Recently, Microsoft Power BI introduced a very useful visualization, called key influencers visualization. As the name suggests, this is a chart of key parameters that effect a measure or outcome.
For example, you have customer satisfaction rating as a measure. Now you want to know which aspects of your data impact the ratings most? You can create the key influencer visual and Power BI finds all the top ranking influencers (using rules and machine learning).
The output can go like this:
How to read this chart?
Let’s look at top influencer for rating to be LOW: If role of the rating person is “Consumer” then their rating is 2.57 times likely to be low than other roles.
Likewise, if company size is <5000, then their rating is 1.48 times likely to be low than other company sizes.
As soon as I saw this chart in Power BI demo, I went…
Hot damn, that looks interesting!!! Can we get this in Excel?
Of course, Excel is a good few laps behind Power BI when it comes to data viz. But that won’t stop a data nerd, will it?
So here we go, a faked “key influencer chart in Excel”. Read on to learn how to create this yourself, from almost any data.
Key influencer chart in Excel – demo
Before we learn how to make this, let me present the chart itself.
Create your own key influencer chart in Excel…
So you are ready to make the chart? Just follow below steps and your key influencers will be identified, sorted and presented in a tidy chart.
Step 1: Arrange your data
This method works with data in one table. You can scale it to a dimensional model (star schema) with some creative pivot tables or cube formulas, but if you have gone that far, then you might as well jump to Power BI and save yourself a lot of agony.
Say your data is in a table like this. We want to investigate key influencers (from dimensions) of “Salary” column. This data is in a table named data.
Step 2: Calculate and sort influences
Now that we know our objective, let’s go ahead and crunch some numbers.
First, generate a list of all influences. This step is a bit manual, but not too hard. You can use Power Query to automate it if it gets too much.
We get something like this:
As indicated above, we need to calculate two kinds of averages.
- average of each column=criteria
- average of each column<>criteria
This is easily done by a couple of AVERAGEIFS formulas.
For example,
=AVERAGEIFS(data[salary], data[Dept], "Accounting")
for "Accounting" average pay.
=AVERAGEIFS(data[salary], data[Dept], "<>Accounting")
for all departments except "Accounting"
Let’s be smart then..,
Instead of writing formulas with manual criteria, we can tweak the column (data[Dept] for ex.) on the fly. After all, we know the column name.
So, let’s use this.
=AVERAGEIFS(data[Salary],INDEX(data,,MATCH(L5,data[#Headers],0)),M5)So what does it do? This formula calculates average of data[Salary] where M5 (Accounting for ex.) is found in the column that has the same header as L5 (Dept).
This is a powerful and elegant use of INDEX formula. Read this page if your INDEX() finger is weak.
Adding other calculations
Now that we have both averages, we can calculate the influence of something like this:
- Influence = average of criteria / average of not criteria – 1
- Order (rank) of influence = Individual influence’s rank in all influences
We can use simple arithmetic for 1 and RANK.AVG() for 2.
(Picture A) Summary of all the calculations so far…
Step 3: Start making the chart then…
Now that everything is ready, go to Insert ribbon and add Key Influencer chart.
Of course I’m kidding. There is no such button. But you can insert a 3D donut chart. Or may be not.
So let’s move on then.
The Key Influencer chart demo’d at the start is actually a scatter plot. See below anatomy.
10 Steps for creating the chart
(1) Make a scatter plot from “more by” and “influence order” columns
Select columns 3 & 4 as shown in Picture A and insert scatter plot. We get something like this.
(2) Reverse the chart by changing Y (vertical) axis order
Just select the Y (vertical) axis and go to axis format settings (CTRL+1 shortcut). Now select “Values in reverse order” option.
We get this.
(3) Limit vertical axis from 0 to 8
The scatter plot is showing all influences. We don’t need to see everything. So let’s limit the chart to top 8 influences. To do that, simply enter axis limits as 0 and 8.5 (if you put 8, then the last point will be hugging bottom border of chart and makes it hard to read).
You will end up with this.
(4) Replace dots with bubble
Now draw a bubble shape in the spreadsheet. Copy it (Ctrl+C). Select the dots in the chart and hit paste (CTRL+V). We get nice bubbles instead of dots in the chart. See this quick tut to understand the concept.
