We will also create few bar trending charts.

Consider the below sample data

Source File: You can download the excel file here

The above excel file tracks few metrics such as safety, quality and revenue. This is just a sample data and may not make sense in actual world but just imagine a manufacturing company that wants to track its overall safety and quality score and also track its total revenue. Now the company may use its own method at deriving the individual safety and quality scores.

They may have a dedicated team to collect safety violations and product defects and then use some formulae to convert those data into final score for any given month. We are not concerned with any of the methods on how those scores are generated. You are the dashboard person and the company has provided you the metrics by each month and now your job is produce a nice dashboard that shows relevant charts for the given data.

Since the data is tracked for each month, it makes sense to show a line or bar chart trending for the metrics.

Dials and Speedometers are relevant when we need to show performance of a single value. So in this case, since we have 12 month data, how do we show single value on the meter chart?

One solution is to show an ‘Average’ value for the safety and Quality metrics or we could show a dial that shows the current month values.

So the GOAL for this exercise is: Show bar chart for Safety trending 12 months and show average and current month value on the dial chart.

Dial chart requirement: For the dial chart, we are measuring the performance, whether we are on track or missed the goal. In order to achieve that, we create three new columns for safety such as ’safety_bad’, ’safety_ok’, safety_good’. These values need to be decided by the company management. If you are not sure, then look at previous year data and decide what should be good and bad values. The dials are used to guide the company to perform better or atleast improve that portion of the company operation represented by the metric.

First let us create the date hierarchy columns from the Period column. You need to make sure that the Period column is an actual Excel date column, else the hierarchy will not be generated

Right click on the period column, select Create -> Add Year, Quarter, Month columns

As you see we added the year and month columns. We may not use all of the above columns but having them ready gives us the option during the chart building.

Now right click on the “Name” and select ‘Create Chart”

We selected the ‘Bar’ chart type

For the x-axis we select the month column and for the y – axis we select the Safety metric

Next, we click on the “Create Chart” button

This action takes us to the below dialog

We rename the chart to ‘Safety’ and then click on ‘Fully Apply’

This action create the below chart (You may need to move the screens and dialog around to see the chart behind)

Now having the chart wizard open, we change the selection to ‘Dial’ chart

Check the Dial chart options below

We modify the options as below

• You can type the low and high range values for each range on the dial.
• In our case, we have defined the safety bad, ok and good values in our spreadsheet so when our goals change, we just change the spreadsheet and the dials will automatically take care. Also, what if we needed different goals for each month so rather than hard coding the range in the chart, we get them from the excel file

We first change the label sequence for the “Region Name” from “Bad” -> “Warning” -> to “Good”. For the dial chart the labels are not used so make sure that the colors are selected appropriately.

You may click on the color icon to change the colors of your choice

Next, we select the range boundary values

The safety_bad value from our spreadsheet represents the lower boundary of our bad region, “safety_ok” represents the upper boundary of our bad region, similarly ’safety_ok’ is the lower bound for our ‘ok’ region and so on. For the ‘Good’ upper bound we simply typed a value but as general practice we should have one more column for the upper bound of the final region. In our case the final region is ‘Safety Good’.

Next, for the pointer value, select the column that you want to show on the dial chart. In our case we select ‘Safety’ and aggregation as ‘Avg’

Next, we click on “Create chart”. This action shows the dialog below

We change the chart title to ‘Average Safety’

NOTE: remove the double quotes in the SQL statement for the group by. This will cause an error.

Click on ‘Fully Apply’

Here is our final Dial Chart

Next, create a dial chart to show current month value

We will change some conditions on the main Qlet. Right click on the “Name” and select ‘Duplicate’

It creates an exact copy of the qlet table. We change the name to ‘Current Month’

Right click on the ‘Period’ column and select ‘Create’ -> Create Date Filter

This action shows a dialog as shown below

First change the operator to ‘Between’

Next select ‘First Day of Month’ for the from and ‘Last Day of Month’ for the To val.

Click on ‘Use This Filter’

This action applies the filter to the Qlet and it shows only currrent month row

Next, right click on ‘Current Month’ and select ‘Create Chart’

All of the settings remain the same except the ‘Aggregation’, make sure to select ‘NONE’

Once all the three charts are done, we arrange them as below

Similarly, you may create the charts for “Quality” and “Revenue”

The second way many dashboards present data is by visual status –- most often using the stop lights colors of red, yellow and green to signal status. Once again, the details are missing and the user must drill down to uncover the underlying issues.

With Excel Dashboards, you connect to your raw data which may be residing in multiple excel files or any other database such as Access or SQL database. Information can be averaged or summarized in the dashboard. So it provides a natural path to the detailed information for drililng straight to the raw transactions.

Create Bar Chart

Bar charts reveal important trend in your data. The very important reason we split the date into year, quarter, month, week and day components is to see if there is a trend in the sales or order information.

Right click on the Qlet title (”Name” ), and then click on the “Create Chart”

It opens a “Chart Factory Wizard”

1. The top drop down contains a list of all the chart types that are supported.
2. The X-Axis drop down has all the available fields from the Qlet
3. The Y- Axis drop down has all the available fields from the Qlet
4. The Y- Aggregation has (SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN,AVG) values

The process is to pick the base column that will form the X-axis, the Y-axis is the numerical value column that will be used to plot the bar or appropriate chart type. The y-aggregation is required, usually we should pick “SUM” but you could use “AVG” or other aggregations as you see fit.

