2 Series Chart with CRM 2011

With the availablity of the CRM 2011 Update Rollup 5 there are some nifty changes to the product. The focus of this post is the capability of multi-series charting. To clarify, multi series charting was always available in crm2011. It required you to download the chart as an xml, make a few simple changes, and re-import it back in. But with the rollup update, we can do one step better - get it all done from the UI! I love it!

Let us create a 2 series chart, which will give us the Estimated revenue and Actual Revenue for each potential customer.


1. Go to Sales/Opportunities and select view "Won opportunities"

2. Go to charts tab and select new Chart. You will reach the blank Chart Designer. Note that I have made the chart display bigger by dragging the frame to the left.

3. Name the Chart "Est & Actual Revenue/ Potential Customer". Under Legend Entries(which will be the Y axis) select Est Revenue and choose Sum as the Aggregate. Notice that there is an "Add a Series" button right below.

4. When the "Add a Series" button is selected, a new row is added under the "Legend Entries" section. For this row, choose the Y axis as "Actual revenue" and aggregate as "Sum". Click on the Column chart icon to the right of the Aggregate drop down. For this case, let us select Line as the Chart Type.

5. Add "Potential Customer" as the Horizontal Axis.Provide a description for the chart.

6. Save and Close the chart from the Chart Tools ribbon.This is the chart you should see.

Well, we have a great 2 series chart, but not really a great looking 2 series chart. The chart looks a little busy, and I would also like to see the Y axis formatted to show the currency sign. Lets get to it!


1. Export the chart you just created from the Charts tab/ Export chart option. Save it to your machine, and open the xml file.

2. The node <presentationdescription/> contains the details of how the chart is rendered. This is where our focus is. Let us look at the highlighted sections in the screen shot below:

3. In <Series> chartype="line", remove the highlighted section from above (YAxisType="Secondary").
   In the ChartAreas/ ChartArea/ AxisY/ LabelStyle section , add the following: Format="$0,k"
   This is what the xml should look like:

4. Import the saved xml back into CRM. Choose to replace the existing chart with the chart you are importing. The final chart looks much nicer, doesn't it?