Microsoft Excel is a great tool for creating business dashboards. Recently, I made the below dashboard using Excel in just 5 steps.
Step 1: Figure out what you need
The first step for any successful dashboard is to understand what information your users want and how they want it.
- Talk to your users and ask them “what and why” they need the information.
- Prepare a mock-up sketch of the dashboard and get the buy-in.
- Identify data sources and refresh options.
At the end of STEP 1, you should have a clear idea about where you data is, how it should be gathered, analyzed and presented.
Step 2: Clean & Set up data
If you look long and hard, you can find the Loch Ness Monster, the truth about Bermuda Triangle before you locate the Perfectly Clean Business Data.
The next step is to clean & structure your data in a tabular format.
- Use Power Query to connect to the data source(s) and fetch the data.
- Set up necessary data cleaning processes with in Power Query.
- Load the data to Excel either as tables or to the data model.
Step 3: Calculate the KPIs with Pivots
Load the cleaned data into “data model” based pivot tables in Excel. Now, using Power Pivot DAX measures, calculate the necessary KPIs.
For example, for the above business dashboard, I’ve calculated:
- Total Sales =SUM(sales[Sales])
- Total Boxes = SUM(sales[Boxes])
- Total Expenses = SUM(sales[Expenses])
- Total Profit = [Total Sales] – [Total Profit]
- Profit % = [Total Profit] / [Total Sales]
Create the pivot tables using these measures.
Step 4: Make Interactive Charts
First create the necessary pivot charts (refer to the mock-up you made in step 1).
Then, make them interactive using Slicers, Timelines or Report Filters.
Step 5: Bring Everything Together & Format
We are ready for the big finale!
Bring all the charts, KPIs and slicers you have created so far to a new sheet. (Cut & Paste).
Arrange them neatly and format as needed.
Viola, your dashboard is ready!
Video Tutorial - How to create a dynamic business dashboard
I’ve created a 30 minute tutorial on how to create the above dashboard with all the necessary steps. Watch it below or on my Youtube channel.
Sample Workbooks
Please download the blank template file from here.
If you want the full dashboard (with al the workings), you can find it in my Excel School Online Course.
More Dashboard Tutorials & Examples
I have a confession to make. Dashboards are kind of my thing. So I have been writing about them for almost 15 years now. Here are some of my best Excel & Power BI dashboards.
24 Responses to “10 Supercool UI Improvements in Excel 2010”
The best improvement by far is the Collapse Ribbon ^ button !
Kind of a shame that some of the best improvements are actually returns to old functionality. One thing I don't like is that to get to recent files I need to do an extra click after File - apart from Save As, that's why I'm usually in the File menu. I like the sparkline options, though they are still as not fully featured as some of the free and pay options out there.
The collapse button for the ribbon menu is good news. Can you make the ribbon menus stick too?
Nine improvements, not ten. You can also select multiple objects in 2007. Click on the Find & Select item at the far right of the Home tab, and the dropdown looks remarkably like your 2010 screenshot.
@Jon.. Thank you. Dumb me, I somehow thought we couldnt select objects in Excel 2007. Just saw the "select menu" and it is there. I have corrected the post and removed the point. I have added the "you can make your own ribbons" instead. Thanks once again.
@Arti: what do you mean by make ribbons stick?
@Alex: May be it is my installation, but when I go to "File menu" I see "recent files" by default.
For example, if I am working with one of the contextual ribbon menus (Pivot tables, Drawing/Chart etc), as soon as I click away from the selected object, the menu tabs vanish. If I click on the object again immediately, then Excel will remember what I was looking at, but if I wander away and click on a Pivot, then back again on the Chart, the menus will 'appear' but not get activated, thereby causing much annoyance and additional clicking.
I want to "pin" the whole menu (not invididual commands) somehow, so that I can have the menu there for the length of the time I am working with graphics. Excel 2003 used to have the Drawing toolbar you could detach and hover while you were working, but this functionality disappeared in Excel 2007.
My thought was Excel should just allow a 'pin', similar to the Recently Opened files menu, for the Ribbon Menus as well. If I have not selected any Drawing object, the commands can be greyed out, but I want the menu as a whole to 'stick'.
@Arti... I think MS solved this problem differently. When I select a pivot and go to "design" tab Excel 2010 remembers this and automatically takes me to "design" tab when I reselect the pivot.
Apart from this you can also define your own ribbon with all the things you normally do. See the above article (I have added this after Jon's comments)
Nice feature. About time for a upgrade for MS Office
Oh... okay. That might be a start. I'd probably just copy-paste the Drawing tab haha. Thanks. I'll definitely give Excel 2010 a try.
Btw - have you considered getting into / gotten into the world of Excel as it meets SharePoint?
Actually, the replacement new thing is probably better than all the rest. One thing that the designers of the Office 2007 ignored was allowing regular users to customize their own interface. Office 2010's interface was expanded in this way to address the huge uproar.
Is there still a limit on how many things you can add to the QAT bar? (I'm too lazy to look myself.)
@Jeff.. it seems to take quite a few, but only shows one line and gives a little arrow button at the end. (summary: shucks!)
The best thing is you can edit the ribbon directly from excel, so now i can create my own bar with just the things I use regularly!
One of the annoying things in 07 for me is the Add-Ins menu bar - in 03 I could keystroke directly to menu add ins.. In 07 I needed an extra keystroke just to activate the add-in menu, then the keystrokes as normal.. Hope this marek sense..
John -
If you remember the old Excel 2003 Alt-key shortcuts, you can still use them in 2007. To get to the Add-In dialog:
Alt-T-I
Dear Arti & Chandoo
Seen your comments over some issues. Hope you are form India, gone through your comment expecting a pin to command it as a whole, great, hope if someone out of MS have read it, it may be kept in mind while the next R & D of Office Ver. 16
Just incase someone forgot CTRL+F1 will collapse the ribbon.
[...] was pleasantly surprised when I ran Microsoft Excel 2010 for first time. It felt smooth, fast, responsive and looked great on my [...]
I like the sparklines, and the ability to modify the charts
How do you get rid of the advertisment on the right hand side? If you upgrade then will it take off the ads?
Once again Microsoft has re-decorated the Office and we are NOT pleased!
The graphics object selector can be found in the Home ribbon under Find & Select, Select Objects near the bottom of the drop down. You can make it part of the Quick Access toolbar by right click over it and selecting Add to Quick Access toolbar.
The graphics "cursor" will now appear on the mini-toolbar at the top left of the window.
How to get rid of "Add-Ins" button in Backstage (File)" menu by means of XML code, i.e. to hide, to delete or to disable this button?
This button is usually situated in the Backstage menu between "Help" and "Options" buttons.
Vladimir, did you ever get an answer to your question?
I am tying to customize the ribbon UI for a file using XML, and this is precisely the piece I can't figure out. I can hide other tabs, remove items from QAT and backstage - all except the options that are showing up under add-ins in backstage. If there is an XML syntax for referencing this thing and making it invisible, I cannot find it.
Hey, nice tutorial. Please check my video tutorial on similar topic at the below link and provide your comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIFc0jYjpA