(5) Add data labels
Select the bubbles and add data labels. Show either X value or calculated labels from cells. Center align and adjust font settings if needed. At this point our key influencer chart looks like this:
(6) Add a dummy series with values just 1 or 2% less than influence
Now that our bubbles are ready, we need to show an arrow from 0 to the influence amount. To do this, we will use error bars, specifically 100% negative x error bars. Try saying that three times in a row.
This is easy to get. Simply add a new column to the calculations area. Write =influence – 2% and you get “Dummy for arrows” column.
Add this column to the chart. Remember, the Y values will be same as “Influence order” (Column 4 in Picture A)
(7) Add 100% negative x-error bars to the dummy series and format them
Wait a second. You can’t simply do that. So just add error bars and then,
- Remove vertical (Y) error bars
- Select horizontal (X) error bars
- Format them (CTRL+1 shortcut)
- Set bar direction to “Minus”
- Error amount to Percentage, 100%
- And end style to “No cap”
We end up with this chart.
While you are at error bar formatting screen, also adjust the bar color and begin arrow type so we get this nice arrowed error bars.
(8) Add another dummy series at -20% for axis labels
We know that top influencer increases average salary by 8.8%, but we don’t know what that is. Time to fix the problem.
Let’s create our own axis labels. Start by adding a dummy column with =-20% in the calculations area.
Also, create the label we want (this can be column & ” is ” & criteria or something else).
You need data like this.
Once that is ready, add a new series to the chart (from Select Data screen) and set X as “Dummy x for axis label” and Y as Influence Order (column 4 in picture A).
At this stage, our key influencer visual looks like this:
(9) Add the labels
Select this new dummy series, add data labels to it. Change label settings so that you can get values from cells (works only Excel 2013 or above). Point to the cells with calculated axis labels.
When everything is set up and formatted, we will have this chart:
(10) Nearly there, just clean up and format the chart
Can you feel the rush of creating something beautiful, fun and interesting in Excel? We are almost done. Just clean up the chart. Remove markers from any dummy series that are not needed. Get rid of grid lines. Add background if you want. Color things and our key influencer chart in Excel is ready.
Final touches – Form control to see positive and negative influences
Of course, the chart is nearly done. But if you want, you can dynamically show either positive or negative influencers. To do that, simply multiply the “More by” column (Column 3 in Picture A) with +1 or -1. +1 for positive influence, -1 for negative. Everything else works just as expected. You can link this to a form control and you will have a dynamic influencers chart.
Key Influencer Chart in Excel – Video tutorial
As this is a fairly complex chart, I made a video tutorial explaining all the nuts and bolts. Watch it if you need a hand with the construction.
You can also see this is on my YouTube channel.
Download Key Influencers Chart template
Click here to download the key influencer chart template.
This file contains detailed instructions, sample data and calculations. Use it to learn or modify for your needs.
What next?
If this is the first time you made a complex Excel chart, pat yourself on the back, go for an extra round of your favorite beverage and hug your loved ones.
And oh yeah, continue the journey with these other examples. You will be richly rewarded.
Budget vs. Actual Chart 
Sixty sports in 6 charts 
Dynamic chart in Excel 
Commonwealth games in a chart 
Interactive pareto chart 
Salary increases in scatter plot
How do you like the Key Influencer Chart?
I love the original thing in Power BI. Faking (recreating) it in Excel was fun but not scalable for large or split out data sets. I enjoyed the process immensely and immediately wanted to share it with all.
What about you? How do you like the key influencers chart in Excel? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
46 Responses to “6 Best charts to show % progress against goal”
Chandoo, thanks for another interesting post.
One thing I'm missing is the question: What is progress, what does one want to know exactly?
I'm asking the question because I think of progress as not the same as "state of completion." Percentages/bars, etc., as shown above, are great to communicate state of completion, but less so for progress.
That's because project progress is how state of completion *relates to* the resources spent so far. Resources can be things like dollars spent, hours spent or project time passed. For example, 5% would be "good progress" in the first week of a one-year project, but terrible progress in the last week of the project.
The way I prefer to report progress is as a simple line chart with time on the x axis, and maybe a marking for the end point (and maybe an "ideal"/"as planned" line).
If it really must be a single number, you could go a EVA-ish route and divide the current % of completion by the current % of project time passed, which gives you a schedule performance index (1 or bigger than 1 = good; smaller than 1 = bad). For this, your suggested charts should work great!
