Happy Birthday Hui…
Note: Hui’s birthday is yesterday (13th). I planned to write this post and share the dashboard workbook with you all yesterday itself, but my daughter wasn’t keeping well and we were busy taking care of her. (And yes, she is ok now, thanks for asking. 🙂 )
Some of you know our guest author and Excel ninja Hui. Yesterday was his birthday. And I wanted to create nice birthday gift for him. So I took a database dump of our forums data and created a dashboard.
First take a look the dashboard I made for him:
[click here for a large version]
Some Key Findings
- Our forums have a total of 5,227 posts, out of which Hui contributed 24% (roughly 1 in 4)
- On average Hui takes 13 and half hours to get back to the questioner with an answer. The fastest he has been was 31 seconds. (only last year data)
- Hui has been very busy on November 30th – 2010, answering 19 times on that day.
- The person who got benefited most from Hui is indi visual, with 44 replies from Hui.
- People used the words thank and Hui in same post 395 times.
- Hui wakes up early and answers questions on our forums. Then, before sleep, he spends some time helping people.
- If Hui had $2.5 per each letter he typed in our forums, he would be a millionaire.
- All data as of Jan 11, 2011. Between that and now, Hui has already answered 37 more times (and still helping…)
How is this dashboard constructed?
With lots of love of course. But quite a few excel techniques were used too.
- Structurally, this dashboard is similar to my 10,000 comment dashboard.
- Word cloud of Hui’s replies is from wordle.net
- Scrollable chart at the bottom is a grid of 20×42 cells conditionally formatted. Scrolling effect thru OFFSET formula.
- Pivot tables, a whole lot of them were used to find the summaries I want
- The header content is picture links & shapes.
- Rest of them are left to your imagination.
Download Excel Workbook with this Dashboard
Please click here to download the workbook. It is locked.
I have made a 45 minute video explaining how this dashboard is constructed. I will be giving this video & unlocked workbook as a bonus to people joining Excel School dashboard option or purchasing Dashboard training kit.
Interested in Dashboards?
- I recommend joining Excel School. You can learn how to make awesome charts & dashboards.
- Visit our Dashboards Page. It has tons of useful information, examples, tutorials & templates.
Say Happy Birthday & Thanks to Hui
I am sure directly or indirectly, Hui has helped many of you. So take a minute and say thanks to him. Wish him several more years of awesomeness, happiness, wealth & health. 🙂
13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?