How do you share your Excel Dashboard with users?

Now that you have built the dashboard, you can share the dashboard in multiple ways.

” Create a PDF output of the dashboard and send as email attachment.

Click on the PDF icon on the toolbar as shown below and it will instantly create a PDF output

PDF output

” Create Static HTML output. Click on the HTML icon on the toolbar. This option creates a static html page that you can put in on the web. Users cannot interact with the dashboard. It is just a snapshot image of the dashboard at the time the output was generated. It does not refresh automatically. You will need to regerate the output again when the data is refreshed.

” Desktop Sharing. You can put the dashboard definition file (icv) on a file share directory and other users can view the dashboard through the Dashboard viewer. You may need separate license for dashboard viewers for desktop.

Go to Menu Create ‘ Publish to web and it will generate a file that you can put it where the dashboard web server is and it will render the output. The look and feel is different with this option

The web version is using a flash charting engine to the desktop Java chart engine.
Details of converting the desktop to web version are not covered in the document. Please refer online at any of our websites for more details

You can download the complete tutorial as PDF
” Web Sharing: In this option, you can publish the dashboard to web and the dashboard is available real time with all the dashboard parameters and refresh actions

Summary

We built the above dashboard completely from scratch.

• We defined Calculations
• We defined date hierarchies
• We built Date Filters
• We built Date Parameters
• We built Bar Charts
• We built Pie Charts
• We cleaned the dashboard layout

Next – Share Excel Dashboard with other Users

Create Pie Chart

We will now create a pie chart by product name

It is nice to know that the revenue distribution is not dominated by a single product.

We can now change the “Category name parameter” to see the product distribution for other category

By Category = Beverages

Summary of steps so far
” Create a foundation table portlet (Qlet)
” Add Calculations and any derived columns
” Add Date hierarchy columns as needed
” Create Date parameters if needed
” Create drop down list of values as parameters
” Create charts using the base Qlet
” Delete the foundation portlet when not needed and you are done with the dashboard design
” Arrange the remaining portlets in desired format.

Once you are done with all the Qlets (query/table portlet) and Glets (graphic portlets), it is advisable to save the dashboard file, copy the file and work on the new file for finishing and polishing the dashboard.

Next – Excel Dashboard Tutorial – 9