I avoid 'progress' except where I can objectively assess progress, such as counting bricks laid or concrete poured. For intellectual work, I don't think that its possible to measure progress to completion with any reliability or credibility. I prefer to update forcasts of completion date, because that's where the effect of completion on dependent activities, deliverables and outturn value of the project is felt. This is also referred to as the 0-100 method. An activity is set at 0 complete until its actually finished, when it is set at 100% complete.
Hi Chandoo,
Great post! I have a preference towards thermometer charts too mainly because of the target/actual comparison.
Just an FYI...seems like the the screen shot for the pies #4 are under the #5 heading. Also the pies conditional formatting is something that doesn't accurately portray completion since the pies are segmented into quarters.
AND also a little trivia...those "pies" are called Harvey Balls, named after Harvey Poppel...
Chandoo,
I wonder. Is there a trick to unzipping your files?
I always seem to end up with a series of XML files rather than an XLSX.
Thanks a lot. 🙂
Eric~
Hi Chandoo,
Thank you again for this amazing help you are so resourcefull to make us little bit more amazing everyday.
When I click on the link on the page "http://img.chandoo.org/c/best-charts-for-goal-progress-comparison.xlsx" it is always bringing me to a zip file with all XML files without the XLSX file. I tried with mozilla and IE.
Thank you
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2014/03/10/best-charts-to-show-progress/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=… […]
@All having trouble with download file.
1. Download the file.
2. Rename the extension as .xlsx
3. Double click or open it in Excel
Doesn't make any difference Chandoo, still end up with a zip file full of xml related files/folders
@Ian H
Download the zipped file and rename it to *.xlsx
where * is the filename
ps: Great name!
Many thanks for your help Hui but not sure why you are repeating what Chadoo said and which I first posted to because it didn't work for me. I did as he said and it didn't work, hence my post.
Chandoo says:
March 11, 2014 at 1:52 am
@All having trouble with download file.
1. Download the file.
2. Rename the extension as .xlsx
3. Double click or open it in Excel
Also, please note that we are investigating an issue with our webserver settings that may be causing this behavior. Sorry for the inconvenience. I am hoping to get this fixed in next 48 hours.
I used thermometer chart & conditional formatting using traffic lights. I just recently completed a dashboard I hope you can take a look but don't know where to send it. Thanks.
The in-cell bar charts is very interesting. This is not to be used as one can easly do manipulations by changing fonts/ font size etc
Hi..this is really helpful..
but I hve one quick ques..is it possible to hve conditional formating for chart graph based on text value and not the numbers..if I take your example project one bar should be red...if data is project 2 then it should be blue..basically we mke chart based on countries n each countries are assigned specific color...so I want a way where I can use conditionsl formating and not do it manaually each month.
You can set up conditional formatting rules to do this.
See this... it may help
http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/04/01/incell-panel-chart/
Hi Chandoo,
Great article and will be very useful.
One question - is it possible to have in-cell bar chart and the percentage complete (similar to icons)?
Try something like :
=CONCATENER(REPT("|";A1*100);REPT(" ";25-A1*25);"|")
it's quite nice
Hi Chandoo,
I am a great fan of you since i stumbled upon your blog. Your blog is very informative and insightful. I liked the way you presented the 5 steps using thermometer chart. I was very much inspired by that and tried to make my own version with 20 tasks to complete. On and after 17th step it was going downward. So I wanted to ask you that is there any limitation to thermometer chart
[…] shows us the 6 best charts to use, when you want to show your progress against a goal. There’s a sample file to download, so you can experiment on your […]
Is there any xhart is available which can show achivement percentage it may 80% or 120% means more an set target.?
Hi Chandoo,
Love your site. I have a small question regarding plotting data that contains ranking. I have 2 fields - Country, Rank. Note that i don't have the absolute values from which the rank has been calculated. So what is the best way of showing this on a graph given only the above 2 fields. Appreciate it
Regds,
Ross
@Ross
I would assign a set of simple numeric values to your ranks
Even a simple 1 to 10 makes plotting relativities easy
Dear Chandoo Sir,
Really awesome post.
Thanks.
Vignesh.V
We can always rely on Chandoo to explain to us clearly things that perhaps we already knew but weren't putting into practice the best way.
A limit I never liked about data bars was that they are monochrome - one colour for positive values, one colour for negative. So a couple of weeks ago I sat down to figure out a workaround. If anyone's interested...
http://digimac.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/multicoloured-data-bars-in-excel/
Epic fail on my part! After three months I just found out that what worked on my machine, didn't work on others.
Problem solved, more functions added.
