1. Creating Dynamic Dashboards using Excel
Presenters
Mark Redfern
and
Whitney Turner, MBA
August 22nd, 2018
Data Science / Business Intelligence Society of Atlanta

2. I have done some, bad, bad things in the past!

3. Visualization Tools

4. What we will cover today.
Session #1
Up-front Planning
Best Practices
Context
Example Dashboards
Resources
Q/A
Session #2
Pivot Tables Overview

5. What we don’t have time to cover today.
Functions
Cell Formatting
Data Connections
Macros
We will be providing a link to this presentation at the end. We will provide you with several excel cheat sheets, YouTube video links, and website links with helpful downloads and tutorials.

6. Up-front Planning -Data Inventory/Data Map
Purpose
Metric/Data
Source/location
Refresh Frequency
Formatting/Data Type
Is this a KPI?
Show Trends
Business owner
Priority level
Notes
Data Inventory/Data Map
include:
Purpose (What are we trying to achieve?)
Metric/Data (Metric| data object | field identifier)
Source/location (Manual Pull, ODB connection, SQL file)
Refresh Frequency (Weekly, Monthly, 10th of each month)
Formatting/Data Type
Is this a KPI?
Show Trends
Business owner
Priority level
Notes

7. Up-front planning – Wireframes & Mockups

8. Best Practices - Design Principals
Mock-up a layout
Keep it on one page
Avoid nice to know information
Don’t clutter your dashboard
Limit chart junk
Avoid colored backgrounds or fills
Avoid trend lines & fancy formatting
Use only legends when they are necessary
Only use color for key information points
De-emphasize boarders and backgrounds
Remove gridlines
Avoid unnecessary data labels
Remove unnecessary axis labels when not required

9. Best Practices – Workbook Structure
Presentation Layer
All updates should be driven by raw data & transformation layer updates
Updates should only be performed using slicers or dropdowns
Dashboard
Presentation Layer
Transformation Layer
Pivot Tables
VLOOKUP
Transformation Layer
Settings & Formulas
Centralizing all settings allows for
faster workbook updates / changes
2. Insures consistency for updates /changes
Settings
&
Formulas
Raw Data
1. Don’t import files without transforming
2. Annotate you file with the data inventory info
Raw Data
Raw Data
Raw Data

10. Best Practice – Common Errors
Wrap every cell (within reason) in the presentation layer in an IFERROR() function:
#DIV/0
#REF
#N/A
=IFERROR([formula/cell reference], “-”) or
=IFERROR([formula/cell reference], “”)
=IFERROR([formula/cell reference], “(error)”)

11. Context – Do you know your audience?
Who is your audience and what do you need to show them?
What background information is relevant or essential?
Who is the audience or decision maker?
What do we know about them?
What biases does our audience have that might make them supportive of or resistant to our message?
What data is available that would strengthen our case?
Is our audience familiar with this data, or is it new?
The importance of context
Exploratory -v- Explanatory analysis - Why showing all of your research, analysis, and work is NOT a good idea.
You need to then answer these questions
Who is your audience? Internal or External? Do they know and Trust you?
What do you need them to know or do?
Campaign marketing spend
Quarterly sales & marketing MROI
marketing performance
What data is available to make your points / argument?
Top 5 KPIs
Recommended next steps
Potential opportunities or optimizations
Potential Risks

12. Context – What needs to be conveyed?
What data is available to make your points / argument?
Top KPIs
Recommended next steps
Potential opportunities or optimizations
Potential Risks
Where are the risks: what factors could weaken our case and do we need to proactively address them?
What would a successful outcome look like?
If you only had a limited amount of time or a single sentence to tell your audience what they needed to know, what would you say?
The importance of context
Exploratory -v- Explanatory analysis - Why showing all of your research, analysis, and work is NOT a good idea.
You need to then answer these questions
Who is your audience? Internal or External? Do they know and Trust you?
What do you need them to know or do?
Campaign marketing spend
Quarterly sales & marketing MROI
marketing performance
What data is available to make your points / argument?
Top 5 KPIs
Recommended next steps
Potential opportunities or optimizations
Potential Risks

13. Examples

14. Examples

15. Examples

16. Examples

17. Examples

18. Examples

19. Examples

20. Resources: Visualization Websites Excel Tutorials Excel Cheatsheets
Stephen few
PerceptualEdge.com
Alberto Cairo
TheFunctionalArt.com
Jonathan Schwabish
Policyviz.com
Jon Peltier
PeltierTech.com
Edward Tufte
EdwardTufte.com
Excel Tutorials
Mynda Treacy
MyOnlineTrainingHub.com
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Microsoft Excel 2013 Essentials
Excel Cheatsheets
MyOnlineTrainingHub Excel Overview
Excel Chart Recipe eBook
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Microsoft Excel 2013 Essentials

21. Microsoft for Hosting tonight’s Meetup!
Special Thanks to
Microsoft for Hosting tonight’s Meetup!
Whitney Turner, MBA
eXcelerateclasses.com
Mark Redfern
LinkedIn.com/in/MarkRedfern

22. Questions and Answers
All of tonight’s resources can be accessed here:

23. September’s DS/BI Atlanta Meetup
Wednesday, September 20th, Qubole.Com Sr. Architect Pradeep Reddy, from Qubole, will present the state of Data Science, followed by deep dive of an end-to-end real world machine learning use cases. We'll explore some of the best practices and challenges of big data operations.