Over the past few years, organizations have realized the potential of data and its impact on businesses. Effective use of data enables businesses to deliver better customer and employee experiences; improves productivity, boosts innovation, drives sustainable growth, and gives them a competitive edge. According to Accenture’s Business Futures research, 88 percent of C-suite respondents believe that forward-looking data is key to their success.

Organizations leveraging SharePoint Online as their primary document and content management can utilize the data stored in the platform to transform their operations. SharePoint Online enables organizations to utilize third-party SharePoint application development tools to create impactful dashboards. These dashboards enable the management and the employees to glean essential insights from the data in real-time and access it anytime anywhere. It also empowers them to make critical business decisions based on analytical insights while staying in sync with corporate strategy.

Adopting a data-led decision-making approach is essential in today’s competitive market. It enables organizations to get ahead of changing customer trends and market volatility by boosting speed and agility. However, despite all the obvious benefits many organizations are struggling with data visualization on SharePoint Online. Improper or ineffective visualization of voluminous data stored in a SharePoint environment is one main reasons organizations fail to get the most out of their data.

What is Data Visualization?

Data visualization is defined as the graphical representation of data in a visually appealing and comprehensible format. The representation intends to show complex sets of data straightforwardly so that the stakeholders can get the insights they require from the data at a glance. It gives stakeholders an upper hand in today’s evolving industrial landscape, giving them clarity, increasing engagement, and improving decision-making with narrowed information. The importance of data visualization is not only for the employees, but it also helps the organizational leaders to:

• Identify new opportunities
• Stay on top of deliveries
• Prevent risks
• Improve operations
• Serve customers better

What are the challenges of data visualization on SharePoint Online?

The voluminous data generated in an organization usually lies in an unstructured format at different locations. It can be stored in various SharePoint sites, site collections, web applications, and external software. The presence of unstructured data scattered across multiple locations buries data insights under complex organizational structures. Some other significant data visualization challenges are:

1: Lack of data visualization literacy

Misrepresenting data using the wrong chart types will do more harm than good. There are numerous representation options available for users to showcase the data, such as tables, charts, graphs, etc. However, a major challenge for most data analysts is understanding what type of visual format should be used to present a specific data type.

2: Excessive simplification of data

At times, to enhance the look and feel of the visualized data, users try to simplify the data sets and pick up the information they feel is necessary for the leadership. This might facilitate data visualization, but the chances of critical data points being left out of consideration increase exponentially. The leadership might not get all the information they require for effective decision-making, which ultimately beats the overall purpose of data visualization.

3: Balancing visual appeal with accuracy

Visual appeal in the context of data visualization is a worthy goal to pursue, but balancing it with critical information and accuracy can be hard to achieve. This is also one of the most common reasons why users fail to visualize and make use of their data to improve business outcomes.

While there are several tools available in the market for data visualization, a No-code SharePoint Online app development solution helps organizations create engaging and impressive dashboards rapidly without writing a single line of code or IT dependence. It empowers the users to create visualizations based on their understanding of a specific process.

Leverage QuickApps to visualization data on SharePoint Online

QuickApps is an innovative No-code platform that enables business users to customize their SharePoint environment and visualize data seamlessly. It comes with a suite of 21 powerful web apps that make it easier for users to aggregate data from multiple sources and present it in an impactful format without needing custom coding. Some of its popular QuickApps web apps that help in data aggregation and visualization are:

qListView

qListView enables the users to view, group, and filter the SharePoint data in relevant and meaningful ways without writing a single line of code. Users can roll up information from multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications. Features include:

• Customizes the look and feel using pre-packaged skins or by creating a custom skin.
• Exports aggregated data into Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, or CSV formats.
• Configures parent-child relationships in a two-level hierarchical list view.
• Creates complex filters and sort list view data in meaningful ways.
• Delivers unlimited grouping capabilities.
• Enables point-and-click roll-up of data in multiple lists.

qChartView

qChartView allows users to quickly create visually compelling SharePoint charts and dashboards with features such as dynamic filtering, drill-down reporting, and a rich user experience. Given that there is no native chart web app in SharePoint, QuickApps’ chart solution is ideal for BI and dashboard scenarios. Its features include:

• Aggregates chart data from across multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications.
• Customizes chart elements, such as fonts, labels, backgrounds, canvas, logos, and tool tips.
• Delivers an assortment of 40-plus chart types to satisfy a wide range of visual, BI, and dashboard requirements.
• Filters values from other QuickApps web apps that allow for powerful dashboard capabilities.

qCalendarView

qCalendarView combines all calendars into one view, including data from non-calendar lists. Differentiating features of the web app include:

• Rolls up multiple calendars across different sites into a single view.
• Configures event color-coding based on a SharePoint list name.
• Enables users to drag and drop an event to another time slot in the calendar and change the end time of an event by dragging the bottom of the event up or down.
• Allows users to delete an event or an instance of a recurring event by simply clicking the red “X” icon on the selected event

QuickApps, when integrated with SharePoint Online, immensely improve the capability of business executives and other knowledge workers to represent data with impactful visualizations. Take QuickApps’ 30-day free trial to overcome your SharePoint data aggregation and visualization challenges and realize the true value of data.