The link above at
To hide them use ;;; custom cell formatting code (how to).
appears to be incorrect. However, using the downloaded file and selecting a cell(s) from that example provides the easy answer.
I wondered if the pies could have a color other than black and white (which, of course, would raise the color-blindness issue that you referred to with the traffic lights example).
Hi Chandoo!
Thanks for the informative post!
I have managed to understand and replicate all of the progress graphs except one, the thermo bar. I read up on the tutorial of how to create them, and I understand almost everything about the look and use of the bar, but one problem I am having is that I cannot seem to "center" the bar into the cell like you did. The reason being that even though the highest input (progress) percent is 100%, the program automatically puts in another 20%, so instead of 100% stopping at the end of the graph, it stops 20% short and I have a huge space at the end because of it.
How did you counter that problem? I have been trying for hours to fix it
@Aden
Set the Axis limits to Minimum 0 and maximum 1
Thanks. I started running a project recently, and I found your charts to be really helpful in tracking it's progress. I'm glad I found your page.
Hi Chandoo!
Great stuff for my customized project moving forward. However, when I use the blue block bars, the %ages spark up to smt like 5000% and cannot lower them nor scale them. If I input manually such as 50% without formatting a column, the bar for 50% e.g., will fill the cell completely, so that's kind of odd... what to do?
Thanks!
I guess I have the same problem. When I put 50 and click on the percentage, it is giving me 500%. Can someone help us on this. Thanks in advance
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2014/03/10/best-charts-to-show-progress/ […]
Hey,
Thank you for making this page. I do have one problem with the thermo graphs. Whenever I try to drag the graphs from one cell to the cell beneath it, the data remains selected on the former.
For example, if I had a thermo with a target number in A1 and an actual number in B1 with my thermo in C1, when I drag my thermo into C2, C3, etc., all of the graphs show the results from A1 and B1.
Is there a way to have these graphs update automatically as I will be regularly working in an excel file with hundred of entries?
P.S. I removed the $ symbols from 'Select Data', but that did not fix the problem.
Thanks again!
@Lisa
Not sure but it sounds like the new cells have Conditional formats applied
Select just the new cells
Select Conditional formatting, Clear Rules, Clear Rules from selected Cells
Hi Chandoo.
I am charting on some defaulter data where greater than zero is not desirable. Problem is that I have to highlight zero as target and anything above as undesirable. Seek your help
Hi Chandoo
Great post!
But I am wondering why bullet chart is not on this list. Is there a reason for its absence?
Thank you for these instructions. The bonus 5 Step Progress Meter you included would be perfect for my project. Where can I find the instructions?
Hi,
Do you know of any simple way to reduce the Data Bars padding so that they fit within the cells?
Thanks and great posy!
Regards
Appreciating the dedication you put into your website and in depth information you
provide. It's good to come across a blog every once in a while that isn't the same out of date rehashed information. Wonderful
read! I've bookmarked your site and I'm including your
RSS feeds to my Google account.
With #1 and #2, how would you also apply a red amber green to the bars (is it possible within chart formatting or would you need to utilise CF)?
I'm thinking of an in cell bar of some kind which will show against a known goal end date how far along with the goal you are (this is to be used for 'how many of the X number of people that I need to train in X timeframe, have been trained and therefore which of each training group is on track to complete on time or falling behind'.
So there would be knowns of number of people, target end date but I'd want it to reflect accurately as some groups of trainees might only have 50 in so their 50% done would be different to a group of trainees where their group had 200 people in it - but 50% would still be the same. Somewhere there'd probably need to be something which noted that there was a different volume of trainees so it could but the remaining effort to train people into context?
Hope that makes some kind of sense, I could be waffling!
[…] charts. Its got things like “Best Charts to Compare Actuals vs Targets” and “Best charts to show progress“. I love me some charts […]
Thanks a lot my dear.
very Useful it for me.
Another great post, thanks for sharing.
Chandoo, I am just starting an Excel class, and everything in the class is new to me. I am learning how to use all of these great charts but don't know what they are all used for. Thank you for your post and I think I will be able to use this down the road throughout my business career
in the above charts , Chart #2: Conditional Formatting Data Bars
->Assume if we have completed 35% of work it is showing in Blue color ,in the same cell remaining 65% of work should shows in some color , how to show?
Hi Sir,
This is Rachit and I am a big fan of you and your work. This is to request you please make a video for Beverages Sales performance data analysis in Excel.
Regards,