SparkMaker is an add-in for Microsoft® Office that creates sparklines (mini-graphs) to visualize numerical data in dashboards, spreadsheets, reports and presentations created with Excel®, Word® and PowerPoint®. SparkMaker 4 uses a new "minimized-clicks" approach which helps you automatically condense your data into sparklines.
Sparklines, a concept invented by Edward Tufte, compress large amounts of data into intense, word-sized graphics, such as:
A company's revenues over time as a bar chart  5.7 Mio.
An exchange rate over several years as a line  1.30
Survey results as pie charts  70 %
Excel functions for dynamic sparklines
A set of user-defined functions for Excel XP and Excel 2003 lets you generate sparklines that automatically update whenever data has changed. With simple expressions like "=Sparkline(...)", you can create cell-adherent, dynamic sparklines directly in the cells of your Excel sheets. With these in-cell graphics, it is possible to design information-rich, dynamic controlling instruments for your business by adding concise visualization to your reports and analyses.
New user interface
A completely redesigned user interface now integrates all your sparkline needs in a single dialog which minimizes click activity. Create all variants of sparklines with this dialog, either as sparkline formulae in Excel or as static sparklines in any Office document (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and always benefit from the same intuitive and efficient user interface. Sparklines condense information so the goal was to condense their creation process, too. The result is a dialog 60% smaller than before which ensures 60% more focus on the essential process of creating information dense data representations with sparklines.
Multi-color sparklines
Two variants of functions for sparklines are provided by SparkMaker: single-color and multi-color sparkline functions. The benefit of single-color functions is that their result is displayed in the same cell in which the function itself is located. However, such functions do not allow to highlight subsections of a sparkline with different colors or display numerical values adjacent to the sparkline. For these purposes, SparkMaker offers multi-color sparkline functions which require two cells: one for the result (your sparkline) and one for the formula.
New sparkline font
SparkMaker makes use of TrueType Fonts to generate sparklines, the so-called Bissantz SparkFonts. We now provide a new line font with unparalleled precision and clarity. It displays sparklines on-screen with high quality even with low resolutions. This font permits you to design information-dense reports and dashboards. Print-outs of sparklines are excellent.
Trend indicators for sparkline functions
Supplementary insight into your data is optionally provided by trend arrows that geometrically depict the course of the figure. You can now use these statistically grounded indicators in your dynamic sparkline functions (multi-color only).
Dynamic reports and dashboards in Excel
Below, an example of a monthly sales report features net revenues for several product categories and sparklines are used to show the history of the last twelve months of revenues. This report clearly illustrates that notebook sales have decreased significantly and require management attention.
Export your sparklines to an HTML ticker
SparkMaker allows you to directly export your sparklines to an HTML ticker. Define the sparklines in your SparkMaker dialog and create an HTML document automatically that you can integrate into your web site. For instance, enhance your intranet with current figures of your company's performance, thus create awareness for controlling figures and distribute information in your company in a non-intrusive way using only a small portion of your screen real estate.
Formats
The sparklines are generated either from specifically crafted TrueType Fonts (TTF), the Bissantz SparkFonts, or as images. Choose between several sparkline types and styles, add numerical data, customize colors and export your sparklines to popular graphic formats like BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG. The data to be shown in such images can be read from the current document, pasted from the clipboard, or edited in a textbox within the SparkMaker dialog. |
