Remember Excel School? It was all I talked about between Jan last week and middle of Feb. Then as if someone has pressed mute button, there was not even a single mention about the school. So I thought, why not give you all an update on Excel School and tell you how the classes are going.
Some stats about the program:
- A total of 147 students signed up for the program.
- 3 Students dropped out for various reasons.
- Out of total 12 weeks, we have finished 8 weeks of lessons now.
- We have covered extensively on topics like excel formulas, charting, conditional formatting, formatting, tables and pivot tables until now. We also did a class project.
- In the next 4 weeks we will be talking about data validation, filters, importing data, advanced formulas, macros and do another class project.
- There were a total of 25 lessons, with roughly 800 minutes of video lessons and several downloadable excel workbooks.
- A total of 219 comments were posted by students discussing lesson topics, asking questions and doubts.
What is the student feedback?
While it is a little early, I am very happy to tell you that students are really enjoying Excel School and have been liking what is shared so far. Some encouraging comments I have received are,
I just wanted to give you some feedback on our lessons so far. While I wouldn’t consider Excel school to be a beginner’s 101 course, I wish I had found something with this level of instruction years ago.
I’m having a blast looking at things that I thought I understood well. You have given some new insight into several things that I’ve been able to apply to some workbooks at my job. Just with one powerful little formula tweaks I figured you saved me and a colleague 475 minutes per month on a monthly report that we have to prepare. Over a years time that equates to over $3500. That’s only one instance.
This is the best instruction that I’ve ever come across. You make Excel fun! THANK YOU! Thank you for being so generous with all of the great information that you share. You truly are awesome!
I am a member of your Excel School and continuously watching your postings. I just want to thank you personally for providing me such a good excel tutorials.
I really am learning a lot…I am stubborn and will keep trying till I get the ideas. And you have so many wonderful tricks I never knew about. I got started with you in charting and I have learned so much and done some nifty charts. I am looking forward to learning a lot more from you in the future. I am amazed how much you know and how well you are able to explain things. I thought I was pretty proficient in formatting till I watched week 2 and I have discovered that there is much more I do not know than I do. Can’t wait for the rest of the classes.
I just wanted to tell you that so far in the Excel School, I am blown away with the quality and amount of information I’m getting out of the course. I have always been the excel expert where ever I work, and it’s inspiring to see what you’ve been able to do with it. I didn’t realize there was so much more to learn.
Been taking an online class in Excel. About 6 weeks into it and wow, I have learned a lot. And I am the best Excel user in my department at work. Class is hosted by Chandoo and he is good, really good. Runs a great blog called Pointy Haired Dilbert. A lot of value in this thing: class was approximately $100 for 15 weeks of awesome-ness. … I am loving it. … The surprising thing I have learned is how to better present information for others. I have always taken pride in making good spreadsheets instinctively, but this has made me much better.
My thoughts on the program so far,
To be frank I was *very* nervous when I closed the signups for the excel school. Having 147 students in the class, each with different and probably very high expectations psyched me a bit. To top it, after running barely one week of the program, I had to move from Denmark to India and that posed different challenges (mainly on bandwidth, internet connectivity, free time fronts). Having 2 small babies at home didn’t help either.
But, the students are generous, eager and fun. They lapped up the lessons with enthusiasm and discussed topics with a sense of humor. They supported me when I told them I had to lie low on comment replies during my transit from DK to IN. They didnt mind when a video link was broken or download went 404. They just gave me time to correct it. Few enthusiastic fellas even emailed me and told how *awesome* the classes are and helped me gain confidence. Thank you.
The promised goodies…
I am hoping to start the next batch of Excel School at End of May 2010. I am actively looking for students now…
So if you are interested in an online excel training program please tell me your name and email address. I will update you once the program is ready for registration. Also, you will be receiving 3 free lessons,
- Excel conditional formatting lesson – as soon as you sign up below
- SUMPRODUCT Formula lesson – by End of April
- Excel Pivot Table Tricks (lesson by Debra Dalgleish and me) – by end of May.
