Finally my Excel classes in USA are over. It was a lot of fun traveling to new cities, teaching Excel & dashboards to enthusiastic crowds and making new friends. As if that is not fun enough, we (Jo, kids & I) are going on a 2,000 mile, 2 week road trip starting today.
Although I am enjoying all this, I also feel bad for not taking enough time to share new tricks, ideas & techniques with you here. So, I have a wacky, wild & awesome plan for you. Join us on our road trip.
That is right. You can join me on our road trip and see what I see, learn some pretty cool Excel tricks, all while sipping coffee and stretching legs in the comfort of your office cubicle. No oppressive summer heat, no driving thru a long turn-pike looking for next rest area while your daughter is screaming in the back; ‘daddy, I need to go now.’ or no drinking three coffees in a row so that you can access free wi-fi and check your email.
So buckle up. Err, I mean unbuckle and join us on this road trip.
What is going to happen?
Simple. While I am on road, each day I will be posting a new Excel tip or article. I will accompany it with a short snippet of what we are doing, include a photo or two of the beautiful things we are seeing.
Sounds Exciting, What should I do?
Nothing really. Just follow our journey for next 2 weeks. May be tell your colleagues or friends about it so that they too can enjoy. And if you happen to be in Raleigh or Pittsburgh or DC, ping me. We may be able to catch up.
So where are we going?
Well, I could tell you all about our Road trip using a map or several bullet points. Heck, I could even use a fancy image to tell you what we are up to. But you know that is not my style. So I have the right thing for you. So I present to you…,
Interactive Map of our Road Trip
That is right. First take a look at our road trip details:
How is this chart / map / interactive thingie made?
I wish I can sit here and type out all the little details about this. But I must rush now and pick up our rental car. So here is the recipe in a nutshell.
- First I created a Google Map with all the locations we are visiting. (link)
- Took a screenshot of the map. Embedded it in to Excel and cropped it.
- Assuming the top left of the map is (0,0) and bottom right is (2.2, 3.2) figured out the x,y co-ordinates for all the markers by trial and error. (Hint: apply grid lines at 0.1 so that you can easily find marker positions).
- Then created an agenda table with below structure.
- Added a scrollbar form control and set it from 1 to 16. Linked it to a blank cell. (related: Introduction to form controls)
- Using scrollbar selection, fetched corresponding row details from above table.
- Created an XY scatter plot with (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) values for selected row.
- Set cropped map image behind the chart’s plot area and resized things until they align ok.
- Using text boxes, fetched various details for selected scrollbar value (date, heading, details, Excel tip).
- Color and format so that everything looks good.
So there you go. Now, you know how to create your own map / chart / interactive thingie.
Download Road Trip Interactive chart
Click here to download the workbook and play with it. Examine the way chart is set up (ungroup it to move things) and various INDEX formulas to understand this better.
More on Maps & Excel
If you like to combine maps & data, then Excel is not going you help you much (unless you are using either Power View or Geo Flow). But there are a few ways to get maps in Excel. Check out below examples to learn more.
- Lithuania at a glance (Choropleth maps in Excel)
- Count-down timer on a map
- Visualizing Olympic medals by country
- Tracking Hurricane Sandy in Excel
So see you tomorrow, from Waynesboro (VA). Until then, stay in your lane and cruise.
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