Chart sandbox

A CRM report is built from three parts: the object supplying the rows, a dimension that groups them, and a measure that aggregates within each group. This sandbox runs on forty seed deals. Change any of the three and the chart follows.

What the constraints are for

A measure slot accepts only a number, which is why deal owner cannot be plotted on the value axis: there is no arithmetic that turns four names into a height. A line asserts that the points either side of it are adjacent, so joining owners produces a slope that means nothing while joining months produces a trend. A donut divides one whole, which is why a breakdown has nowhere to go inside it.

Every mark above is computed from the same aggregation that fills the row table, so a bar can be checked against the records behind it.

One object, and why that matters

Every row here is a deal, and every figure is computed from deal properties alone. That is the simple case. A report that reaches across an association — deals and their contacts, contacts and their companies — returns one row per association rather than one row per deal, so a sum across that join counts a deal once for every contact attached to it. The figure then rises whenever somebody adds an association, which is the most common way a report comes to overstate a number nobody thinks to question.

Two date fields are included for the same reason. Grouping by create date and grouping by close date answer different questions, and the same 120 deals produce different monthly shapes under each, because a deal is created one to four months before it closes. Switching the dimension between them shows the difference rather than describing it.

Read next

• The custom report builder — the same model in HubSpot's own interface.
• Dashboard architecture — what belongs on a dashboard once the charts are right.