Auxiliary Reporting. Now Driven from Your Database
Posted by Rod Bishop | Filed under Organisational charting
How to Build a Matrix Chart in OrgPlus Desktop
The following explains how to build a matrix organisation in OrgPlus.
It’s important to note that these features only exist in OrgPlus Premium (and Professional) 8.3 at present… we’ll keep you posted on new releases to OrgPlus Enterprise as they happen.
1. Start with a data file
You can use ours for this example.
2. Import the data
The import should automatically identify AuxReportsTo.
3. Import complete!
OrgPlus should have successfully understood your data… but it’s not very pretty yet! Time to clean it up using Sorting and Chart Rules.
4. Go to Data > Sort. In Sort By select “Project”
This ensures that each department has individuals in order by Project.
5. Go to Format > Chart Rules > Manage Rules
Here we’re going to set up the conditions and chart rules. We’ll also use the same conditions later for our conditional formats.
We’ll need three conditions:
a. Department only
In our data, our Department Leader’s “Project” column is empty. So we’ll use this to determine who our Department Leaders are.
Add a new condition. Call it “Department only”. For “Field Name”, select “Project”. For “Comparison” select “Is Empty”.
For “Chart Style” select “Tree”. For “Action” leave blank.
b. Project only
Follow the same logic for our Project Leaders.
Add a new condition. Call it “Project only”. For “Field Name”, select “Department”. For “Comparison” select “Is Empty”.
For “Chart Style” select “One Column”. For “Action” select “Demote Left” “1 Level”.
c. Department and Project
Our matrix employees have both “Project” and “Department”.
Add a new condition. Call it “Department and Project”. Make it true when both Project and Department are Not Empty.
For “Chart Style” select “One Column Left Center”. For “Action” leave blank.
6. Select an Auxiliary Line. Go to Format > Line Properties > Advanced.
In Auxiliary Line Options select “Under Boxes”.
The “Advanced” tab only appears when an Auxiliary Line is selected.
7. Manually tidy your Auxiliary Lines
Click the end of each Auxiliary Line and drag it into a “tidy” location… use ours as a guide or make your own. Below shows what it looks like when you click and drag an Auxiliary Line.
8. Go to Data > Refresh Properties. Select Option. Un-tick “Refresh Auxiliary Lines”.
As of OrgPlus 8.3 there is no way to configure Auxiliary Line position using Chart Rules (we expect it in a future release). So for now, to ensure your tidy formatting survives a data refresh we’ll need to toggle off the refresh.
9. Add your conditional formats!
Using the conditions we prepared in Step 5 you can now configure conditional formats so that Deparment Leaders, Project Leaders and others all feature visually different boxes.
That’s it! You now have a data-driven org chart of a complex matrix organisation. Below is one I prepared earlier.
It’s most important to note that this is 99% data-driven. With these rules you can create any size of matrix organisation, direct from your HR data, even as a sub-part of a normal hierarchy.
If you use these structures let us know in the comments below. We’re very interested to see how this works in your organisations!
Pages: 1 2
Tags: Organisational charting, OrgPlus
