Imagine you are the head of training department at ACME Inc. You arrange training programs round the year to empower your team. It is hard work, coordinating between employees, trainers, department heads, venues and coffee machines. What if there is something to help you keep track of all this? I am not talking about getting you a shiny new iPad, you silly. I am talking about a tracker & calendar built in Excel that ties everything together (well, almost everything, you still have to fill the coffee machine.)
This is what we are going to build:
Please watch this 8 minute video before moving on. It explains how the workbook is setup and what it does.
[Watch this video on Chandoo.org YouTube channel]
Employee training tracker & calendar – how is it made?
Step 1: Get the data
The first step is to figure out what types of data we need. At the very least, we need 3 sets of data:
- A list of people
- A list of training courses
Let’s assume our data looks like this:
All of this data is maintained in Excel tables (named people and courses)
Step 2: Set up a tracker to assign people to training programs
Once we have all the data, we can create a tracker (another Excel table). This allows us to map people to various courses.
Error checking at tracker level:
When you map people to training courses, there are 3 possibilities:
- The mapping could be duplicate
- The course is over capacity
- The mapping is OK
We can use conditional formatting to show these errorsin the tracker so that users will know if everything is ok or not.
We end up with something like this:
Step 3: Design calendar view on paper
We need to define goals for calendar view. Let’s say the calendar view should answer these questions:
- What courses are happening right now (3 month window)
- How many people have attended the courses?
- What is the total cost
- What is the feedback rating of the courses?
- Show summaries for individual departments or all
Next step is to sketch the calendar view. Here is what I came up with.
Step 4: Set up slicer & scroll bar form control
Using the instructions in introduction to slicers and introduction to form controls, we set up a slicer on department and a scroll bar to select month.
Step 5: Calculate all the necessary values for calendar view
This is the engine of our calendar view. There are a lot of calculations that go in to showing various summaries and monthly values. Explaining all of them will take forever. Instead, let me summarize the key techniques.
- SMALL formula to fetch the courses scheduled in a particular month
- INDEX formula to fetch various values from people, courses & tracker table.
- SUMIFS (and COUNTIFS) formula to sum & count various things that meet conditions.
- SUMPRODUCT formula when sumifs won’t just get what we want.
- Calculating average rating by selected department employees for a particular course
- TEXT formula to display currency values in the calendar view.
- REPT formula along with star symbols to show rating.
- IFERROR, because #DIV/0! is not the prettiest value on your output worksheet.
Once the calculations are ready, we move to next step.
Step 6: Plug the values in to Calendar view and format
One all the values are loaded to calendar view (thru linked cells, of course), we need to format.
- Use conditional formatting to show borders, fill colors only if a cell has value
- Use conditional formatting to change the color of star rating depending on the slicer selection.
- Set header portion apart with colors and spacer rows.
- Clean up and hide un-necessary stuff.
And the calendar view is ready.
Download Training Tracker & Calendar workbook
Click here to download the training tracker & calendar workbook. Play with the calendar view, Examine the formulas in hidden Calc worksheet and change inputs to learn more.
Of course, it’s not that simple.
I have summarized only the key steps. The actual process of making this calendar is a bit more lengthy and time consuming.
To learn more about how this dashboard is made, consider enrolling in our Excel School + Dashboards online course.
This workbook & detailed tutorial (45 mins) is now part of Excel School videos.
Please click here to know more about the Excel School program and enroll.
More Excel dashboards & trackers for you
If you manage staff then you would love these additional resources.
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?