How to Create Powerful Excel Dashboards

Introduction

Excel dashboards are graphical user interfaces that combine visuals with data in an interactive and organized way to help users make more informed decisions. These dashboards can help provide an effective way of visualizing complex data that can be difficult to understand and hard to communicate. Through the use of insightful visualizations, Excel dashboards can provide organizations and individuals with an opportunity to get a better understanding of their data and can turn data into valuable, actionable insights.

Overview of Excel Dashboards

Excel dashboards can be either simple or complex, depending on the specific needs of the organization or individual. Excel dashboards can contain a variety of elements such as graphs, charts, tables, and more. These different types of visuals and data sources can be organized and displayed in an Excel dashboard according to the specific needs of the user. Excel dashboards can be useful for tracking various types of data such as sales, performance, budget, and more.

Benefits of Visualizations

Excel dashboards can be an effective way of providing meaningful insights into large amounts of data. Through the use of visuals, data can be displayed in an organized way and can be easier to understand. Visuals also allow users to quickly identify patterns, trends, and insights that might otherwise be difficult to see. Excel dashboards can also provide opportunities to tell a story with the data, making it easier to communicate and share the insights with others.

Collecting and Organizing Your Data

In order to create accurate visualizations, it is essential that your data is collected, cleaned and stored within an Excel workbook correctly. When gathering data, it is important to consider the sources you are using.

Sources of Data

Data can come from a range of sources, depending on the type of project you are working on and what questions you are trying to answer. Sources of data can include company records, customer surveys, market research, and external datasets. Consider the type of data you need to collect and the sources that can provide it to you.

Cleaning and Normalizing Data

Once you have collected your data, it is important to clean and normalize it. This will ensure that all data points are consistent and formatted correctly. Data cleaning and normalization includes checking for errors, removing duplicate entries, transforming and formatting data in a way that makes it easier to analyze.

Storing Data in an Excel Workbook

Once your data is clean and normalized, it’s time to store it in an Excel workbook. Excel allows you to organize the data into separate tables which makes the data easier to work with. Additionally, Excel provides powerful tools that allow you to analyze the data and create visualizations.

Creating Your Dashboard

Data visualizations give people an immediate way to interpret data quickly and effectively. With just a few clicks of the mouse, users can create stunning and insightful visualizations on an Excel dashboard. Here are the steps you need to take to get started.

Selecting the Optimal Tool

Before starting your dashboard, it is important to first determine which tool you will use for creating the data visualization. The Excel program contains a number of helpful features to make it easy to select the right tool for the job. Look for features in the program that have built-in visualization capabilities and also allows dynamic updates to your visuals if needed.

Connecting to Data Sources

Now that you have selected the right tool, you need to connect your data sources with the Excel dashboard. There are a few different ways to do this, depending on the type of data source. For example, if the data source is an online spreadsheet, you can connect them directly via an API call or through a data transformation tool. If the data source is in a local database, you can connect it via a SQL query or ODBC connection.

Organizing and Crafting the Dashboard Design

Once the data is connected to the Excel dashboard, it is time to start creating the visualization. Here you will need to think about the information that you want to display, the type of visualization that will best convey the data, and the size and arrangement of the visuals. To help make the best design choices, consider the following:

• Understand the data - Examine what the data is telling you, identify trends, and spot outliers.
• Organize the data - Select the appropriate data fields to show in each visualization, and the order in which they should be presented.
• Choose the right visual – Select the right type of chart that captures the essential elements of your data.
• Iterate and adjust - As needed, make changes to the data fields, chart type, or other aspects of the visual to capture the most effective message.

Types of Visualizations

There are a variety of different visualizations tools available to help you turn data into insightful visualizations on an Excel Dashboard. Each type of visualization has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and knowing which one to use in different situations can help boost the presentation of your data. Here, we’ll go over some of the most commonly used types of visualizations: basic line and bar charts, Tableau heatmaps, and Power BI scatter plots.

Basic Line and Bar Charts

Basic line and bar charts are some of the most commonly used visualizations. They are simple, easy to understand, and can provide a good overview of the data. Line charts are commonly used to show trends over time, while bar charts are used to compare different items. Both types of charts are fairly straightforward, so they're great for beginners.

Tableau Heatmaps

Tableau heatmaps are a great way to compare values across different categories. They use color to show the relationships between variables or items in a given dataset. Heatmaps allow you to quickly identify patterns and outliers, making them incredibly useful for data analysis. However, they can be a bit more complex than basic line and bar charts, so they require a bit more understanding before they can be used effectively.

Power BI Scatter Plots

Power BI scatter plots are used to visualize the relationship between two or more variables. They are helpful for finding correlations and patterns between different datasets. Scatter plots can reveal trends and outliers, as well as provide insights into the underlying structure of a dataset. Scatter plots can also be used to model data to determine the influence of one variable over another.

5. Integrating Your Dashboard

Your dashboard is your window into the performance of your business and its metrics, but you may want access to the dashboard on demand or outside of your office. Fortunately, there are several excellent ways to streamline your dashboard data and make your insights available for quick retrieval.

a. Apps Scripts

Google Apps Script is an easy-to-use scripting language developed by Google used to automate tasks within G Suite. It allows users to access their data from any device with an internet connection. You can use Apps Script to automate tasks such as retrieving data from your spreadsheet, updating the data, and generating interactive visualizations for your dashboard.

b. Microsoft IoT Edge

If you’re looking to take your dashboard to the next level, you can utilize Microsoft’s IoT Edge platform. This platform gives you the power to run a variety of functions and tasks at the edge of your data, instead of requiring a centralized cloud-based infrastructure. This can be a great way to streamline the data you’re making available in your dashboard, as you don’t need to send it back and forth to the cloud.

IoT Edge also allows you to apply machine learning models to your data and generate highly interactive visualizations. This makes it easier to identify patterns in your data and gain valuable insights.

Optimizing Performance

In order to make sure your dashboard is performing optimally, there are a few steps that you can take to maximize the performance of your dashboard. By taking these measures, you can ensure that your dashboard visuals will be responsive, accurate, and useful.

Refreshing Data Sources

Periodically refreshing your data sources is essential to ensuring the accuracy of your dashboard visuals. Data sources often need to be refreshed in order to be up-to-date, and if this step is neglected, your dashboard visuals will not reflect current information, and may become unreliable. Refreshing data sources is especially important when the data is coming from an external source such as an API.

Debugging Performance Issues

Sometimes, your dashboard visuals may become slow or unresponsive for various reasons. If this is the case, it is possible to diagnose and fix issues related to dashboard performance. Common causes of dashboard performance issues include:

• Data tables and charts with too many fields or too much complexity
• Data sources that are too large or contain too much information
• Incorrect formatting of the underlying data

The process of debugging performance issues in your dashboard varies widely on the root cause of the issue. However, it often begins with checking the size and complexity of your underlying data to ensure you are not attempting to display too much data in your visuals. After this step, further investigation may be necessary in order to identify and resolve the underlying issue.

Conclusion

Excel dashboards are a great way to quickly transform data into actionable insights. They allow users to easily interact with data, identify trends and relationships, and share their findings with stakeholders. By following the 4-step process outlined in this article, users can quickly create powerful and insightful visualizations on their Excel dashboards.

Recap of Benefits

Excel dashboards offer many advantages, including:

• The ability to easily access data
• The flexibility to quickly create actionable visuals
• The capacity to identify trends and relationships
• The opportunity to share insights with others

Tips for Future Excel Visualizations

Here are some tips to make working with Excel visualizations easier:

• Make sure to format the data properly so it is easy to read
• Take advantage of the filtering and sorting options to quickly pinpoint relevant information
• Use conditional formatting to quickly identify trends
• Create custom charts to enable easy comparison of data
• Leverage formatting shortcuts to quickly apply strokes, fills, and more

With the right data and visualization techniques, Excel dashboards can offer a great way to quickly turn data into powerful insights. Harnessing the strengths of Excel dashboards can lead to better decision making and strategy formulation.