Charts and Graphs, Learn Excel

Making a Dynamic Dashboard in Excel [Part 2 of 4]

Last updated on May 26, 2010

Chandoo

This is a guest post by Myles Arnott from Clarity Consultancy Services – UK.

Part 1: Introduction & overview
Part 2: Dynamic Charts
Part 3: VBA behind the Dynamic Dashboard a simple example
Part 4: Pulling it all together

Part 1 of dynamic dashboard tutorial introduced the purpose and general functionality of the model. In this post we are going to look at the first 4 charts and see how they work.

Chart 1 and Chart 2 : Flexible pie charts

These are Dynamic pie charts with the option to select the KPI, period and product/salesperson to be analyzed. As both pie charts use the same functionality I will focus on the chart in CH1.

The key to the flexibility of these otherwise simple pie charts is taking a little time to set up the chart source data.

1) Selection criteria

We want to be able to select data by product group and month and be able to choose the key performance indicator to report. We also want to be able to report on all product groups and for all periods.

To ensure that only valid criteria are selected, each selection is driven from a data validation list driven from a named range:

2) The formula

The main formula being used is the SUMIFS(Sum range, Criteria range, criteria,…). This was a new formula in 2007 and provides a simpler solution to the SUMPRODUCT() formula.

So the formula in cell D24 in CH1 is:

=SUMIFS(INDIRECT($C$21),Sales_Per,B24,Product,$C$19,Period,$C$20)

Right, lets break it down for you:

Sum range

To create flexibility around the values returned I have used the INDIRECT formula to reference a named range. The named ranges are Count, Total_sales KPI_1 and Total_GP. I have then referenced these three named ranges within the data validation list.

Criteria range 1 and criteria 1

This matches the sales person in B24 against the list of sales people (named range Sales_Per) in the data tab.

Criteria range 2 and criteria 2

This matches the product in C19 against the list of products (named range Product) in the data tab.

Criteria range 3 and criteria 3

This matches the period in C20 against the list of periods (named range Period) in the data tab.

The result of bringing all of this together is that the value returned is:

The value range as defined in C21
The sales person as defined in B24
The product as defined in C19
The period as defined in C20

3) The final step – Dealing with “All”

The final element to enable the fully flexibility is to allow “all” to be selected for product and period. This gives you four options:

Product and period specified
Product specified, all periods
All products, period specified
All products and all periods

To manage this I have created a column for each option with a variation of the formula defined above. Finally I used a column as source data for the chart which pulls though the relevant information based on the selections made. They look like this:

I leave the interpretation of the actual formulas to you.

CH3 and CH4 Flexible line charts

These are dynamic line charts with the option to select the KPI, period and product/salesperson to be analyzed. As both line charts use the same functionality I will focus on the chart in CH3.