Using SharePoint, you can quite easily display tabular data of the information you have in a list. However, wouldn't it be cool if you could show charts of information stored in lists (not just a graphical view of surveys)?
Well, this is indeed possible using a combination of DataViews and the Microsoft PivotChart Web Part. For more information on connecting web parts, see:
Microsoft Office: Displaying SharePoint lists in Web Parts
Microsoft Office Assistance: Troubleshooting connecting web parts
I'm a keen "indoor rower" and wanted to track my progress (hopefully progress anyway!) of my times for the 2000m on the Concept2 rowing machine. If you're interested, I created a "Health & Fitness" SharePoint site where I store information such as weight, fitness exercies, running times, and alike, as well as having RSS feeds for health eating menus and other fitness related feeds. What a nerd huh?!
The list I created was therefore a store of my times for various distances.
OK, so using this example, first, you will need to install the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Parts and Components (which includes the Microsoft PivotChart Web Part). This is available for free from:
Next, I created a Web Part page in a "Site Pages" document library (see my other article posted today) called "Rowing".
Once the page is created, you then need to add your Office PivotChart Web Part to the page (which should be listed under the "Virtual Server Gallery").
Drag that web part onto the page, as well as the web part you want to display the data from - in my example, "Concept2 Rowing Times".
We now need to connect these web parts, so the PivotChart Web Part displays the information from the Concept2 Rowing Times web part. To do this, we need to change the view of the Concept2 Rowing Times to a DataView that I previously created.
Note that this DataView contained the following fields (the fields you want to use on the chart must be in the view):
# Setting
# Time
# Distance
# Created By
# Created (i.e. date created)
Now that we've updated it to a DataView, we should be able to connect (link) the two web parts.
In Design mode, click the down arrow on the PivotChart Web Part, and select Connections > Get Data From > Concept2 Rowing Times. You should now have something like the following:
I then set about changing the chart to display the information I wanted. To get the menu click the "Toolbar" button.
For this chart, I changed it to a line chart. I then dragged "Created" onto the "Drop category fields here" area, and I dragged "Time" onto the grey area of the chart itself. I also dragged the "Distance" field onto the "Drop Filter Fields Here" area and changed it so that it only displayed my 2000m times.
Note: To under a drop selection, drag the item back off the chart.
The finsihed example is shown below:
If anyone knows how to have the x-axis show a range of dates, with the points scattered accordingly then would be keen to here from you (at the moment, each date is evenly spread, even if the gaps between the dates varies). I tried an x-y scatter graph but no success.