Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Charting Basics
Posted Monday, January 16th, 2012
How many Leads are generated from our marketing efforts? How many high priority cases are being escalated? The charting functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will help you find the answers to these questions and many more. Let’s take a look at the possibilities.
Inline Charts
New to 2011, you can view a chart right inside a CRM view just by clicking the chevron here:
**Note: if you don’t see the option to expand the chart, it may be turned off. Go to the Charts tab in the ribbon, click ‘Chart Pane’ and select either ‘top’ or ‘right’**
Expanding the chart in this view of Active Cases gives you a basic chart of a Case Mix (By Priority):
Clicking on the chart creates a filter and changes the Case view. Notice there are 3 different case priority types. Clicking on any one priority will filter cases that meet that criteria. Here I’ve selected the high priority column and now I’m just seeing cases where the priority is set to high:
There’s also a new funnel icon by the Priority field. This means that the case view is being filtered by the Priority field.
Ok, now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s jump into the fun stuff: creating your own charts.
**NEW FUNCTIONALITY AVAILABLE IN RU 5 FOR DYNAMICS CRM 2011**
Charting in CRM 2011 just got much easier. Instead of having to export XML to create what should be basic charts you can now do them in the UI. Let’s walk through an example.
We now have the ability to create either a multi-series or multi-category chart directly in CRM. Let’s say we want to see exactly how our estimated revenue compared to actual revenue for 2011.
Go to Sales, Opportunities then access the Charts ribbon:
Click “New Chart”, which will bring up the handy Chart Designer tool and give your chart a name.
Now, select a field under Legend Entries (Series). I’m going use the Actual Revenue field first.
You will then be able to select data functions such as Sum, Count, Average, etc. and a chart type for each series. I have selected Sum and Bar charts for both series. You have the option of selecting Top/Bottom rules but this will only apply to one of the series.
**Note: CRM will allow you to list 5 different series on one chart. **
I add the Estimated Revenue as the second series then for the Category or Horizontal Axis, I will add Owner so that I can break down the revenue by sales rep.
Here is the chart:
If I want to change anything, I click Edit Chart:
Here is the same data with the Estimated Revenue stated as a line chart.
Now let’s look at an example of a multi-category chart.
I’d like to see how many Opportunities were upsells, which is one of our Won reasons, organized by sales rep.
Again, I go to my chart designer but this time, I select only one series and add my categories. You can only add 2 categories natively.
My first Category is Owner, then Rating:
And this is the completed chart:
You may need to do some tweaking to find the best chart type to show the information you are trying to see but this is a great enhancement to the out of the box charting tool in CRM 2011.
Tags: Charting in 2011, CRM 2011 Basics, CRM Basics, CRM Charting, CRM Dashboard, CRM Report, New 2011 Functionality
Posted in CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM, Reports
Kanika Bailey
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