid topic to write about. 

Being busy is not really an excuse for us at CFX so I ignored the first reason and concentrated thinking about what a good topic would be, finally I came up with graphs.  I have done very little on graphs.  Honestly, I have not really worked with them all that much so blogging on this topic will provide me a reason to really get to know and use the different graphs that come with Business Objects Crystal Report. 

We will start with the simple bar graph.

The goal today will be to build a small little bar graph that provides the total number of Accounts base on the ACCOUNT.TYPE field.  To start, build a report using report wizard that contains the SalesLogix Account table.  We will need the Account and Type fields from that table.  Also, we will want to build a report group using ACCOUNT.TYPE.

For starters, let's suppress the Group1 Header and Footer along with the Details sections of the report.  We are doing this just to avoid confusion.  This is a group based chart so we need to display this graph in the layer above the group, in this case the header or footer. Doing so allows the chart to roll up the data from the group.

In the Report Footer section of the report, right click and select the "Insert Chart" value on the list that appears.  Immediately an orange box has attached itself to the cursor, to release just click on the location where you want the chart to display, in this case just click on the report footer again.  This will bring up Crystal's Chart Expert.  You will already be on the Data tab because the action will automatically default you to the "Side By Side Bar Chart".  The tabs along the top change based on the type of chart.  With this bar chart you have the Data, Axes, Options, Color Highlight, and Text.

For this chart instance, on the Data tab, set the field below the "On Change of" value to ACCOUNT.TYPE and the field below the Show Value(s) label to ACCOUNT.ACCOUNT.

On the Options tab, check the box with the label "Show Value" located in the Data Points section.

On the Text tab, uncheck the Title Checkbox and change the Title to read "# Accounts by Type".  Then uncheck the Group Title and change to "Type" and the Data Title to "# Accounts".

Now select the OK button and view your chart.

To bring the Chart Expert back simply right click on the chart and select "Chart Expert" from the list that appears. I encourage you to play around with the different setting on the tabs to see the effect on the graph

On Friday we will play some more with the Bar type of chart.

Thanks for reading,  Geo