Creating Traffic Light Indicators in Xcelsius Using the Bubble Chart Component

Those of us using Crystal Xcelsius for executive dashboards often wish there was an out-of-the-box component for traffic light-style performance indicators. Red/Green/Yellow indicator lights are universally understood as indicators of state and are universally found on practically all executive dashboards. In fact, most business executives actually think in terms of green/red, good/bad modalities.

The author of my favorite book on Crystal Xcelsius ( Crystal Xcelsius For Dummies ) has an article where he shows step by step instructions on how to produce these neat executive dashboard traffic lights (click on the images to enlarge if necessary):

The basic idea is to use the built-in bubble chart component and strip everything out except for the bubble. Here is the usual bubble chart:

This link to the Xcelsius traffic light tutorial is definitely worth visiting. The author carefully illustrates each step that he takes, including the construction of the underlying excel spreadsheet and how to tie the series into Xcelsius.

Tags: Xcelsius Dashboard Indicators, Executive Dashboards