Introduction to Alerts

Sample: Charts

This section provides an example of the Alert function applied to a chart. We will use the Column Chart to illustrate a very simple example. This will give you the ammunition required to understand how the alert function works on charts.

Suppose you need to create a chart that compares the actual quarterly revenues against the target revenues.  The Excel file looks like the following:

1. Once the Excel file has been imported, the next step is to insert a column chart on the canvas area.
2. Then click on the chart to edit the Property Window.

3. We are ready to use alert on this simple chart. Click the Alerts Tab. To enable alerts, check the Enable Alerts check box.

4. Since the chart is measuring Revenues, the correct alert method is High Values Are Good. You will now want to adjust the trigger color levels. To do this, click on the zoom icon on the alert control panel and increase the alert panel maximum limit. Then simply drag and drop each arrow until you find the desired values.

For this example, we have set the alerts with the following limits:

• Red: Actual is 90% or less than Target.
• Yellow: Actual is between 91% and 109% of Target.
• Green: Actual is 110% or greater than Target.

The next step is to actually select the target values from the spreadsheet.

5. Click the Target icon and select the target values.

The chart is now ready to be published. It will look like the following example:

Note About Charts & Alerts: The above example describes a very simple use of charts and alerts. You can create more elaborate models by using a selector, chart and alerts. To do that, simply follow the same above instructions but link the chart actual and target data to the range where the selector is inserting the data.