Creating Charts in PeopleSoft

Pictures often speak louder than a text data. If you have page which contains huge list of numeric data, then it will be much better read if the data is converted into an appropriate chart. Also it will be very easy to identify high level information from a chart than a grid or scroll. PeopleSoft offers different types of charts that can be added to your application to make meaningful information.

Some of the chart types offered in PeopleSoft are Bar Charts, Stacked Bar Charts, Gantt Charts, Pie Charts, Bubble Charts etc.

If you have the well formatted data upfront, then creating charts is a simpler process. I will just outline the bare minimum steps required to create a chart on a PS Page.

Step 1: Open the page in application designer and place a chart control on the page.

Step 2: Open the chart properties and assign a record field to the chart. Work record will be the best fit for this.

Step 3: Write the code to initiate the chart. You can consider PageActivate event for this. The pseudo will be as below.

Local Chart &Chart;

Rem Get the chart based on the record field associated in step 2.;

&Chart = GetChart(RECORD.FIELD);

Rem Specify the data source record;

&Chart.SetData(Record.MY_DATA_RECORD);

Rem Set X and Y axis for the chart;

&Chart.SetDataXAxis(MY_DATA_RECORD.MY_X_VALUE);

&Chart.SetDataYAxis(MY_DATA_RECORD.MY_Y_VALUE);

You can now customize the look and feel of the chart using the delivered properties & Methods of chart classes such as

1.       SetXAxixLabels – To set the label for X axis.

2.       SetYAxisLabels – To set label for Y axis.

3.       SetLegend – To set legends for the data colors.

4.       SetDataURLs – To open another page when clicking on a data in the graph.

5.       SetDataHints – To show hints for data points on chart.

6.       SetDataColor – To change the color of the data points.

7.       Type -  This property will determine the type of the chart. You can refer the below table to set appropriate value for the chart you desire.

%ChartType_2DBar	Two-dimensional bar chart
%ChartType_2DStackedBar	Two-dimensional stacked bar chart
%ChartType_2DPercentBar	Two-dimensional percent bar chart
%ChartType_2DHorizStackedBar	Two-dimensional stacked horizontal bar chart
%ChartType_2DLine	Two-dimensional line chart
%ChartType_2DHistogram	Two-dimensional histogram chart
%ChartType_2DPie	Two-dimensional pie chart
%ChartType_3DBar	Three-dimensional bar chart
%ChartType_3DStackedBar	Three-dimensional stacked bar chart
%ChartType_3DPie	Three-dimensional pie chart
%ChartType_2DHorizPercentBar	Two-dimensional horizontal percent chart
%ChartType_3DPercentBar	Three-dimensional percent bar char
%ChartType_2DHorizBar	Two-dimensional horizontal bar chart
%ChartType_2DScatter	Scatter chart
%ChartType_2DBubble	Bubble chart

You can even consider creating Pivot Grids for simple data sets, so that it requires no coding and provides more efficient way for creating and using charts. To read on creating pivot grids, read my previous post on the subject.