Sales Pipeline Funnel Chart Order is now incorrect

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Posted on by Community Member

Hi,

We are using the OOB sales funnel chart which our consultant linked to the new sales stage field we're using.

We had a problem previously where the stages were not displaying in the correct order in the chart. We fixed this by firstly changing the name of each stage (adding in 1., 2. before the name so it would sort in that order) and secondly changing the code number (GUID?) of each of the stage values (so that if the chart was using the number of the field value it would order correctly also). This did seem to solve the problem.

Today I noticed that the chart wasn't displaying the stages in the correct order anymore (not sure for how long). However, I have no idea what the order is based on as it's not alphabetical by stage name, not by stage value number and also not by the revenue value.

Can anyone tell me how the data is being ordered and how to fix it? I attach images of the chart, the values and the code.

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James Donohoe on at

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Export the chart

edit the xml:

add <order alias="stepname" ascending="true" /> just before the closing </entity>

re-import and it should order correctly

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Community Member on at

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Hi,

I'm getting this error message:

I tried 2x code edits, but maybe both are wrong?

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Ulrik 105 on at

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Use descending instead of ascending. Your second example is the correct setup.

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Community Member on at

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Thanks for the suggestion, but something about what I've added in is still bringing up the import error message.

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Community Member on at

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In the original XML screenshot you posted you had a line <attribute name = "new_stage" alias="stepname" groupby="true" />

If you add an "order" clause that refers to this alias, the line must still be there. It looks like you deleted this line by mistake when adding the extra code.

Also note that option sets sort by the underlying values rather than the text labels, usually.

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Community Member on at

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Thanks - turns out I have a number of pipeline charts with different coding and was using different ones each time. I have gone back to using the original chart and can add the code correctly. It seems to be working. No idea why the other chart isn't working still or how to amend the different coding, but I'll see if I can just use this one.

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Clint Woods 1,031 on at

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Hi Adam. I was trying to verify the statement that it would sort by the underlying values instead of the text labels and found that not to be the case. That would be a quite logical way for this to have been implemented, but for some reason, it appears they did not do that. In this example, "inquiry" has the value 1, "meid" has the value 2, "applicant" has the value 948,100,000, and so forth for the remaining Status values. The client is really not keen on updating the string value of the Status to make these sort accordingly and I was wondering if you or anyone else had a good workaround.

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Clint Woods 1,031 on at

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Sorry to immediately answer my own question, but this might be helpful. Thanks to this blog by Ledgeview Partners, I have the following slightly different explanation of how to fix this. In my case, there was no Order specified for this funnel chart. The chart definition looked like this:

I extracted the chart definition and made the following slight modification:

I would just note that the order is by the alias already specified as opposed to the attribute name as you would see it in your FetchXML of an ordered query. The result is the pipeline chart in the numerical order of the Status attribute assigned to the Leads

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Community Member on at

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Glad you fixed it, adding an Order clause was the fix for the first post in this thread too.
You might want to consider turning off the 3D to make it more effective as a visualisation - funnels are misleading enough in 2D but in 3D they are really easy to misinterpret.
Without cheating and adding up the numbers, can you tell in less than half a second if the first stage has more Leads in than all the rest put together?
The first slice is actually smaller than the rest, but we can't help but be distracted by the overwhelming effect of all that colour to either side, and the 3D makes us think of this as a big cone. Once you think of this as a volume, the first part looks huge by comparison to the rest.
Also see how the elliptical area on the top adds lots more blue pixels that do not represent any data? In your first (incorrectly sorted) screenshot, the first slice is way smaller than the bottom slice but has way more colour on screen.
A simple column chart would probably give people a much clearer picture of the number of leads in each stage, without distortion, albeit without the (sometime over-used) metaphor of a "funnel".

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Hi Everyone,

I know this is an old thread but I am having a very similar problem. I tried adding the order line in as shown below in red. (I also tried descending)

<entity name="opportunity">
<attribute name="stepname" groupby="true" alias="_CRMAutoGen_groupby_column_Num_0" />
<attribute name="new_totalestimatedrevenue" aggregate="sum" alias="_CRMAutoGen_aggregate_column_Num_0" />
<order alias="_CRMAutoGen_groupby_column_Num_0" ascending="true" />
</entity>

Dynamics accepts the import however it does not change the order of the phases in the funnel chart. As you can see stage 10 does not follow on linearly from the other phases. The stage categories are in the correct order within the option set and even numbered linearly as shown below. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your help :)

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