Category: excel Dashboards

Excel Features to Create Dashboards ”; Previous Next You can create a dashboard in Excel using various features that help you make data visualization prominent, which is the main characteristic of any dashboard. You can show data in tables with conditional formatting to highlight the good and bad results, you can summarize the data in charts and PivotTables, you can add interactive controls, and you can define and manage KPIs and so on. In this chapter, you will get to know the most important Excel features that come handy when you are creating a dashboard. These features help you arrive at the dashboard elements that simplify complex data and provide visual impact on the current status or performance in real time. Excel Tables The most important component of any dashboard is its data. The data can be from a single source or multiple sources. The data might be limited or might span several rows. Excel tables are well suited to get the data into the workbook, in which you want to create the dashboard. There are several ways to import data into Excel, by establishing connections to various sources. This makes it possible to refresh the data in your workbook whenever the source data gets updated. You can name the Excel tables and use those names for referring your data in the dashboard. This would be easier than referring the range of data with cell references. These Excel tables are your working tables that contain the raw data. You can arrive at a summary of the analysis of data and portray the same in an Excel table that can be included as a part of a dashboard. Sparklines You can use Sparklines in your Excel tables to show trends over a period of time. Sparklines are mini charts that you can place in single cells. You can use line charts, column charts or win-loss charts to depict the trends based on your data. Conditional Formatting Conditional formatting is a big asset to highlight data in the tables. You can define the rules by which you can vary color scales, data bars and/or icon sets. You can either use the Excel defined rules or create your own rules, based on the applicability to your data. You will learn these conditional formatting techniques in the chapter ─ Conditional Formatting for Data Visualization. Excel Charts Excel charts are the most widely used data visualization components for dashboards. You can get the audience view the data patterns, comparisons and trends in data sets of any size strikingly adding color and styles. Excel has several built-in chart types such as line, bar, column, scatter, bubble, pie, doughnut, area, stock, surface and radar if you have Excel 2013. You will understand how to use these charts and the chart elements effectively in your dashboard in the chapter − Excel Charts for Dashboards. In addition to the above-mentioned chart types, there are other widely used chart types that come handy in representing certain data types. These are Waterfall Chart, Band Chart, Gantt chart, Thermometer Chart, Histogram, Pareto Chart, Funnel Chart, Box and Whisker Chart and Waffle Chart. You will learn about these charts in the chapter − Advanced Excel Charts for Dashboards. Excel Camera Once you create charts, you need to place them in your dashboard. If you want to make your dashboard dynamic, with the data getting refreshed each time the source data changes, which is the case with most of the dashboards, you would like to provide an interface between the charts in your dashboard and the data at the backend. You can achieve this with the Camera feature of Excel. Excel PivotTables When you have large data sets and you would like to summarize the results dynamically showing various facets of the analysis results, Excel PivotTables come handy to include in your dashboard. You can use either the Excel tables or the more powerful data tables in the data model to create PivotTables. The main differences between the two approaches are − Excel Tables Data Tables Data from only one table can be used to create PivotTable. Data from more than one table can be used to create PivotTable, defining relationships between the tables. When the tables increase in the no. of rows, the memory handling and storage will not be optimistic. Can handle huge data sets with thousands of rows of data with memory optimization and decreased file size. If you try to create a PivotTable with more than one Excel table, you will be prompted to create relationship and the tables with the relationship get added to the data model. You will learn about PivotTables in the chapter − Excel PivotTables for Dashboards. If you have data in the Data Model of your workbook, you can create Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts that span data across multiple data tables. You will learn about these in the chapter − Excel Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts for Dashboards. Dynamic Dashboard Elements with Interactive Controls You can make your dashboard elements interactive with easy to use controls such as scrollbars, radio buttons, checkboxes and dynamic labels. You will learn more about these in the chapter − Interactive Controls in Excel Dashboards. Scrollbars Radio Buttons Checkboxes Excel Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts Excel Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts are helpful to summarize data from multiple resources, by building a memory optimized Data Model in the workbook. The Data Tables in the Data Model can run through several thousands of dynamic data enabling summarization with less effort and time. You will learn about the usage of Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts in dashboards in the chapter – Excel Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts for Dashboards. Excel Data Model Excel Power PivotTable and Power PivotChart Excel Power View Reports Excel Power View Reports provide interactive data visualization of large data sets bringing out the power of Data Model and interactive nature of dynamic Power View visualizations. You will learn about how to use Power

