Chart Compass works like a colleague who is good at charts. You show it your data, tell it what you want to say, and it answers with the chart that fits, drawn with your own numbers. This first lesson takes two minutes and uses a sample, so you need nothing of your own yet.
Open Chart Compass
Open Chart Compass. The screen has two halves. At the top of the left side is a switch with two tabs, Chart map and Ask me. You are on Ask me; lesson 6 covers the map. Below the switch are three numbered steps: Your data, What should the chart say? and A few questions. On the right is where the answer appears. Until you bring data, the right side shows a compass and a short hint.
Load a sample
Under the paste box, find Or try a sample. There are twelve:
| Sample | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Monthly sales | 12 months of revenue and a target |
| Sales by region and product | 5 regions, 3 products, sales |
| Revenue by channel | 5 channels and their revenue |
| Customer ages | 240 customers with an age and a segment |
| Ad spend and revenue | 40 campaigns with spend, revenue and clicks |
| Sales funnel | 5 stages and the deals left at each |
| Sales by region, two years | 5 regions and 2 channels, with sales in 2025 and 2026 |
| Daily website visits | 182 days of visits from 3 sources |
| Daily share price | 30 trading days with open, high, low and close |
| Website launch plan | 7 tasks with a start date, an end date and a team |
| Moves between teams | Who moved from one team to another, and how many people |
| Budget against actual | 6 departments with budget and actual |
Press Monthly sales. Step 1 now describes the data in one line, Monthly sales: 12 rows, 3 columns, and shows each column with its type: Month is a date, Revenue and Target are numbers.
Say what the chart should show
Step 2 lights up with eleven goals. Two of them carry a small dot: Change over time and Against a target. The dot means your data fits that goal well. Point at any goal to read what it means.
Press Change over time.
Read the answer
The right side fills in. At the top, marked ★ Best fit, is a Line chart, drawn with the twelve months of revenue and the target. Beside it, Chart Compass says why:
Under the reason are the fields (X-axis: Month, Y-axis: Revenue, Target) and the chart's name in Power BI, Tableau and Excel. Under those is a Watch out line about how this chart can mislead.
Below the best fit are Also good (a column chart, a column and line chart, a KPI card, an area chart) and Skip these here, which says why a pie chart is wrong for this data: Time has an order; a pie loses it.
Try one more
Press Revenue by channel in step 1, then Part of a whole in step 2. The best fit is now a Donut chart, because five parts are few enough for one. A pie chart sits under Skip these here: five slices are hard to compare, and a pie works for two or three.
The samples further down each lead to a chart with a shape of its own. Press Website launch plan, then Flow and process, and the best fit is a Gantt chart with a line for today; Daily share price with Change over time gives a Candlestick chart.
That is the whole method in a few examples: the same tool gives a different chart because the message and the data are different. The next lesson brings your own data.