Forum Discussion

TonyGonzalez's avatar
TonyGonzalez
Qrew Trainee
3 months ago

Charting Help

I need help with a best practice on charting information, using data entered monthly.  I will try and explain below...
We have lots of data we track by monthly numbers.  I have setup a simple table to allow a user to simply input the total number of events for that month.  I would like to display these in a chart, based on FY, but don't really want the label to be 10-1-2023, as an example.  I would rather have Oct as the abbreviation.  I can't figure out how to do this and still be able to display in the correct chronological sequence.  If I just use month names, I can only get them to display in an incorrect order.  



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Gonzo - A Newbie, but learning fast. (Former SmartSheet evangelist who is quickly converting to QuickBase)
IT Director City of New Braunfels
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9 Replies

  • Best suggestion is to use MM/YY as your labels. So instead of 10-1-2023 you could do 10/23

    You need it as MM so that they go 01 - 02  - 03 etc



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    Chayce Duncan
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    • TonyGonzalez's avatar
      TonyGonzalez
      Qrew Trainee

      So that would still be a text field, right?  I could do that, but would require I pre-populate that field with all the iterations of month and year.  Seems a little cumbersome.



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      Gonzo - A Newbie, but learning fast. (Former SmartSheet evangelist who is quickly converting to QuickBase)
      IT Director City of New Braunfels
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  • Have you tried simply having the report group the X axis by month as opposed to by Equal values.  Then it will read like OCT 2024.



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    Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
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    • TonyGonzalez's avatar
      TonyGonzalez
      Qrew Trainee

      Mark, I have, but can only do via month.  Month and FY are different fields.



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      Gonzo - A Newbie, but learning fast. (Former SmartSheet evangelist who is quickly converting to QuickBase)
      IT Director City of New Braunfels
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  • I would really like the ability to have the flexibiliy to be able to filter by month OR year.  i.e I want to see all October numbers across 5 years.  I want to then be able to see all months groups into a fiscal year, but in the FY order starting with Oct.  I can do this with a bunch of different fields, but again seems very cumbersome.



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    Gonzo - A Newbie, but learning fast. (Former SmartSheet evangelist who is quickly converting to QuickBase)
    IT Director City of New Braunfels
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    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Qrew Champion

      OK. So the only way to do that is to cheat on the months name by making a new field called [Months Name Sorted].  This is an example assuming your fiscal year begins in October.

      var date MyDate = [insert your date field here];

      Case(Month($MyDate),
      1,"04-JAN",
      2,"05-FEB",
      3,"06-MAR",
      4,"07-APR",
      5,"08-MAY",
      6,"09-JUN",
      7,"10-JUL",
      8,"11-AUG",
      9,"12-SEP",
      10,"01-OCT",
      11,"02-NOV",
      12,"03-DEC")

      Then you will need to have another calculated field to calculate the fiscal year and include both of those in separate dynamic filters.  

      An example of a fiscal year calculation might be

      IF(Month([my date field])>=10,  Year([my date field])+1, Year([my date field]))

       ..  and mark it to be searchable (calculated numeric fields or numeric fields in general tend not to be searchable by default and they're therefore not eligible by default to be dynamic filters.)  



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      Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
      mark.shnier@gmail.com
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      • TonyGonzalez's avatar
        TonyGonzalez
        Qrew Trainee

        Mark, as always this works beautifully.  While not ideal, it works and that's what matters most.  I appreciate it.  On a side note...does QB have a yearly user conference?



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        Gonzo - A Newbie, but learning fast. (Former SmartSheet evangelist who is quickly converting to QuickBase)
        IT Director City of New Braunfels
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  • DavidJung's avatar
    DavidJung
    Qrew Assistant Captain

    Just to share what I did on one of my monthly reporting tables, I have two fields that I use to graph by month.

    Date field, sorted by month on the graph: ToDate([Month #]&"-28-"&[Year]) ... so I am setting the date as the 28th for them all.

    Text field, sorted by equal values: 

    If([Month #]>9,
    " -."&ToText([Month #]),
    " - "&ToText([Month #])
    )

    ... where I inserted the period as a way to push the months of Oct-Dec to the right of the other months. I use this to chart FY, which is April to April.



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    David Jung
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