Create Sparklines for Excel Reports

[jineshnp31]

Hi! 

I am looking for a solution to build sparklines for a trend report in Excel. Given is what I am looking to build.

Is there a way to use the Reporting tools to visualize a trend over time for each category as below?

Reference: https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2019/10/02/excel-sparklines-insert-change-use/

Appreciate any help!

Thank you.

[BrandonB · Accepted solution]

Hi @jineshnp31 

Sparklines aren't built in to the Alteryx reporting tools, but you could leverage a VBA script that executes as an event "after workflow run" or from a run command tool after the Excel file has been created. 

Example of sparklines VBA: https://myengineeringworld.net/2012/09/create-sparklines-automatically.html

Execute VBA from a workflow: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Alteryx-Run-Command-Executing-Excel...

[danilang · Accepted solution]

Hi @jineshnp31 

Like @BrandonB said, Spark Lines are a native Excel function and there's no built in way to set up the formatting on the excel spreadsheet to have them appear automatically

There are 2 other ways you can make it work however. 

1. Set up a template Excel file that already has the Spark lines defined and the Grades 1 to 5 columns defined in a named range.  Configure the output tool to insert the data into the named range.  Once a user opens the Excel file, the spark line will be regenerated automatically.

2. You can reproduce the Spark lines functionality using the Alteryx reporting tools(I was bored)

  

Tricky part here is that you only have the headers show up at the top of the table and you need to group the Interactive Chart and the Table tools by student to line them up in the output.  To do this you need to build a dummy Header record with only headers as a table and a dummy chart with white data lines and points Once you union this header row with the actual data rows, you have something that looks like this.

Dan

[jineshnp31]

Thank you @BrandonB I will try this solution as well, it actually also helps me think about automating another process! Appreciate it! 🙂 

[jineshnp31]

@danilang This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks a lot for your help! The second option fits my requirements better as we were looking to also have a brief snapshot to be sent out as email for the trend.

Appreciate your help! 🙂

[Chrisbrown]

Usually, when working with a large data set, the numbers can be a bit overwhelming, to say the least. It is not easy to quickly grasp what the numbers, trends and slope represent. For example, if there is a chart of stock prices (which may contain many numbers), it may overwhelm you. You won’t be able to quickly tell if prices are going up or down.

Sparkline in Google Sheets| Visualize Data in 2 mins