More to do with the SalesLogix Crystal Report - Side By Side Bar Graph

SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports (Crystal Reports) is the report writer for Sage SalesLogix (SalesLogix).  I am a developer that works for the best CRM Consulting and Service Provider in the world and we primarily work with SalesLogix.  This blog focuses on writing Crystal Reports for SalesLogix and helping you, the reader, learn and get more from both tools. I am currently blogging about the graphs that come with Crystal Reports.  In a previous post I discussed the simple side by side bar graph that Crystal Reports provides standard.  Today we are going to take that graph to the next level and show you more things you can do to make your graph look a little better with a little more data. 
The graph we are working with currently provides the number of accounts by type.  I am going to change this graph to also show me the same detail but include the status of the Accounts also. To do this I open the report with my bar graph, I right click on the upper corner of the graph and select "Chart Expert" from the list that appears.  This will open the Chart Expert dialog defaulted to the "Type" tab with the "Side By Side Bar Graph" selected.  To add a little dimension to this chart select the "Use Depth effect" check box on the bottom of this tab.  You can also selct if you want the graph to display Horizontally or Vertically.
Next, navigate to the "Data" tab and add in the Account.Status field under the Account.Type in the upper right hand corner of the tab. 
On the "Text" tab, change the Title of the Graph to "# Accounts by Type and Status", and the group title to Status.  Just so you can see you do have control over the fonts on your graph, go down to the format section and set size of the Title font to 9.
Select "OK" which closes the dialog and allows you to again see your graph.

This is a little messy, to clean up our data to really just focus on those items that are important to us like,  I really do not want to see any accounts that have a status of "Purge" and I want to remove accounts with a type of Competitor, Partner, or Vendor.  To limit the data for this report, I will go up to the Report Menu, find Selection Formulas, and then select Record form the list.  When the formula editor opens I created this formula:
{ACCOUNT.ACCOUNT}>""  // This one was already in the formula
and
{ACCOUNT.STATUS} <> "Purge"
and
Not({ACCOUNT.TYPE} in MakeArray("Competitor","Partner","Vendor"))
Now when I view my report things are cleaned up a little.
 
FYI, there are more chart options available to you by right clicking on the chart and selecting the "Chart Options" menu item.  This will open up a dialog that allows you to play around with the chart properties. 
Next time we will get into the Stacked Bar Chart. 
Thanks for reading!