Having worked as a business analyst and CRM consultant for over 15 years, I have grown fond of MS Dynamics CRM, now Dynamics 365, now Power Apps. Especially the charts feature used for visualizing data in the system.
The focus of this blog is MS Dynamics CRM charts and how to improve them via XML modifications or tricks in the interface. Although this blog contain numerous customizations to the charts xml files, I do not consider myself a developer.
I don’t like charts just for the fancy colors and shapes.
I believe that charts should:
- Emphasize business targets and business processes
- Visualize items that need immediate attention. Be actionable.
- Easy for the user to decode. A good chart shouldn’t need much, if any, explanation
- Be useful as an everyday tool
- Help show us where we are and where we are going
While I am not trying to be a comprehensive resource on charts. This blog is more of a way to share my cheat sheets and overviews with everyone. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful for improving your MS Dynamics CRM charts.
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Originally from Denmark, but now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
If you by chance look to work with someone who has an unusually high interest in KPIs and charts, please contact me via this form, or via Twitter. Follow @crmchartguy
Ulrik B. Carlsson
crm chart guy 
Your blog seems to have failed in its objectives 😉 You claim that “I am not trying to be a comprehensive resource on charts” but the posts you have written are by far the clearest and most detailed information about configuring chart properties in CRM that I have found ( and believe me I have looked!).
You also avoid the trap of many blogs of showing the “Hey look it’s a shiny 3D pyramid” options and all that non-useful crud that seems to attract a certain type of dashboard designer, and focus on useful methods to actually enhance visualisation and improve the ability of users to understand their data and use it to make informed decisions. Well done – please write more!
Thanks Adam. I appreciate it. I hope to add some new posts soon.
This is AWESOME! Very generous. Thank you….
Briliant! Thanks for the good work and sharing.
Great blog, thanks for sharing! Do you have any insight into making charts using data from custom fields? I don’t want to be restricted to the out-of-the box options for charts, but I’d also rather not go through a Microsoft Partner.
Hi Andrew
Thanks for reading.
CRM Charts pretty much supports all the custom entities and fields you can throw at it.
They’ll show up in the chart editor once you’ve added them to your system.
You’ll rarely see them used on my blog, and others probably, as examples are easier to understand for everyone if you only use system fields.
I do work for a Microsoft Partner though 🙂 http://www.alfapeople.com
Amazing blog site. I truly enjoyed your web site. I do have a simple question. I have a bar chart with labels. Sometime the labels show inside the bar chart and sometimes outside the bar chart. Is there a property that controls that option?
Thanks
I can point you in the right direction. You have to use the CustomProperties in the series. You can find the available custom properties for the bar chart here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456715.aspx
Fantastic blog, Chart Guy! You’re at the top of my reader now. Do you know of any tool for quickly rendering the chart XML during development so I don’t have to import into CRM to check my work? I’m happy editing the XML directly but just want to see how it’s turning out along the way. I’d consider Visual Studio, but that seems to be a lot of work and expense, and I don’t know what version gives me the charting tools.
How do you develop charts?
Hey Wendell – you mean you can’t just read the XML? I think Ulrik reads it like Neo sees the Matrix…
More seriously, I just edit XML in Notepad++ then import, publish and test, round and again. A tip for speeding this up is to open one of the entity’s forms for editing and leave that window open. Import chart in your Solution window, switch to the form – Publish (this published the whole entity, not just the form). Switch to main window and refresh to see how horrible it looks this time!
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I find this much faster than keep going to the entity in the solution explorer to publish, then back to charts (especially on slow remote customer systems). And “Publish All” is always slow, and a bad plan if anyone else is on the system at the time.
Depending on how custom the entities are that are involved in the chart, you could do this in any system really. I build lots of customer charts in my own systems without needing their solutions. Sometimes I cheat and use a different field of the same type to replace a custom one until I am happy with the overall effect, then switch it for the final go-live (especially for categories, I might use a custom date field instead of created / modified so I can quickly create fake data).
LOL – that comment made my day – thanks
Thanks Wendell. Like Adam (ukcrmguru) , my go to editor is Notepad++.
It’ll keep track of all your tags and make sure they are all closed, proper syntax etc. Plus it’s free.
When it comes to adding properties you are kind of on your own. If you spell IsVisibleInLegend with a lower case “i” in “in” IsVisibleinLegend, it won’t work. That can be really difficult to spot if you’ve looked at the same code for a long time.
I actually prefer making all my charts as user charts first. All the same tools are available and you can export and import like crazy without having to wait for something publish. Once the xml is finished, it can be imported as a system chart with no changes.
So where do I find the charting XML definitions (with valid arguments)? I’ve looked around MSDN and the web but haven’t stumbled onto the “Secret book of Codes” 😉
I’m using Notepad++ too. Good idea about user vs system chart development.
