Dashboard 101: Creating a Pie Chart

Welcome to "Dashboard 101", a series of tutorials designed to teach basic Crystal Dashboard design-- in this tutorial, we are going to be looking at how to build a simple Crystal Dashboard (Xcelsius) visualization using the Pie Chart component. When you are finished with the tutorial, your visualization should look like this:

You can then use this technique to add other charts to your visualizations, as it is the same basic workflow. To create this visualization, you will need to download the source Excel spreadsheet, which is available from a zip file found here.

To create this visualization, follow these steps:

1.    Select File > New with Spreadsheet
2.    Browse to the folder where you have stored your course files.. There is a sub-folder named “Activity Source.” From this folder, open the “SalesByState.xls” spreadsheet.
3.    From the Component Browser, drag the Pie Chart component onto your canvas
4.    Right-click on the Pie Chart and select Properties
5.    For the Titles, click on the range selector icon beside the Chart title and select cell “A1”
6.    For the subtitle, click on the range selector icon beside the Subtitle and select cell “A2”
7.    Under the Data properties, select the radio button for “Data in Columns”
8.    For the data Values, click on the range selector and select “C5:C12”
9.    For the data Labels, click on the range selector and select “B5:B12”
10.    Click the icon in the Toolbar marked “Fit Canvas to Components”
11.    Click the Preview button to check your visualization
12.    Save your visualization as “Sales_by_State.xlf”

And that is all there is to it-- the same technique can be applied to add other charts to your visualization. Remember, you will select the data for these charts using your range selector and you can change the options for the chart, including formatting, labels, etc. from the chart's properties page.