The Pie Maker Automating the Fact Book Creation Process David Onder & Alison Joseph SAIR
9608 students Master’s Comprehensive Mountain location Residential and Distance 2
Why did we do this? Old process Access queries and SAS runs Manual data entry and formatting in Excel 3 Problems Error prone Long time to complete Only one level of data Inconsistent formatting Lack of SAS skills
How could we fix this? 4 PushPullvs Cons Lack of SAS skills Not easily pushed to web Cons Pictures and column spacing Timing issues Pros SAS is very powerful Easy to create multiple levels of reports Pros “Easy” to learn Handled by entry level position and students Resists issues with staff turnover
Gap Analysis 5 Have Access DBs per term Existing Excel tables and graphs Desire to overlap with other IR processes Need Combined Access DBs Automated Excel tables and graphs Consistent, well-defined format
General Approach Major revision to fact book look (see It’s Not About Pie…) Restructure existing Excel workbooks (standardized) Modify existing sheet as Report sheet (based on Process) Build Data sheet Build Process sheet based on Data (calculations here) Build Access queries Connect Excel Data sheet to Access query Build Factbook using Adobe InDesign 6
Inspiration Chart Junk and Graph Formatting Edward Tufte Stephen Few Juice Analytics 7 Formulas and Complex Graphs Chandoo Jon Peltier Others General layout and look and feel
Major Fact Book Revision 8
Build New Pages 9
Data Tab 10
Process Tab 11
Formulas 12 SUMIFS COUNTIFS AVERAGEIFS VLOOKUP SUMPRODUCT INDEX and OFFSET SUMIFS COUNTIFS AVERAGEIFS VLOOKUP SUMPRODUCT INDEX and OFFSET
Report Tab 13
Access DB 14
Excel Connection to Access DB 15
Resources Edward Tufte ( –The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2001 Stephen Few ( –Show Me the Numbers, 2004 –Information Dashboard Design, 2006 –Now you see it, Purna Duggirala ( ) – Excel helphttp://chandoo.org/wp/ Jon Peltier ( – Excel templateshttp://peltiertech.com 16
Contact Information David Onder, Director of Assessment Alison Joseph, Business and Technology Applications Analyst Office of Institutional Planning and Effectiveness opie.wcu.edu, (828) Special thanks to Billy Hutchings (OIPE), Stephanie Virgo (former WCU employee) and John Bradsher (student employee) 17