Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries.
It is possible to combine Custom Number Formats with the Pivot Table to produce Text based answers.
Download some sample data and follow along here: Sample File.
On the Simple Example worksheet
You will see that we have a sample table consisting of 5 fields, Names, Email, Opened and Date
Next add a numerical field “Open”, to convert the Opened field to a value
In F2: =(D2=”Yes”)*1 and copy F2 down
We can now add a Pivot table to the expanded table:
Select the area A1:F9
Insert, Pivot Table, Pivot Table
Select a Table or Range: ‘Basic Example’!$A$1:$F$9
Existing Worksheet: Location: I2
Once the pivot table is added, the PivotTable Field List will be displayed
Drag the Date field to the Column Labels
Drag the Email field to the Row Labels
Drag the Open field to the Sum Values
The Pivot Table will low look like this:
We can hide the Grant Total Row and Column by right clicking on the Grand Total Heading and select Remove Grand Total.
We will now add a Custom Number format to the Sum of Open area
Select the Sum of Open area
Right Click and select Format Cells
On the Number Tab, Select the Custom Category and enter a Format code: [>=1]”Yes”;[=0]”No”;
Anywhere that a value >0 occurs the word “Yes” will appear and where ever it is 0 a “No” will be shown.
You can do any of the normal Pivot Table, Filtering, Grouping etc activities and the results will change accordingly.
You can now format the Pivot Table as desired.
More Complex Results
We can use the Custom Number Formats to define up to 3 Text Values to either individual or Ranges of results.
Goto the Complex Example worksheet.
This Pivot table has used a Custom Number Format of: [<=9]”Low”;[<=19]”Medium”;”High”
This Custom Number Format assigns a Value of Low to a Sum of Rank <= 9, a Value of Medium to a Sum of Rank <= 19 and High to the remainder of the values
The Pivot Table also has a Conditional Format applied to the Sum of Rank area which applies a Color to the Font of the cells.
Limitations
The limitations of this technique are in that a Custom Number Format can only display 3 Conditional formats using the [ ] parameters.
There are a number of techniques that can expand on this using VBA and these are discussed below:
Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables with VBA
Robert Mundigl has written a great article on using Text within Pivot Tables using VBA
Emulate Excel Pivot Tables with Texts in the Value Area using VBA
References:
You can read more about Custom Number Formats here:
Here at Chandoo.org:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/02/25/custom-cell-formatting-in-excel-few-tips-tricks/
http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/11/02/a-technique-to-quickly-develop-custom-number-formats/
http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/08/19/selective-chart-axis-formating/
http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/08/22/custom-chart-axis-formating-part-2/
http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/custom-cell-formatting/
Elsewhere
http://www.ozgrid.com/Excel/CustomFormats.htm
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/NumberFormats.html
You can read more about Conditional Formatting here:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/03/13/excel-conditional-formatting-basics/
http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/03/13/want-to-be-an-excel-conditional-formatting-rock-star-read-this/
29 Responses to “Customer Service Dashboard using Excel [Dashword Week]”
Looks good, Mara. Keep up the good work!
Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations...
wow ! Great stuff Mara !!
I am amazed on the work you did !
What I like about your dashboard
1. The first impression is the colors used. Very smart use of colors that matches each other, easy on the eye - make people wants to find out more !
2. Clear message shown for the tweetboard for Quick overview on the state of situation.
3. Use of creative titles for your charts "Information Desk".
4. Clear and uncluttered charts. Gives reader a clear perspective with good use of charts colors too.
5. Good use of Legend to describe what color meant "Highest Sales out of the three months"
6. Of course, good use of Check boxes and Slider bar to offer interactiveness on your charts.
Suggestions
1. You may want to consider formatting your Y and X axis labels to show thousands, in $500K format instead of $500,000, so you can even made your chart look much neater.