Please use the below form (click here if are not able to see it) to express your interest in Excel School Program:
PS: For Excel School Curriculum & Details pls. visit – http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-school/
PPS: The price of Excel School will remain same at $97
Are you a student? What do you think of Excel School?
If you are an Excel School student, please take a minute and share your opinion of the program thru comments. I would love to know how it is helping you be more awesome in excel. Also, pls. share your suggestions for improvements for future batches.
49 Responses to “Project Management Dashboard / Project Status Report using Excel [Part 6 of 6]”
[...] display milestones Part 4: Time sheets and Resource management Issue Trackers & Risk Management Project Status Reporting – Dashboard Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project [...]
Excellent!
I was looking forward to this and you've done it again...Shame I can't claim it was all my own work 😉
ps hope you're getting enough sleep
Excelent !!! Tks to share your knowledge with us.
Izabel
Sao Paulo - Brazil
Nice job!.
I'm also keen on PM Excel Dashboards. Please, take a look at
http://screencast.com/t/TyaxH5r4mDf
That's one example of my Project control Spreadsheets.
Cheers
Hi Miguel,
Do you share your PM Excel Dashboards? It looks awesome.
Regards,
Germán
Hi M. Miguel,
Can you share your Excel Dashboards? Awesome work BTW.
Regards,
Michel Levesque
Can you share the PM excel template?
[...] haired Dilbert hat zum Abschluss einer Artikeserie zum Thema Projektmanagement mit Excel eine Anleitung zum Bau eines Projekt-Dashboards veröffentlicht. Ein Dashboard ist eine Visualisierungsform für große Mengen von meist [...]
Quite a nice and helpful article. I am sure excel is one of the most used application across many many big companies. And your info on project status update using excel would surely be usefull. Keep up the good work on this blog site. Also to share there are some open source flash-based graphing and charting solution which caould also be used on any project..
http://askwiki.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-create-quality-charts-using.html
@Alex, Izabel .. thank you 🙂
@Miguel: Thank you. Your dashboard looks very good. It is inclined towards the budget and finances of the project. I have kept those aspects out of this series. May be I will revisit the financial aspect of projects at a later point.
@Rishil: Thank you. Yes, you can create flash based charts (or even simple image based charts) and embed them in a project dashboard that can be published to the team using intranet (like sharepoint). This is how large companies usually do it. Thanks for sharing the Askwiki article.
Great looking dashboard!! Do you have a version for the Mac versions of Office available?
Thanks
Chandoo,
this is great piece of collating info.I liked it and shall try using it in office.
Thanks for the all hard work behind this.
Chandoo,
Kudos. This is really as simple as it gets for laymen. We did this sort of stuff in Consulting - but this can now become really simple for people. Will have my team look at this! Great work.
thanks,
Mrigank
[...] I suggest reading my 7 part series on project management using excel. Starting with Excel Gantt Charts to Project Dashboards. [...]
Just downloaded the project management template bundle...great!
Have you done anywork on a Project Portfolio Dashboard template?
@Bw... Thanks for getting a copy of the templates. 🙂 I have worked on few assignments where we built such templates. But these are similar to other regular dashboard templates. I will share some of these ideas in a later post someday. Meanwhile if you have any ideas on how to structure project portfolio dashboard, let me know using comments or email.
[...] to display milestones Time sheets and Resource management Issue Trackers & Risk Management Project Status Reporting – Dashboard Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project [...]
[...] display milestones Time sheets and Resource management Part 5: Issue Trackers & Risk Management Project Status Reporting – Dashboard Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project [...]
[...] to display milestones Time sheets and Resource management Issue Trackers & Risk Management Project Status Reporting – Dashboard Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project [...]
Thanks fro the great ideas! To get a sense of the layout and design of a Dashboard more geared toward Cost and Schedule anaysis, check out the example Dashboard at http://www.ProjectDashboards.com which was built entirely in excel.
hey,
i just need a simple Chart where by i can show some of the projects by % wise. no dates required.
1st column Project name and 2nd column will be status (filled with %). can you pls help me out.
Thanks.