In our case, we want to see a “year over year trend for our sales growth”

1. Select “Bar” as the chart type
2. Select “Or Year’ as the X- Axis
3. Select “Amount” as the Y- axis
4. Select ‘Sum’ as the aggregation (by selecting sum, we are telling it to sum the amount and group it by year value)
5. Click on the “Create Chart” button
6. It shows the Glet Editor for your review which is a pre-built SQL query.

We change the Glet Name, and click on “full apply” button

It creates a bar chart as shown above, you can drag the borders and expand the view, it will scale automatically.

We just dragged the corners and expanded the view. Do not close the chart wizard yet, we will create other views like a rubber stamp.

By Quarter
Go back to the chart factory and only change the X-Axis column to ‘quarter’ field

Click ‘Create Chart’

Change the name to “By Quarter” and click “Full Apply”

Do not worry about the size and the placement. Just drag by the title “By quarter” and place it in a position where you can see it. At the end we can re-arrange the portlets on the dashboard canvas.

The column “Or_Qtr_Disp” has Qtr, 2 digit year and the last digit indicates the quarter number. The reason we chose this value is so that we can order the quarter across multiple years.

As you see, we can clearly see a trend emerging from our data. The Qtr-98-1 has the tallest bar. Now lets create a month view so we can nail down, which month contributed to that spike

By Month
We go back to the chart factory and select “Or_Mth_Yr_NN” which contains Year, month number and month name(3 letter).

So far the tallest periods are March and April of 1998. Why is that? Did you do special promotion, did you get extra word of mouth or publicity?

Similarly you can create slices by Week, or each Day. Note that as you go more granular, the chart may look more congested.

Now let us see which products are doing better.

Click on apply

Change the name to “By Product” and in the SQL query below, type, “Order by 2 Desc” which will sort the products by the revenue in the descending order

You have now found your winning product line.

But lets see how each of the products fair well within their own category.

Next – Excel Dashboard Tutorial – 8

Create Dashboard and Table portlet

Once connected, it will show you a list of action items to pick from

We will click on “New Blank Dashboard“

In the Dashboard Name, we type in “Order Management Analytics”

Click OK.

It will present you with a table browser showing all the available worksheets as tables

Expand the node to see all the worksheets.

In this example file, we just have one worksheet named “order_data”. Note how, it attaches a $ sign at the end, which indicates this is an Excel Worksheet.

So make sure you do not have any dollar sign when naming the Excel worksheet and no other special characters and no white or blank characters. Replace blank characters with “_” underscore character

Double Click on the “order_data$” node

Click on the “* alias=ord” item at the very top to select all the items

You may change the name of any column or any other property such as sort and group by.

We will leave it as it is and click on the “Create Table” button.

This action creates a Table Portlet (Qlet) in the Dashboard canvas

We will use this Qlet as our basic building block for the following exercise

Next : How to build Excel Dashboards – 4

Launch Dashboard Software and Connect

Launch InfoCaptor Dashboard Software on your Desktop and click on the connect button on the toolbar

The connection wizard has items that simplify connecting to different data sources.

For Excel Files, Click on the Excel button

Once you click, it automatically selects the appropriate Driver for you

Click on the “Access/Excel File” button.

Select the order_raw.xls file. It populates the connect name for you. But you can change this name. Connect Name is for your reference

NOTE: Make sure that the order_raw.xls file is not open in MS Excel. The Excel file is locked once you connect to it. If the file is open in MS Excel, you may get connected but not able to query and may get unpredictable results.

Now, click on the Connect button
Upon successful connection, the connection wizard disappears and a new action wizard pops up.

Next : How to build Dashboards – 3

Modular Dashboard Design
Lot of the online tutorials and Dashboard e-books teach you to build dashboard in Excel file. They provide you with templates, you fill in the information and build the dashboard using Excel charting techniques.

If you use Excel Templates for your real dashboarding needs then you may end up with any of the below problems.

” Big Bulky and bloated excel files
” Undocumented Macros
” Zero verification on the data authencity
” No way to refresh the dashboard (lost productivity)

“Best Practise for Dashboard Design”
Modular Design – Keep Data and Presentation Separate
How? – Use Excel only for storing your data. Nothing more.

Do not build any visualization in the same place where your Data resides.

Benefits of this approach
” Your dashboard or presenation layer is independent – Dashboard definition is stored separately
” Increased productivity – When you have fresh data just refresh the dashboard, no redevelopment needed
” No Messy Excel Macros or coding knowledge required – Just drag and drop tables and visually build Tables, Charts, Speedometer, Gauges, Dials, Thermometers and more charts
” Simplified Distribution and Presentation – You can Export the Dashboard to PDF or HTML and just send them as attachments
” Save Time – Just build the dashboard presentation layer only once and automate the refreshes.

Lets begin Building Dashboard

Data Preparation

Export your transaction data to Excel file by running a report or requesting your IT department.

There are certain rules to be followed when you get the data in Excel files.

Here is a sample Excel dump of Order Entry data.
Download Excel Data
The first row is always treated as the column names.

If you inherit an Excel file with pivots and charts all over the places then try to copy just the raw data in another worksheet in the same file or create another file. If it is not possible to keep the first row as the column names then you could define “named ranges”. In the dashboard designer it is possible to access the data using Cell ranges but then future updates to the Excel file could break the dashboard, for e.g if the data goes beyond the Cell range.

NOTE: Make sure column names do not have any funky characters. Just keep it to simple alpha-numeric column names.

Part 2: How to Build Dashboards Excel – 2