At eImagine, we do some pretty cool dashboarding in our CRM implementation. Unfortunately, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 only supports 5 standard (read: boring) chart types out of the box: Column, Bar, Line, Pie, and Funnel. Well, I take that back--Funnel is exciting, but the other 4 are definitely boring.
However, since CRM uses the standard .NET Framework Chart control, it is an undocumented feature that you can extend the charting visualizations to take advantage of many other chart types. And, even better, this can be done without development extension of the control! Here are instructions to easily change the chart type of an existing or newly created chart in CRM:
- Navigate to Settings > Customization > Customize the System.
- In your soluton, navigate to Entities > (Target Entity) > Charts.
- Select the chart you wish to change and choose Export.
- Save the resulting XML and open it in Visual Studio or any text editor.
- Scroll to the Series element and modify the ChartType property.
- Save and import the XML as a new chart.
Here are all the supported chart types you can use:
| ChartType | Description |
| Area | Area chart type. |
| Bar | Bar chart type. |
| BoxPlot | Box plot chart type. |
| Bubble | Bubble chart type. |
| Candlestick | Candlestick chart type. |
| Column | Column chart type. |
| Doughnut | Doughnut chart type. |
| ErrorBar | Error bar chart type. |
| FastLine | FastLine chart type. |
| FastPoint | FastPoint chart type. |
| Funnel | Funnel chart type. |
| Kagi | Kagi chart type. |
| Line | Line chart type. |
| Pie | Pie chart type. |
| Point | Point chart type. |
| PointAndFigure | PointAndFigure chart type. |
| Polar | Polar chart type. |
| Pyramid | Pyramid chart type. |
| Radar | Radar chart type. |
| Range | Range chart type. |
| RangeBar | RangeBar chart type. |
| RangeColumn | Range column chart type. |
| Renko | Renko chart type. |
| Spline | Spline chart type. |
| SplineArea | Spline area chart type. |
| SplineRange | Spline range chart type. |
| StackedArea | Stacked area chart type. |
| StackedArea100 | Hundred-percent stacked area chart type. |
| StackedBar | Stacked bar chart type. |
| StackedBar100 | Hundred-percent stacked bar chart type. |
| StackedColumn | Stacked column chart type. |
| StackedColumn100 | Hundred-percent stacked column chart type. |
| StepLine | StepLine chart type. |
| Stock | Stock chart type. |
| ThreeLineBreak | ThreeLineBreak chart type. |
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