This is a bit on the fringe of your blog but I was wondering if you knew how to limit the list of drill-able fields. Your blog has helped me create some nice charts but when a user clicks on a bar/segment there are hundreds of fields to chose from – especially on built-in entities.
Do you know of a way to limit this list without breaking out into code (I’m guessing I can limit the list by filtering the results of a RetrieveMultiple pre-synch plugin but that seems like overkill)?
Thanks so much and keep up the good work!
To my knowledge you can’t limit the list. The best you can do is to include the important fields as columns in the view that you are using. Then they will be at the top of the list of drill-able fields. However, that trick only works when the View can be changed by the User. If the View selector is not available, all fields will be listed alphabetically as options.
What’s up with Gantt charts? .NET doesn’t support it OOB, and I can’t find any XML driven implementations (even from you, oh great CRM Chart Guy!). That’s the number one request I ever get. Please share with us the secret…
Interesting question. The only Gantt chart solution I have seen is this one http://www.assistancesoftware.com/project-planning-with-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011/
I am wondering if some of the chart types that can handle multiple Y-values, like the Range Bar Chart, could be utilized for this. It’s not something I have played around with though.
I never noticed the Range Bar before. I think I can make that work. I poked around MSDN and the net and can’t find any XML examples. Can you point me to any XLM example? I’ll let you know how it works out.
Was poking around today for the RSS feed on your blog. Can you point me to it if I missed it. If not, please consider adding the widget. You’ve definitely filled a gap in the community with your great working knowledge of charts. Thanks and keep up the great work!
Thank you very much Donna. I didn’t have a link to my RSS feed. Shame on me. But I have one now and it’s next to the twitter link on the top right side.
I added your feed to my Outlook RSS collection a while ago – noticing it was a WordPress.com site I just added /feed after the home URL. Similar tricks work for other platforms, either /feed or /feed.xml is usually enough.
Perfect, thanks!
Hey man, your blog has proven to be such a valuable resource for us to get our dashboarding on CRM to the right level. Thanks a million!!
Do you happen to know any way to display the grand totals on a pipeline/funnel chart? LegendTooltip does the trick when hovering the legend, but I really want it to be permanently displayed. Any ideas?
Can I format the URL argument to link to the record represented by a chart segment (assuming it represents one record) within the XML?
Very informative blog! Do you have any insights on displaying data month over month or year over year, for example to compare sales volume or marketing campaign response?
Wow, great blog!
I didn’t realize you could go so far beyond the chart wizard functionality with XML (which I guess I’ll have to learn).
I posted a question on the MS community forum that you might be perfect to advise on:
https://community.dynamics.com/crm/f/117/t/128392.aspx
Basically, is it possible to create a forecast report that is filtered by products from specific suppliers? We have multiple suppliers we resell for, and often will have products from multiple suppliers on an Opportunity/Quote/Order/Invoice going to our end customer.
Each product has a supplier set on the Product definition page.
Really need a way to show a forecast of all deals by supplier. However, I want to show the sum of all products from that supplier in the Opportunity (and not include the contribution to the opportunity ammount from other suppliers whose product are also in the order).
Clear as mud? 😉
Hi Jeff, thanks for the comments.
I think this post might be of help, although your starting point would be the Opportunity Product entity. https://crmchartguy.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/groupby-on-a-related-entitys-related-entity/
Is it possible to Create a Chart for the Opportunity Product entity? I can’t seem to figure out how.
Yes, but you have to add it to a dashboard first before you can access it. Or if you are a system admin, then add it to the sitemap.
While I love the charts and they are very powerful, some of my users do not even want the chart pane strip to take up any part of their screen real estate. I know you can turn the chart pane off, but that is by entity and only temporary — they come back the next time you sign in. Is there some master control to turn off all charts persistently for a given user?
Hey Chart Guy, I was asked about leader-boards yesterday and suggested using Goals to track top sale staff performance. Is there a way to replace “bars” with a row of “gold star” icons in a chart? I’m thinking there might be away to display a jpg of a row of stars in the bar instead of a color. Stacking individual star images might also be doable.
What do you recommend?
Hi Andrew. I want to display a bar chart on a CRM 2013 account form that references revenue fields found on the account. I can build the bar chart to show the appropriate revenue data, but cannot figure out how to edit the xml code to look for the account’s name. Am I crazy or is this possible?
Hi Andrew. I have 10 two-option fields on my account form. It’s for segmentation. “This customer is in interested in this type of product…” An account can have 0 to 10 options ticked off. It is possible to make a chart that shows: Segmentation 1-10 on the X Axis and then a count of accounts on the Y axis?
So the chart would show: This many accounts are in segment 5 – and this many accounts are in segment 7…
I can not show the segments as an option list with 10 options – because one account can be in more than one segment.
And I can not make a custom entity with the segments. (because of other limitations further along in the process.)
