All articles with 'dashboards' Tag

As the launch date for our 2nd batch of Power Pivot class nears, my plate looks fuller than ever. Fine tuning the course details, preparing our online classroom for new batch of students and coordinating with Rob for video recording etc.

But I wanted to take a few mins today and share with you some really useful Excel tricks, ideas and examples from web. I found these really useful and inspiring. I am sure you will learn from these links as much as I learned.

Hello friends..,

I have 2 things for you:

• Details about our upcoming Power Pivot courses
• A short video about designing better dashboards.

Pop quiz: What is wrong with above report?

At first glance, it looks alright. But if you observe closely, you realize that it is not telling the entire story. Just looking at regional sales numbers, you have not much clue what is going on with them.

So how to improve it?

Are you making these 10 rookie mistakes when creating dashboards?

Watch below to video to understand what these mistakes and how to avoid them.

10 Rookie mistakes to avoid when making dashboards [23 mins]

Hello folks,

I have a super exciting news to share with you all. I will be conducting a series of Masterclasses on Advanced Dashboards & Excel in USA this Summer (May – June 2012). So if you live in (or nearby) Chicago, New York, Washington DC or Columbus OH, and want to one up your dashboard skills, you know what to do next.

I am conducting these masterclasses in partnership with PowerPivotPro.

Click here to know more and book your slot.

HR managers & department heads always ask, “So what is the vacation pattern of our employees? What is our average absent rate?”

Today lets tackle that question and learn how to create a dashboard to monitor employee vacations.

What do HR Managers need? (end user needs)

There are 2 aspects tracking vacations.

1. Data entry for vacations taken by employees
2. Status dashboard to summarize vacation data

In this 2 part tutorial, we will learn how to design a project portfolio dashboard. Part 1 discussed user needs & design. Part 2 will show you Excel implementation.

Final Implementation – Project Portfolio Dashboard

First lets take a look at the finalized dashboard implementation. Continue reading to learn more & download this dashboard.

In this 2 part tutorial, we will learn how to design a project portfolio dashboard. Part 1 will focus on user needs & design. Part 2 on Excel implementation.

Background
As you may know, we sell a set of Excel Project Management templates. These templates help plan, track, manage & report a project right from Excel.

While these templates good, they have one limitation. They work for one project at a time. Many customers have asked me if I come up with a project portfolio dashboard that can tell what is going on in a set of projects in one view.

And that is where we begin.

Finally the wait is over. Eager to know who won our Excel Salary Survey Dashboard contest? Read on.

Recently, we published 66 dashboards visualizing Excel salaries around the world. Each of the contestants have put in great effort and hand-crafted these beauties. Now its time we picked a winner.

How does the voting work?

The voting has 2 components

1. Readers (that is you) pick a winner and runner-up using online voting.
2. Judges (2 of them) will also pick winners. Judges vote carries 20% weight.

Everyone likes to be in control. Even my 2 year old daughter jumps with joy when she lays her hands on TV remote. She pushes the buttons and assumes it is working. It is another story that we rarely watch TV at home.

By adding an element of control, we can make our dashboard reports fun. Interactive elements like form controls, slicers etc. invite users to play with your dashboard, get involved and understand data by asking questions. That is why I recommend making dashboards interactive.

Today lets understand how you can make dashboards interactive.

Whenever we deal with large amounts of data, one of the goals for analysis is, How is this data distributed?

This is where a Box plot can help. According to Wikipedia, a box plot is a convenient way of graphically depicting groups of numerical data through their five-number summaries: the smallest observation (sample minimum), lower quartile (Q1), median (Q2), upper quartile (Q3), and largest observation (sample maximum)

Today, let us learn how to create a box plot using MS Excel. You can also download the example workbook to play with static & interactive versions of box plots.

Ladies & gentleman, put on your helmets. This is going to be mind-blowingly awesome.

See how many different ways are there to analyze Excel salary data. Look at these 66 fantastic, beautifully crafted dashboards and learn how to one up your dashboard awesomeness quotient.

Did I tell you I love tennis? Some of my personal heroes & motivators are tennis players. And as you can guess, I admire Roger Federer. Watching him play inspires me to achieve more. So last night when he lifted Wimbledon trophy for 7th time, I wanted to celebrate the victory too, in my style. So I made an interactive timeline chart in Excel depicting his victory.

Hello folks,

I have a quick announcement. As you may know, I am doing a set of Excel & Dashboards Masterclasses in Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane. We had a fantastic session in Sydney (with 18 delegates). We are sold out in Melbourne & have 2 spots left in Brisbane. But we kept getting requests for more in Melbourne. So we have added an additional session in Melbourne. This is right after Queen’s birthday – on 12th & 13th of June. Please use below links to enroll for the masterclass if you are interested.

• Melbourne Masterclass – 12 & 13 June
• Brisbane Masterclass – 31May & 1 June

Reviews from our Sydney masterclass delegates
We asked the delegates of our Sydney masterclass to tell us how they liked it. Here is a short video with their reviews (4 min):