KNOWLEDGE BASE
ChartSync getting started guide
A step-by-step guide on how to get started with ChartSync
Contents:
1. Logging into Salesforce
Once you have installed ChartSync, you first need to log into your Salesforce account from the app. To do this, select or create a Sheet in your Google Spreadsheet and locate the ChartSync menu under the "Extensions" tab at the top of your Google Sheets document:
Click on the “Login to Salesforce” option.
An Authorize button will then appear in the right hand panel:
Click on the Authorize button to launch the Salesforce login page and login with your Salesforce username and password.
Tip: if you login to your Salesforce account beforehand, the Spreadsheet will be automatically authenticated when you click Authorise using the current logged in account’s credentials.
Note, you can logout of the connection with Salesforce by clicking on the “Logout from Salesforce” option at any time.
2. Selecting a report
Once authenticated, select "Launch" from the "Extensions" tab & you can start importing report charts and data by connecting a sheet to a specific Salesforce report & chart.
Once you have clicked "Launch", the ChartSync wizard will appear on the right hand side of the Sheet:
Select the report that you wish to import from the recently run Salesforce reports drop and click Next. Note, currently, you’ll need to click on a report in Salesforce to change this list.
3. Filtering report data
An option to add a filter will appear:
Select the field to be filtered, along with the Operator and Value. Note, that you can also filter your reports within Salesforce itself if you wish to use more complex filters. Click Next.
4. Selecting a chart format
Now select your format options. In the "Select format" section you can select a Chart type to be generated, and also the format of picklist summary columns:
Chart Formats
Select “Salesforce Chart” to generate a chart based on the chart that is displayed in the selected Salesforce report.
Select “Pivot Table Only” if you want to generate a pivot table without a chart. This allows you to easily build a chart of your own design in Google Sheets.
Select “Hierarchy” to generate a hierarchy chart from your data (see later).
Select "Data Only" to pull over the Salesforce report data without a chart or pivot table.
Index Picklist Values
When using picklist summary fields to sort a chart in Salesforce, it will automatically order them by the order of the picklist values stored in Salesforce. However, in a Google Sheet, the pivot table doesn’t know the order of the picklist values, and therefore will order them alphabetically.
To address this, you can choose to index picklist values. This will prepend an index to the picklist values that matches their order in Salesforce, thus allowing them to be sorted as they are in Salesforce. Deselect the checkbox if you just want to show the default non-indexed values.
Show Values on Line Charts
Select whether you would like to add data labels to your auto-generated line charts.
5. Selecting a refresh period
Now select a refresh period:
Depending on the period selected, the pivot table, chart and associated report data will be automatically generated on a periodic basis, e.g. every 4 hours.
Top tip: If you generated a pivot table only and used this to create your own bespoke chart, both the pivot table and chart will be automatically refreshed, see our tutorial on this for more information.
To start the process of generating the chart, click Run.
The settings you have entered will be saved as meta data in the sheet, so you can run them again later.
The sheet will then be populated with the data from the report.
A new tab will also be generated and populated with:
A pivot table based on the report summaries.
A chart based on the report chart.
6. Connecting a hierarchy Chart
To generate a hierarchy chart, you must first create a tabular report in Salesforce which generates a report with the child record in the first column, and the parent record in the second column. For example:
Next, setup a Sheet and configure the wizard to import this report. When selecting Chart Type, select “Hierarchy”.
A hierarchy chart will then be generated based on the data in the report:
7. Refresh settings
On any page of the wizard you can choose to refresh the settings that are assigned to the current Sheet. Settings for the previous page are stored when you click "Next", so these will be the values that are refreshed.
Note, this is useful when switching between Sheets as you can refresh the settings that are currently associated with that Sheet using this button.
8. Managing refresh schedules
The Refresh Schedule menu option allows you to see which Sheets have been assigned to what refresh schedule. Select one or more Sheets and click delete to remove the schedules. Note, you can use Cmd-Select (Mac) or Ctrl-Select (PC) to individually select and deselect entries:
