Happy Birthday Hui…
Note: Hui’s birthday is yesterday (13th). I planned to write this post and share the dashboard workbook with you all yesterday itself, but my daughter wasn’t keeping well and we were busy taking care of her. (And yes, she is ok now, thanks for asking. 🙂 )
Some of you know our guest author and Excel ninja Hui. Yesterday was his birthday. And I wanted to create nice birthday gift for him. So I took a database dump of our forums data and created a dashboard.
First take a look the dashboard I made for him:
[click here for a large version]

Some Key Findings
- Our forums have a total of 5,227 posts, out of which Hui contributed 24% (roughly 1 in 4)
- On average Hui takes 13 and half hours to get back to the questioner with an answer. The fastest he has been was 31 seconds. (only last year data)
- Hui has been very busy on November 30th – 2010, answering 19 times on that day.
- The person who got benefited most from Hui is indi visual, with 44 replies from Hui.
- People used the words thank and Hui in same post 395 times.
- Hui wakes up early and answers questions on our forums. Then, before sleep, he spends some time helping people.
- If Hui had $2.5 per each letter he typed in our forums, he would be a millionaire.
- All data as of Jan 11, 2011. Between that and now, Hui has already answered 37 more times (and still helping…)
How is this dashboard constructed?
With lots of love of course. But quite a few excel techniques were used too.

- Structurally, this dashboard is similar to my 10,000 comment dashboard.
- Word cloud of Hui’s replies is from wordle.net
- Scrollable chart at the bottom is a grid of 20×42 cells conditionally formatted. Scrolling effect thru OFFSET formula.
- Pivot tables, a whole lot of them were used to find the summaries I want
- The header content is picture links & shapes.
- Rest of them are left to your imagination.
Download Excel Workbook with this Dashboard
Please click here to download the workbook. It is locked.
I have made a 45 minute video explaining how this dashboard is constructed. I will be giving this video & unlocked workbook as a bonus to people joining Excel School dashboard option or purchasing Dashboard training kit.
Interested in Dashboards?
- I recommend joining Excel School. You can learn how to make awesome charts & dashboards.
- Visit our Dashboards Page. It has tons of useful information, examples, tutorials & templates.
Say Happy Birthday & Thanks to Hui
I am sure directly or indirectly, Hui has helped many of you. So take a minute and say thanks to him. Wish him several more years of awesomeness, happiness, wealth & health. 🙂

















9 Responses to “CP044: My first dashboard was a failure!!!”
CONGRATS on the book!
Thanks for this podcast. It's great to hear about your disaster and recovery. It's a reminder that we're all human. None of this skill came easily.
Thank you Oz. I believe that we learn most by analyzing our mistakes.
Hey chandoo
this really a good lesson learned
but as I have already stated in one of my previous email that it would be more helpful for us if you could release videos of your classes for us
thanks
The article gave me motivation, especially you describing the terrible disaster that you faced but how to get back from the setbacks. Thanks for that, but with video this will be more fun.
Hi Nafi,
Thanks for your comments. Please note that this is (and will be) audio podcast. For videos, I suggest subscribing to our YouTube channel. No point listening to audio and saying its not video.
You always motivate me with respect of the tools in excel. How we can really exploit it to the fullest. Thanks very much
Thank you Amankwah... 🙂
Thank you very much, Chandoo, for your excellent lessons, I am anxious to learn so valuable tips and tricks from you, keep up the great job!
I truly appreciate the transcripts of the podcasts, because as a speaker of English as a second language, it allows me to fully understand the material. It'd be great if you can add transcripts to your online courses too, I am sure people will welcome this feature.
Dashboards for Excel has arrived in Laguna Beach, CA! Thanks!
Now I need to make time to "learn and inwardly digest" its contents as one of my high school teachers would admonish us!