ITR 2 | Bonavista MicroCharts

After a long time,it’s time to tallk about a new infovis related product released by another european company based in Germany: Bonavista system.
I was able to test the professional version of their new product: MicroCharts; it’s a small and usefull add-on for Microsoft Excel charts that allow user integrate very small data visualization on theri spreadsheets.

The charts are created on-the-fly, simply defining the data cluster needed and the layout elements such as dimensions , colors, fonts.

We discuess several time ago about sparlines, small multiplies and micro-charts in general with some other professional such as Andreas Flockerman and Stephen Few.
The microcharts avaialble are:

– Column Charts

– Line Charts

– Pie Chart

– Bar Charts

– Bullet Graph

The most interesting things are related to the definition of period and on some customizations in the final visualization results ( for example time periods ).

I only found some problem using it in my Open Office Calc: I was able to see microcharts but not edit them into it.

Anyway, I think it’s a nice tool to have into your own spreadsheets in order to offer a better comprehension of data.
As you can image, the target audience is mainly defined by people involved in reporting, analisys and using data for and from business intelligence areas.