Beautiful work, here! I have four “Two Option” attributes on an entity. I need a chart to show me the total count — for each — where the value = Yes. So, like this:
Assessment Entity record
Field 1
Field 2
Field 3
Field 4
I want one chart to show me the total number of Field 1 where it = Yes, and so on.
Is this possible with a chart?
hello,i want know if it is possible to show fields in chart.
Thank you for your help
Hi Andrew, I dont know where to begin in explaining how much your site has helped me and my organisation in getting our heads arounf how to work with charts and CRM as a whole – Thanks!
With your guides we have come a long way but on graph that we have not yet solved is the number of active assignments per week. We have extended CRM to handle Staffing and have introduced an entity called Assignments (name is not really relevant). This entitity has a start and an end date.
I have no problem making “Starting assignments per week” or “Ending assignments per week” but Active Assignments per week makes my head spin. How can I go about displaying this in a chart?
Best regards!
/Klas
Hello Sir,
I would like to know if it is possible to hide a chart depending on the view that is being displayed? I have a lot of views and a lot of charts (thanks to your good self) but not all charts are relevant for the views I have created so I would like to hide some. Is this functionality available?
Well you may not try to be comprehensive, but you have become my number one resource for anything CRM Chart related. I am always taking your examples and trying different ways to get them to do what I need. I didn’t know it was possible to go so far beyond the basic charts when I first started. Your site is very appreciated, and so easy to understand! Thank you for writing so much!!!
As a question, have you run across any way to get a chart to at least act like it filters on an aggregate. I have a situation where I have multiple weekly goals I’m needing to show progress in on a monthly basis. I can get the average percent to show up, but in order to color it based on the percentage achieved I would need to filter it. I do not know of anyway to do this, since as far as I can tell, you can’t filter on an aggregate. Any ideas, or hints of how one might find a way to make this kind of work?
Even if you don’t have any ideas still love your site and hope to see more from you soon!
Hi! Your blog has been a huge help! I have learned so much! I am struggling to get the filter criteria work in the XML of some of my charts. I have added the link entity your directions say. But I have to be missing something!! Would you have any suggestions? or do you see any common mistakes?
Thanks for the comments. If you are counting records, then you need to use “countcolumn” instead “count”. That’s the issue 99% of the time.
Hi CRM Chart Guy. Like other say these chart related blogs are so great! First of all I want to thank you for that.
Secondly I really need some help and can’t find it elsewhere on the net.
With the release of Dynamics 365 V9 I see people (and myself) more then ever using the hubs instead of the regular web app (Sales Hub, Customer Service Hub). But no matter if the hub is running in a regular browser or within an app on Android, Windows or IOS, the charts are ugly and hardly usable.
This is mainly because the width of the Y axis is far too small and labels are not readable.
Do you experience the same thing and is there a way to tweak this by modifying the XML or so?
Kind regards,
Maurits
The Netherlands
Hi Maurits
Unfortunately the “hubs” do not support any xml customizations at this time, and I’m not sure when/if that will change. I saw somewhere that it was listed as a known limitation, so hopefully it will change. Currently it seems like the hubs strip any of presentation formatting and applies it own, so the only thing that is somewhat kept is the fetch part.
Hi Ulrik,
Thank you for the ocean of insights you have been providing!
Are you able to advise on how to get the Org Insights Data into PowerbBI ?
I know there is a dataset called ‘savedorginsightsconfigurations’ but I cannot see it in the connection listings.
Thanks,
Hey. Yes and no. The Org Insights data is not stored in the same place, so that’s why you don’t see it there. Organization Insights have its own OData connection you need to use. You can find the details on it here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/use-organization-insights-solution-view-instance-metrics#odata-support
However, this connection is currently broken, so it won’t actually work. At least in the instances I’ve been testing. Depending on how much you need it, you can do a Web query in Power BI, but use the same connection string and that will let you retrieve the data. The format very is difficult to work with though, so it will need to a lot of transformations before you can use it.
Hi Ulrik,
Thank you for the ocean of gems you provide with the bog!
Would you know how to get the data from Org Insights into Power BI? I know there is a data set called ‘savedorginsightsconfigurations’ but I cannot see it on the list after you connect to your org.
Thanks,
Rocky
sorry, blog.
Hey. Yes and no. The Org Insights data is not stored in the same place, so that’s why you don’t see it there. Organization Insights have its own OData connection you need to use. You can find the details on it here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/use-organization-insights-solution-view-instance-metrics#odata-support
However, this connection is currently broken, so it won’t actually work. At least in the instances I’ve been testing. Depending on how much you need it, you can do a Web query in Power BI, but use the same connection string and that will let you retrieve the data. The format very is difficult to work with though, so it will need to a lot of transformations before you can use it.
Thanks Ulrik!
❤ ❤ Love your blog ❤ ❤
Hi Ulrik, your blog is awesome. It helped me out to clear a lot of chart issues!
Thx!
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