Working with Cost/Benefit Charts
A Cost/Benefit Chart enables allows you to compare properties you class as Costs in your organization against properties you class as Benefits.
The result is a type of color-coded bar chart which highlights the costs and benefits, as well as a calculated cost/benefit value.
There is no limit to the number of cost and benefit properties you use, but obviously the more you do use, the more unusable the chart will become.
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Cost/Benefit Charts require that you have Whole Number or Decimal Number properties for your Costs, and either Whole Number, Decimal Number of Drop-down properties for your benefits. If you do use Drop-down properties for benefits, these should include a number, such as: 1 - Low 2 - Medium 3 - High You can have multiple costs and multiple benefits on one chart. |
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Why and how should you use one?
An example of using a Cost/Benefit Chart might be to show the business benefit of expenditure on software applications.
A number property could be used to store the actual monetary cost of the application in your organization, while a drop-down could be used to assign the importance of the application to the business - from 1 to 10.
Using the chart, you would then be able to get an overview as to whether you were spending a lot of money on applications that have little business value.
Where and when can you use one?
Use the table below to see where you can use a Cost/Benefit Chart:
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Page Type |
Parent node |
Tabs |
Number on page |
Editable |
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Index Page |
Object Type node |
Yes - optional |
1 The Chart must be the top-most item on the page |
No |
What do you want to do?
Create a new Cost/Benefit Chart
To create a new Cost/Benefit Chart for your page:
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Ensure the Layout node for your element is set to Empty
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Right-click the Layout node and choose Add Behaviors > Other Charts > Cost - Benefit Chart
A Cost-Benefit Chart node is added below the Layout node.
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Select the Cost-Benefit Chart node and set the properties.
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In the Costs area, select the properties you want to use as costs on the chart.
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In the Benefits area, select the properties you want to use as benefits on the chart.
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Use the Multiplier field to enter the multiplier number for equalizing calculations.
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Costs tend to have higher values than those you assign to determine benefits such as business importance. For example a cost might be 10,000, but the business importance might be 3 - High. The Multiplier can be used to set a value to multiply the benefits by so they can be brought into line with the costs for comparison. |
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Right-click the Object Type node and choose to add a New Property Group
Use New Property Group > Empty Group or From CM Panel depending on your preference.
See Working with Property Groups for more details on Property Groups.
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Select the Property Group and use the Selected Properties area to choose all the cost and benefit properties you want to reference on the chart
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Save your Site.
The Site is saved and the Cost/Benefit Chart is created.