After reading this great article about background-processes I got an simple idea on using charts as progress-bar instead of the mentioned PCT_GRAPH format.

To accomplish that, just create a new Chart Region with type 2D Bar-Chart. Enter following Axis-Settings.

Then provide a sql-query that is returning a process-name and a value for the progress between 0 and 100. All there is left to do is to activate the Asynchronous Refresh from the Chart Attributes.

The result will look similar to following example.

The major advantage of this approach is that the Timer-Plugin isn't needed at all. It is just this out-of-the-box Chart Region - not even a Dynamic Action is neccesary.

Goto Live-Example.