Can anyone recommend a good tool to create graphs and charts in Lotus Notes?
Subject: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
Didn’t have a chance to try it myself yet, but you might have a look at Martin’s use of XML/SWF charts:
http://www.bizzybee.be/2006/08/30/good-looking-graphics-from-your-data/
Given the average quality of his tips, it should work great.
Well, unless your looking for something to run in the client, that is …
Subject: RE: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee yet and I don’t do much web design so can you flesh this out a bit?
How do you get from a Notes view to the chart? Just in broad strokes, how would you do this with a Notes view rendered on a web page?
Upsides/downsides to the technique?
Thanks.
To the original poster, if you need to do this in the client, think about pushing the data off to Excel and charting it there. Tons of examples and code in this forum, hte 4/5 forum, in the FAQs so poke around first.
Doug
Subject: RE: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
Hehe, I’m sure you noticed the part where I said, that I haven’t used it mysef, yet, right after you finished your coffee, right?
Anyway, here’s a rough sketch.
The OBJECT tag in the HTML sample page is what finally does the magic. It tells the browser to use the flash plugin and directs it to the source of charts.swf (which you have either in your webserver’s HTML file system or stored as file resources in a database). The path to charts.swf might need adjustment, depending on where exactly you stored it.
Also note, that the two references to charts.swf include a parameter “&xml_source=sample.xml”. Thats the link to the source xml file. As you suggested, you would probably not want to create a static xml file in Domino, but rather use a view (or an agent) to return the xml.
The easiest (and probably fastest) way to generate the XML would be an embedded view. Give the embedding form (or page if you prefer) a content type of application/xml and add all the static part of the xml in the sample xml file given.
The dynamic part (everything between the chart_data tags) would have to be created by a “treat view contents as HTML” view. In Martin’s example, the number for region 1 and region 2 might be generated from two different documents, while the weekday strings could still be included in the static xml text on the form.
Now, instead of specifying “sample.xml” in the xml_source parameter, provide the web path to your embedding form (which might by chance be called sampel.xml) or to the view (if you make the form a view template for that view.
That should about be it. Except for learning about all the diffenrent types of charts charts.swf can create. But remember: All just from reading the article, I’ve not tried it yet.
Subject: RE: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
Thanks Harkpabst for directing Aline to the article. I found another tool that does roughly the same as the XML/Swf tool I described in the article and one of these days (perhaps today) I’ll post a demo database on my site, that should clear things up a bit.
Aline, I’ll let you know if I’ve finished the demo db.
Martin Vereecken
http://www.bizzybee.be (Notes blog)
Subject: RE: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
Thanks for the expanded description. Like I said, I don’t do much on the web side and spend very little time in the xml world. I think there are enough hints there that I can get it to work.
I’ll just add this to my ‘todo’ list and ‘getToIt’ when I can (or need to).
Thanks.
Doug
Subject: RE: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
I am having trouble getting xml_source correct.The url generates an XML file fine if i browse to it in IE.
But when I try to use it on my page it wont work as my data source for my chart.
Anyone have any tips for using an agent to generate xml and passing parameters to the agent and using that as my xml_source?
Subject: Creating graphs and charts in Lotus Notes
I created an interesting article on this: check out http://www.bizzybee.be/2007/11/05/even-better-looking-charts-from-your-data-with-fusioncharts/
Martin Vereecken
http://www.bizzybee.be (Notes blog)