Skip to main content

SF-0202 · Concept · Easy

What are report charts?

✓ Verified by Vikas Singhal · Last reviewed 5/17/2026 · Updated for Spring '26

Report Charts are charts rendered inside the report itself — bar, column, line, donut, funnel, scatter, and more — driven by the report’s own groupings and metrics. Different from dashboards (which are collections of charts), report charts give you a chart attached to one underlying report.

Chart types available

ChartBest for
Vertical Bar / ColumnCompare categories
Horizontal BarLong category labels
Stacked Bar / ColumnComposition within categories
LineTrend over time
DonutComposition (percentages of a whole)
FunnelSales stages, conversion stages
ScatterTwo-variable relationship
Lightning TableTop N rows with data bars
ComboBar + line on the same axes

Where they appear

  • Inside the report — at the top, when you build a chart on the report itself
  • On Lightning record pages — drop a Report Chart component onto a record page, pointing at any report whose result is record-scoped
  • On dashboards — but dashboards use their own component layer, not the report’s embedded chart

Building a chart on a report

  1. Open the report in the Lightning Report Builder
  2. Make sure the format is Summary, Matrix, or Tabular with Row Limit
  3. Click Add Chart → pick chart type
  4. Choose X-axis (a grouping field), Y-axis (a summary metric)
  5. Configure colours, legends, axis labels
  6. Save

The chart re-renders every time the report runs.

Report charts on record pages

Salesforce ships a Report Chart Lightning component:

  1. Lightning App Builder → drag Report Chart to a record page
  2. Configure the report it points to
  3. Optionally filter the chart by the current record’s Id (e.g. only Cases for this Account)
  4. Save the page

This is how you get “Open Opps for this Account” charts on the Account record without building a custom dashboard per record.

Chart vs Dashboard

Report ChartDashboard
SourceOne reportMany reports (one per component)
ScopeTied to the parent reportStand-alone page
EmbeddedOn the report, optionally on record pagesOn Home, App pages, Console
FiltersInherit the report’s filtersHas its own filter pane
Use caseOne quick visual for one reportKPI summary across many reports

Limits

  • One chart per report (Lightning Report Builder shows you the chart options panel)
  • Up to 4 groupings supported in the chart (depending on chart type)
  • Up to 250 data points visualised per chart

Common follow-ups

  • Multiple charts per report? — No, one chart per report. For multiple visuals, use a dashboard or multiple reports.
  • Can I conditionally colour bars? — In Lightning, yes — via Conditional Highlighting on the data, and chart colour palettes.
  • Why don’t I see the chart options? — The report is Tabular without a Row Limit, or has no groupings at all.

Verified against: Salesforce Help — Add a Chart to a Report. Last reviewed 2026-05-17 for Spring ‘26.