2. Budget Variant Chart - This one is special...I took a second look and try to understand it. I am not sure if this is the best chart to visualize Sales VS Budget and Variances. And the Variance of 16.19% is positive, so u may want to use conditional formatting to make it green color, red if negative.
Overall is Great Work and Great Effort !!! Keep it up and I am so proud of you !
Francis Chin
http://www.francischin.com
Great Work Maya, just wondering if "5" Scrollable list of various gift shop items, can compare the previous 2 and current month selected in the above picklist, just one more suggestion if we can use top 5 gift category by using donut and bar mix chart to show sales mix for different months
Chandoo I would like to thank you for posting such helpful tricks for creating dashboards, I have learned a lot from your KPI Dashboard demo, I have created one dashboard to compare performce of Sales Associates, thaks a lot again
Thanks for the idea! Great job! You are giving me a lot of inspiratons!
Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I'm such a novice at this so I was so grateful for Chandoo's class and for everyone who submits ideas on his blog.
Francis: Thanks so much for your comments. You're an inspiration. For the budget variance chart, I actually got that idea from one of Chandoo's post on budget vs actual. There was one that was simple and easy to read so I learned how to do that and made it dynamic. I'm open to any other ideas you have for budget vs actual. I'm always looking for ways to improve.
Sabrina: Thank you for you for your suggestion on the top 5.
Dear Mara,
Great work.
But i one suggestion regarding the INFORMATION DESK graph is consist of month but which year it belong is not there if it would be there it would be great.
Warm Regards
Bhushan Sabbani
+91 98208 26012
Thanks for this idea... Great Stuff !!
Excellent dashboard Mara.
The best I like about the dashboard is the choice of colors. They are cool and not distracting. Thanks for sharing the file.
@Chandoo
Thanks for the dashboard week Chandoo. I am learnt a lot in the last 2 days. I am excited over the next 3 days! 🙂
Regards,
Ravi.
Great work Mara ! Thanks for sharing .
Mara, I liked the line, "Need to be more helpful." Our government needs to print this line, laminate it and post it in all government offices for the staff to see.
Hi there, i have been recently visiting this blog it is really great, the best one for Excel, wish Chandoo great success ahead.
I have one query, if you protect the data sheet the chart with the checkbox gives and error saying the data is protected and cannot be modified, is there a way around. This is cause if we want to publish this to someone who should only see it and do no changes to the data, is it possible please guide.
This could be a silly but bear me i am novice to excel 🙂
Thanks.
nice work.
inspired me a lot, working on few dashboard projects...
[...] Customer Service Dashboard in Excel 14,326 [...]
[...] Customer Service Dashboard Example [...]
dear mara
looks great .any reason why you have not used the bullet chart for the actual vs target chart.on the whole it is simple and elegant .jay.
Dear Chandoo,
The word Dashboard in the heading is misspelt.
Wow. Very Nice work Mara. Next week I am going to take the Course, I will try to post my work here.
Thank you so much for your helpful blog. Always appreciated your tips and tricks.
I am proud that you belongs to our Vizag City.
The above comment, I forgot mentioned about Chandoo, those two paras is about Chandoo. 😀
Thank you Mara!
Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations…
Great Work Mara!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Chandoo,
I had been following your blogs for tips and tricks on excel. I am working with Media agency and we collect the data. Now this data has several parameters based on several legends. For eg Class A - legend color red, classB - legend color green and so on. Class A has several characteristics and parameters and heading etc. Now everytime we gather data and make pivot then based on the data in the pilot tables - top 10 we need to insert those in charts manually and also need to change the colors of legends and also. We create nearly 300 slides every month sector wise and it takes nearly our 4-5 days in doing that. Do you have any sample dashboard which will be helpfull to us and we can create it in a day.
Thanks really amazing one,
it helped me in desgining OTACE report
Regards
Gowravan M
9980651792
Awesome Job done here .............
very good master piece but wont to know if you can design KPI's for a financial institution. Thank you
I need help to make performance for our company
we have about 10 products from 5 years old