Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel is a series of 6 posts by Robert.
This 6 Part Tutorial on KPI Dashboards Teaches YOU:
Creating a Scrollable List View in Dashboard
Add Ability to Sort on Any KPI to the Dashboard
Highlight KPIs Based on Percentile
Add Microcharts to KPI Dashboards
Compare 2 KPIs in the Dashboards Using Form Controls
Show the Distribution of a KPI using Box Plots
Dashboards have become quite popular in the last few years and in spite of all the Business Intelligence software products that provide dashboards, a lot of dashboards are still implemented with Microsoft Excel.
What is a Dashboard?
According to Stephen Few, one of the world-wide leading authorities on visualization and dashboard design,
a dashboard is a visual display of the most important information […] which fits entirely on a single computer screen […]
(Information Dashboard Design, 2006)
The Scrolling Problem
Fitting on a single computer screen is the challenge this post will solve. Imagine you have a large list of 100 or more items (e.g. products, sales regions, etc.) with several corresponding Key Performance Indicators (e.g. prices, costs of goods sold, sales, etc.) and you want to show this in a table on your management dashboard. The whole table will not fit on a single computer screen anymore. Most of the time it will be sufficient to show the first or largest 10 items only. But what if the user of your dashboard wants to scroll down the table and see the rest of the data? Sure, you might teach him to go to the sheet with the data and scroll up and down there. But this is not convenient, not user-friendly, insecure and not the purpose of a dashboard.
The solution
The table on our dashboard doesn’t need much explanation. The only thing that differs from millions of other numeric tables in Excel is the slider scroll-bar between the names of the items and the data. This scroll-bar allows the user of the dashboard to walk through the whole list and see all items without leaving the dash-board. The table is small and leaves a lot of space for tables or charts on the dashboard.
Download the excel sheet containing KPI Dashboard solution to learn this better.
The implementation
- First have our raw data ready in a separate sheet, this is the easy step, you know how to get your data in to one sheet. So skip to next one.
- Next create a 10 row table for the dash board
- Insert a scroll bar form control Go to Menu > view > tool bars and select “forms” to see the forms tool bar. Select the scrollbar control from forms tool bar and draw one on your spreadsheet.
- Assign the scroll bar control to a cell right click on it and select format control option. In the dialog box, go to “control” tab and adjust the values as shown below:
- Finally write OFFSET() formula to display any consecutive 10 values in our scrollable table: OFFSET is used on the dashboard to bring back those 10 lines from the sheet with the raw data that are selected by using the scroll bar. A sample formula is shown here:
=OFFSET(Data!E5,Calculation!$D$5,0)where Data!E5 refers to the column containing the required data, Calculation!$d$5 has the current scroll bar value. That is all, you will have a small table that you can use to see all data using scroll
What next?
Make sure you have downloaded KPI Dashboard solution workbook to learn this better.
Read the next article in this series:Part 2: Add Ability to Sort on Any KPI to the Dashboard
Also, Checkout our Excel Dashboards Page for more examples and resources.
Chandoo’s note: Robert is a regular reader and commenter on this blog. Drop your comments / questions here and I am sure he will answer them 🙂
13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?