@WonderLaura

In SharePoint online, the Quick Chart web part can show you dynamic data from a list!   As long as you have a SharePoint list (aka Microsoft list) on your site that has at least one number or currency column, you can use it in the web part settings, to display as a chart.  In this post, I’ll detail the steps to set this up.

1.  Add a Quick Chart web part to any page on a SharePoint site.

2.  You’ll notice in the web part settings, in the Data section, you have a couple of options for Data:

a. Enter data – this means that you can manually type static data. With this setting, you simply type several items directly in the web part settings.  This is not dynamic, and you would have to edit the web part settings each time you wanted the chart to have different data.  This setting is not what this blog post is about.

b. Get data from a SharePoint list on this site – this means you can pick a list on the site, to display the dynamic data graphically as a chart.

Note: If there are no lists on your site that include at least one number or currency field, you will see an error here under the SharePoint list option: “No list available on your site”.  So, even if there are lists, they won’t show here without one of these types of fields.

Save a draft of the page, so that you can come back to it.

3.  I’ll walk you through testing this out with your own list.  Click to create a new list on your SharePoint site, and in the list of templates, pick Work Progress Tracker.  Click Use template, and name the list Work progress tracker.

4.  There are no number or currency fields yet, so click Add column, create a new column as Currency, and name it Job Cost. Create a number column, and call it Number of Resources.

5.  Add a few items to your Work progress tracker list, and fill out all of the fields, so that there will be data to view in the web part.

6.  Go back to the page where you added the Quick Chart web part at step 1.  Go to the web part settings, by clicking the Edit web part button.  Configure the web part as follows:

Chart type – Column chart

Data – Get data from a SharePoint list on this site

List – Work progress tracker
The only lists to choose from in this drop-down, will be lists on this site that have at least one number or currency column.

Column that has the data to display – Job Cost
Notice that the only two columns to choose from here, are the currency and the number field that you created.

Column with labels for each data point – Title
This column is the only single line of text column in this list.  If you created more columns of this type, they would be listed here also.

Sort order – Ascending label
Choose from ascending/descending label, or ascending/descending data.

Layout – For the horizontal axis, call it “Job name”, and for the vertical axis, call it “Job Cost”

In the web part itself, you can type a name for your chart.  I called mine “Work Progress”, and you can see this in the first screenshot above.

As you change each setting, you’ll be able to see the chart update itself dynamically on the page.

7.  Save the page as a draft, or publish it.  You’ll notice that you can hover over each bar of the chart, and see the name of each job, from your list.  As the data in the SharePoint list changes, so will this chart.

Notice that if you add many items to your SharePoint list, the bar chart will have many bars, and these cannot be grouped in any way.

Try changing the setting to a Pie chart instead of a bar chart.

Notice that with the pie chart, it tells you a percentage next to each item.

In summary, this web part is pretty simplistic and straightforward, but does not have many settings.  You cannot group items, and it will always just represent every single item in the list as a piece of data in the graphic, with no way to group data by category or in any other way.

Resources:

I wrote another post, on how to build charts in Power Apps.  There are three methods that I talked about, and all of these methods are more flexible than the Quick Chart web part.  Here is my post with an associated demo video: Charts in Power Apps

Microsoft: Use the Quick Chart web part

Power BI has a certain licensing cost associated with it. If you do have Power BI, you can create a report directly from a SharePoint list.  Here’s how: Create a report quickly from a SharePoint list in the Power BI service.

Learn about this web part and much more in my online SharePoint training on my website IW Mentor.