@DS... if you have excel 2007, you can use data bars in conditional formatting for this purpose.
Hi Chandoo - this series is an excellent resource and tutorial, thank you for sharing.
When I sat down to consider what my dashboard should look like, one of the most important features for me is to be able to maintain version control and to show simply on what version is on display.
Apart from the naming convention of the file name, is there a good way to do this within a dashboard? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
@Larph: Welcome 🙂
> You can do version control thru Macros (but always remember that your audience can disable macros)
> Another option is to use a static time stamp / version number in the title page of dashboard that you update manually whenever you make changes to the file
> In excel 2010, you can keep track of file versions from File menu. This can be used to select a previous version of dashboard.
> Best option is to use a version control system like SVN or upload files to Sharepoint or something like that. This will take care of versioning for you (although it is a bit technical and dashboard audience may have difficulty figuring the versions out).
> The easiest option is to use filenames and the CELL() formula to get the version number (or date) from the filename so you can show it on the dashboard.
Hi Chandoo... I'm following you from Brazil...
I would like to thank you for the tips about excel, mainly with dashboards ... It helped me a lot …
Take care...
Di
On the dashboard when I print, the text is blanked out in the middle of the Issues list - suggestions on how to fix?
[...] Project Management Dashboard in Excel [...]
Hi Chandoo, do you have an equivalent Project Management Dashboard / Project Status Report for MS Office 2010?
As a Microsoft trainer I'm interested in your choice of Excel for project management. I'm assuming that you've tried Microsoft Project and have decided not to use it? We get folks on our MS Project courses who've tried to use Excel for PM purposes and none of them have made such an impressive project plan, but I wonder is it worth all the effort?
This looks very interesting. How may I be a part of this
Does this template work in Google Spreadsheets?
Many thanks for sharing your expertise with us. Keep up the good work 🙂
Heya i'm for the first time here. I came across this board and I to find It really helpful & it helped me out a lot. I am hoping to offer one thing again and aid others like you helped me.
Hi Chandoo,
Your PM dashboards impressed me so much that I've downloaded the Portfolio and Project Management package. All of the documents look very professional.
I was going through the Portfolio dashboard and I had a question.
When I enter in additional holidays they are highlighted in the gantt chart. Is it possible so that the name of the holiday shows up in the highlighted area of the gantt chart.
Thanks
Adam
[...] Project Status Dashboard [...]
[...] Project Status Dashboard in Excel [...]
[...] Project Management Dashboard in Excel [...]
can you confirm that the downloads will work on a mac - excel for mac v14.3.6
thanks
Made a slight variation on the schedule sheet,
1. Add a date column for start
2. In week column cell use =weeknum() and link to date cell
3. Hide week column
When you enter in a date for each task the week number is populated accordingly
simple but more effective, you can also dynamically link the date cell to your MSP project file for even more automation!!
I purchased a copy of the project management dashboard excel file. I misplaced the password to unlock the file and make modification. Can you please resend the password.
Thank much in advance...
Hi there! I just would like to give you a big thumbs up for your great info
you've got right here on this post. I'll be returning to your website
for more soon.
I bought ur project management template just want to know how to hide the budget section from portfolio?
Hi, Thanks - very good job you've prepared!
You've inspired me as well 🙂
Best regards
Hello!
I am using a gantt chart template which i got from your website. All is good just when I add all my acitivities in data spreadsheet and then go back to gantt chart to view them, I only see first 9 and then I need to keep scrolling for the next ones. is it possible to see most of the activities if not all in the single frame.
thanks for answering!
This is my first time pay a visit at here and i am actually happy to read all at alone place.
I am interested in your dashboard; downloaded the locked version, unable to use it...do you have a user guide that is available that I can see and use on the locked version?
Please send me daily newsletter
Hi,
I downloaded the PM dashboard and the gantt chart only has dates till the year 2016. How do I change this to include 2017 FY as well.
When I enter a activity for this year , it fails to show up on the chart.
Hi
Would.like to purchase the project management .kits
Pls share the payment link in INR
Also share your contact number to speak with you
Regards
Hari
9384825926