Everybody already knows the gauge chart. You can use an Excel dashboard to track your company’s key performance metrics. There are certainly situations where “Current” would actually be the last point on the sparkline. In today’s article we cover template design using shapes.

Step 3: Pick Visualisations Choose a layout. Founded in 2007 by Eric T. Peterson, author of "Web Analytics Demystified", the company provides strategic guidance and tactical support to many of the best known companies in the world. Here is the classic speedometer, can not be absent from any dashboard so we don’t talk about it lengthily. Always in a hurry? - Trend Widget An Excel dashboard cannot be a standalone in-depth analysis tool, but it can provide a first-level dive into the data as a jumping off point for deeper analysis. Discover more examples! We have by-passed this problem with some VBA tricks. In this article we will share you how to use our lightweight free dashboard widgets to create great but simple and fast presentations using free toolkit.
In the example above, showing the past two years of trends by month, and then providing quarterly totals and comparisons, makes the most sense based on the planning cycle for the client. We have gotten this from the bottom of the toolbox. Yet, they seem pretty digestible in this format, don’t they? OK, what’s next? Copy and paste the configuration tables from the ‘Widgets Showcase’ onto Tab #2 and arrange them in a similar layout to the dashboard layout. As I wrote in my last post, I’ve been spending a lot of time building out Excel-based dashboard structures and processes of late.I also wrote a few weeks ago about calculating trend indicators.A natural follow-on to both of those posts is a look at the “metric widget” that I use as a basis for much of the information that goes on a dashboard. There is also some documentation that needs to go on the Presentation Layer (Tip #6): the date / date range for the report, definitions for any included metrics that are not clear to the casual user, and any important caveats/clarifications about the data. So far this wasn’t typical but there are many key performance indicators (KPI) can only be defined in %. • Install the add-in • Use Gauge charts to create awesome automated dashboards • Enjoy your work!
Creating an excel dashboard is not an easy task. We reach the needed result in a blink of an eye. Figure out how you’re going to display them. Is there inherent seasonality in the metric (signified by both the black and gray sparklines having similar spike/dip periods)?