How do I remove the 'Other' field from my reporting / dashboard / chart?

English Forum Tips and Tricks
1

Hi there,

I am running a report for our team and there is an ‘other’ field which is really throwing off the data. Does anyone know how I can remove this field?

image

Thanks,

Andrew

2

@Andrew_Cooper1 welcome to the forum!

Yes, you can remove a field from the reporting. Whatever custom field you are using to generate that donut, should be added as a filter.

Edit the chart, under filters click “add filter”, select custom field, and the name of that custom field. This will provide you with an option to uncheck the “other” field.

Best of luck!

Christine

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3

I have a feeling that the ‘Other’ field is what is generated automatically by Asana when it groups all the remaining custom field values which are lowest and can’t all fit within the donut chart area.

The bar chart is able to display more values (than the donut) along the X axis. Does that help?

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4

Thanks Richard, yes that makes sense. Do you know if you can then sort the bar graph from highest value to lowest?

5

@Andrew_Cooper1 , good question!

The donut graphs always display from highest to lowest which is not always useful, especially when you want your values to display consistently, say a 1-5 star rating for example. And no, you cannot currently reverse this order (at the time of writing).

But with ‘Column’ style charts, they will display the bars in the order of your custom field’s options. This may be a good thing because you can completely control the order of how your bars will be displayed by simply editing the sorting of your dropdown values. On the down side, you may not want this if your dropdown is displayed in a form for example, or you want a different sorting in your List view for example.
Note, at the time of writing you can currently display up to 12 bars along the X axis of a ‘Column’ style chart, i.e. your top 12 custom field options will only be displayed.

Also note for numeric values you can also use negative numbers which will also display as expected in a ‘column’ style chart, with the bars below the line, instead of above :wink:

6

Thanks Richard, that’s really helpful information. It still doesn’t solve what I am after and maybe there isn’t a current solution.

I am managing a group of project managers and want to give them vision across other areas where they have been selected as a dependency.

The report below gives me most of the information which is great, but the ‘other’ field really skews the data and even when you click into ‘other’, it shows the projects but doesn’t highlight who’s been nominated as a dependency. Is there any way to remove other or have those sections show up even if they are only 1%?

metro
metro846×438 21.8 KB

Thanks for all your help :slight_smile: .

Andrew

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7

Hi Andrew, unfortunately not yet using a donut chart :confused:

However, since it seems you have (7+9) 16 categories in total, if you go with ‘column’ style charts, you could create two ‘column’ charts in your dashboard, side by side with the top 8 bars on the left and the remaining 8 bars on the right (which would basically be your ‘Other’. In each chart, you can use the filter to manually select the relative top 8 and bottom 8 respectively. It’s a workaround for now but, visually, it may serve it’s purpose!

8

Hey Richard, thanks so much for the response.

I have put together a bar graph below which is much better in terms of bringing in more fields. I was confused as to how to create two bar graphs and then use the filter, are you able to explain how I can do that step by step?

bar graph
bar graph826×441 18.3 KB

Thanks,

Andrew

9

Hi @Andrew_Cooper1 , I can deduce from your Y axis ‘Project count’ that this dashboard is probably in your ‘Reporting’ tab and is counting projects in various Portfolios, right? If you can share a screenshot of your chart’s editor window, then I can probably guide you better, but assuming the above, your X-axis is set to Portfolio and Y-axis is set to Project count. So this is what you will have to do:

  1. Create a duplicate of this chart (top right of the chart > overflow menu > Duplicate chart) so that you have two charts which are the same.
  2. In the first chart, go to Edit settings (pencil icon) and under ‘Report on’ where you likely have ‘Include projects from: Portfolios’ there is a list of your portfolios. From this list, remove the bottom half in the list of portfolios (eg bottom 8), while keeping the top half (eg top 8)
  3. In the second chart (the duplicate that was created), repeat step 2 but instead, remove the top half in the list of portfolios (eg top 8), while keeping the bottom half (eg bottom 8)
  4. In your Reporting dashboard, place the charts side-by side by clicking and dragging them. Each chart should display 8 columns each and, when read in conjunction, will show 16 columns in total.

If my assumption is wrong, send me a screenshot :wink:

10

Hey Richard, thanks very much for the info, very clear and a great solution.

Your assumption was spot on, the only issue is the projects I am tracking are all in the one portfolio (screen shots below) so I’m not able to remove any of them. Is that correct or am I missing something?

asana screen shot
asana screen shot1499×980 55 KB

Thanks,

Andrew

11

Hi Andrew, in that case you will have to use the filter settings (similar to my steps 2 & 3, above, but instead of choosing portfolios, use the ‘Filters’ at the bottom of the settings list on the right) to choose which columns will appear along your X axis. Your last screenshot show ‘Dependencies’ set for your X axis so that is what you want to look for in the filter settings (likely under ‘Custom fields’…?)

12

Thanks Richard, that works perfectly and solves my problem. Really appreciate your help.

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