Discuss Excel Dashboards ”; Previous Next Dashboards are popular visual displays of data, mostly comprising of charts / graphs with striking attention seeking components. There are various tools available in the market to create dashboards. If you are a Microsoft Office user with reasonably good mastery on Excel, then creating dashboards in Excel is a wise decision. This is because Microsoft has introduced several powerful features in Excel, making your job of handling large datasets from various data sources simple and less tiresome. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Excel features effectively in dashboards. They include features that can make a dashboard dynamic and interactive. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards – Power View Reports ”; Previous Next Excel Power View enables interactive data visualization that encourages intuitive ad-hoc data exploration. The data visualizations are versatile and dynamic, thus facilitating ease of data display with a single Power View report. You can handle large data sets spanning several thousands of rows on the fly switching from one visualization to another, drilling up and drilling down the data and displaying the essence of the data. Power View reports are based the Data Model that can be termed as the Power View Database and that optimizes the memory enabling faster computations and displays of data. A typical Data Model will be as shown below. In this chapter, you will understand the salient features of Power View reports that you can incorporate in your dashboard. Power View Visualizations Power View provides various types of data visualizations − Table Table visualization is the simplest and default visualization. If you want to create any other visualization, first table will be created that you need to convert to the required visualization by Switch Visualization options. Matrix Card Charts Power View has following chart types in visualizations − Line Chart Bar Chart Column Chart Scatter Chart Bubble Chart Pie Chart Line Chart Bar Chart Column Chart Scatter Chart and Bubble Chart Pie Chart Map Map with Pie Charts Combination of Power View Visualizations Power View visualizations unlike Excel charts are powerful as they can be displayed as combination with each one depicting and/or highlighting significant results. For example, you can have three visualizations in Power View − Table visualization − displaying Country, Medal and Medal Count. Stacked Column chart visualization − displaying Country, Gender and Medal Count. Pie chart visualization − displaying Medal, Gender and Medal Count. Interactive Nature of Charts in Power View Visualizations Suppose you click on a Pie slice in the above Power View. You will observe the following − The Pie slice that is clicked will be highlighted while the rest of the Pie slices will get dimmed. The Table will display only the data corresponding to the highlighted slice. The Clustered column will highlight the data corresponding to the highlighted slice and the rest of the chart will get dimmed. This feature helps you to enable your audience viewing results from large data sets to explore the significant data points. Slicers in Power View You can use common Slicers in Power View to filter the data that is displayed by all the visualizations in Power View. For example, in the following Power View, you have 2 visualizations − Stacked Bar chart displaying Medal Count by Country and Medal. Stacked Column chart displaying Medal Count by Sport and Medal. Suppose you have two Slicers – one for Gender and one for Season, the data in both the charts will get filtered to the selected fields in the Slicers. Tiles in Power View In Power View, Tiles help you to pick one data point of a field and view the corresponding values. Tiles can be used in Table, Matrix, Card, Stacked Bar chart and Map visualizations. Tiles in Table visualization Tiles in Matrix visualization Tiles in Card visualization Tiles in Stacked Bar Chart visualization Tiles in Map visualization Tiles can be used with a combination of visualizations also. You can use the interactive nature of the charts in such visualizations also. Power View Reports You can produce aesthetic Power View reports that you can include in your dashboard. This could be done by choosing a suitable background, choosing the font, font size, color scales, etc. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards – PivotTables ”; Previous Next If you have your data in a single Excel table, you can summarize the data in the way that is required using Excel PivotTables. A PivotTable is an extremely powerful tool that you can use to slice and dice data. You can track, analyze hundreds of thousands of data points with a compact table that can be changed dynamically to enable you to find the different perspectives of the data. It is a simple tool to use, yet powerful. Excel gives you a more powerful way of creating a PivotTable from multiple tables, different data sources and external data sources. It is named as Power PivotTable that works on its database known as Data Model. You will get to know about Power PivotTable and other Excel power tools such as Power PivotChart and Power View Reports in other chapters. PivotTables, Power PivotTables, Power PivotCharts and Power View Reports come handy to display summarized results from big data sets on your dashboard. You can get mastery on the normal PivotTable before you venture into the power tools. Creating a PivotTable You can create a PivotTable either from a range of data or from an Excel table. In both the cases, the first row of the data should contain the headers for the columns. You can start with an empty PivotTable and construct it from scratch or make use of Excel Recommended PivotTables command