If your reports include hourly distribution of data like,
- Customer footfalls in your store
- Page views of your site
- Customer service calls to your toll free numbers
here is an interesting charting idea to show the data around the clock (literally)
Update: Visualization pros Jon Peltier and Jorge Camoes took a critical look at this, nearly fainted 😉 at the carnage of a familiar metaphor and posted their awesome reviews here:
Rock around the clock by Jon, he recommends a line chart over this for all the valid reasons
Charting around clock by Jorge, he suggests a neat looking 12 pointed radar chart as an alternative.
Both these are indeed fine examples of how shaking a familiar metaphor (analog clock) or way doing (usual bar chart for 24 hours) can bring a great discussion and excellent alternatives out of passionate people. Do read them 🙂
What you are seeing is essentially 2 bubble charts tweaked to look like wall-clocks with bubbles around the 12 positions.
This can be an interesting addition to your dashboards or daily report. Excited to find out how this is done? read on.
1. Get your data ready to plot it around the clock (circle)
Let us build the above graph using fictitious page view data for each of the 12 hours since midnight till noon. The data is shown aside.
In order to create the around the clock affect we need to plot each of these hourly values around a circle at 12 points. Now, without getting all mathematicky to scare you, lets try to come up with simple explanation to find all the 12 points around the circle:
Assuming the radius of clock or our chart circle is 100,
- Clock has 12 hour positions, thus each one is 30° (360°/12)
- The first point’s x value would be:
SIN(30°)*100 - and y value would be:
COS(30°)*100 - For each of the other 11 points, we just need to use the multiples of 30: 60, 90, 120, .., 360
- in excel spreadsheet you can find the values by
ROUND(SIN(RADIANS(hour*30))*100,0), ROUND(COS(RADIANS(hour*30))*100,0) - We have to convert the degrees to radians since SIN(), COS() accept only radians as inputs
Once we are done, the data should look like this:
2. Plot the Bubble Chart
This is the easy part, just select the cells containing x,y and page view values and insert new chart, select bubble as the chart type. Make sure you have mentioned the x,y, and bubble sizes in correct places.
The fun part begins after creating the chart, as the dimensions may be skewed and you may get egg like circle, so adjust the dimensions and your 12 hour clock view is ready to go.
Use the same process to create another clock for hours from noon till midnight and juxtapose them on that dashboard or report, send it across to your boss or team, let the conversation begin 😀
Download the template and play with it
Like this technique, why don’t you download the Data Around Clock – Charting Idea excel and play with it. Its available on the standard PAHF license (Poke Around, Have Fun)
Fun ways to enhance these charts:
- Overlay a clock diagram in the background
- Use sky color for the background, thus one clock has darker shades and other has brighter shades
- Bubbles themselves can be colored as Sun colors, bright orange to yellow and back to orange
More on Bubble Charts: Why you should star retirement savings really early, Olympic Medals per Country in All Years
More on charting: Hack together a thermometer chart, tell a story with min-max charts, 73 awesome chart templates, download and wow
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?