Hello David, 

Firstly, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delayed response as we have been experiencing an unusually high number of tickets. I am sorry that it has taken longer than usual to respond to your concern and your patience is highly appreciated.

The only way to create a chart in our wpDataTables plugin is, to firstly have a wpDataTable created,

and then through the chart wizard, you have to set up various options, such as selecting an input table, select which columns will be used, and you can choose to leave some other settings as default, to go ahead with the chart creation at the last step;

Please check out more details on how our chart wizard works on this page;

You can also check out all the available chart engines and examples of wpDataCharts documentation here : 

Examples of tables and charts;

Charts.JS

HighCharts

Google charts

Apex charts

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Also, regarding using Excel files with our plugin, there are two available methods, i will point out important things that differentiate them :

1. Create a table linked to an existing Excel file, in which case you get to select the file (upload it) that'll be used to pull the data. This file will be stored in ../wp-content/uploads/YEAR/MONTH/ folder. The file on that location can be changed, but the structure can't. So, if you have the file with the same title, the same number of columns, same headers, and the same order of columns - you'd be able to replace the original file with the new file, and wpDataTables would pick that up.

2. Create a table by importing the Excel file. In this case, the source file is read, and a manual table is created. So, the generated table reads the source only once, and after that, there are no relations between it and the wpDataTable. You would be able to edit the table, but the changes wouldn't be seen in the source file. In this case, you'd be able to save new rows in a separate Excel file (without column headers) and export it as CSV. Then, access the table and in the Editing tab above the table see what the "MySQL table name for editing" is. Access your database and access that table. In the "Import" tab select the new CSV file and import it. That will update the table. Another option would be to switch to Excel-like view, select a range of new cells from your Excel file and paste them below the last row in wpDataTables.

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But if i understand you correctly, you would like to have the Excel file in a server location ;  then create a cron that would automatically run our chart wizard to generate a chart?

I believe that will not be possible, but we can check with out 2nd level Team, if you can just confirm that we correctly understood the goal, please?

Hello David,

I forgot to mention, sorry;

Just wanted to additionally point out that we have a sandbox/Demo site (https://sandbox.wpdatatables.com/), that you can use to try out the plugin;

and there is a 15-day money-back guarantee period, so if you purchase the plugin, you can safely fully test it out, we will assist along the way, and if it doesn't fit your needs you can request and receive a refund in that period.