to preview the possible customized PivotTables for your data and choose one that suits your purpose. In either case, you can modify a PivotTable on the fly to get insights into the different aspects of the data at hand. Consider the following data range that contains the sales data for each Salesperson, in each Region and in the months of January, February and March − To create a PivotTable from this data range, do the following − Ensure that the first row has headers. You need headers because they will be the field names in your PivotTable. Name the data range as SalesData_Range. Click on the data range − SalesData_Range. Click on the INSERT tab on the Ribbon. Click on PivotTable in the Tables group. Create PivotTable dialog box appears. As you can observe, in Create PivotTable dialog box, under Choose the data that you want to analyze, you can either select a Table or Range from the current workbook or use an external data source. Hence, you can use the same steps to create a PivotTable form either a Range or Table. Click on Select a table or range. In the Table/Range box, type the range name − SalesData_Range. Click on New Worksheet under Choose where you want the PivotTable report to be placed. You can also observe that you can choose to analyze multiple tables, by adding this data range to Data Model. Data Model is Excel Power Pivot database. Click the OK button. A new worksheet will get inserted into your workbook. The new worksheet contains an empty PivotTable. Name the worksheet − Range-PivotTable. As you can observe, PivotTable Fields list appears on the right side of the worksheet, containing the header names of the columns in the data range. Further, on the Ribbon, PivotTable Tools − ANALYZE and DESIGN appear. You need to select PivotTable fields based on what data you want to display. By placing the fields in appropriate areas, you can obtain the desired layout for the data. For example to summarize the order amount salesperson-wise for the months − January, February and March, you can do the following − Click on the field Salesperson in the PivotTable Fields list and drag it to ROWS area. Click on the field Month in the PivotTable Fields list and drag that also to ROWS area. Click on Order Amount and drag it to ∑ VALUES area. Your PivotTable is ready. You can change the layout of the PivotTable by just dragging the fields across the areas. You can select / deselect fields in the PivotTable Fields list to choose the data you want to display. Filtering Data in PivotTable If you are required to focus on a subset of your PivotTable data, you can filter the data in the PivotTable based on a subset of the values of one or more fields. For example in the above example, you can filter the data based on the Range field so that you can display data only for the selected Region(s). There are several ways to filter data in a PivotTable − Filtering using Report Filters. Filtering using Slicers. Filtering data manually. Filtering using Label Filters. Filtering using Value Filters. Filtering using Date Filters. Filtering using Top 10 Filter. Filtering using Timeline. You will get to know the usage of Report Filters in this section and Slicers in the next section. For other filtering options, refer to the Excel PivotTables tutorial. You can assign a Filter to one of the fields so that you can dynamically change the PivotTable based on the values of that field. Drag the field Region to FILTERS area. Drag the field Salesperson to ROWS area. Drag the field Month to COLUMNS area. Drag the field Order Amount to ∑ VALUES area. The Filter with the label as Region appears above the PivotTable (in case you do not have empty rows above your PivotTable, PivotTable gets pushed down to make space for the Filter). As you can observe, Salesperson values appear in rows. Month values appear in columns. Region Filter appears on the top with default selected as ALL. Summarizing value is Sum of Order Amount. Sum of Order Amount Salesperson-wise appears in the column Grand Total. Sum of Order Amount Month-wise appears in the row Grand Total. Click on the arrow in the Region Filter. Dropdown list with the values of the field Region appears. Check the box Select Multiple Items. Check boxes will appear for all the values. By default, all the boxes are checked. Uncheck the box (All).

Key Performance Indicators ”; Previous Next Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measurements for assessing what is achieved against the set goals/ targets /business objectives. In dashboards, KPIs necessarily will have a position to display visually where a person / department / organization stands currently compared to where it is supposed to be. Examples of KPIs include the following − Sales department of an organization might use a KPI to measure monthly gross profit against projected gross profit. Accounting department might measure monthly expenditures against revenue to evaluate costs. Human resources department might measure quarterly employee turnover. Business professionals frequently use KPIs that are grouped together in a business scorecard to obtain a quick and accurate historical summary of business success or to identify trends. Dashboards either viewed publicly or selectively present continuously monitored KPIs and hence are chosen as the best monitoring and reporting tools. Components of a KPI A KPI essentially contains three components − Base Value Target Value / Goal Status Though it is the Status that one would be interested in, the Base Value and Target Value are also equally important as a KPI need not be static and can undergo changes as the time proceeds. In Excel, Base Value, Target Value and Status are defined as given in the following sections. Base Value A Base Value is defined by a calculated field that resolves to a value. The calculated field represents the current value for the item in that row of the Table or Matrix. E.g. aggregate of sales, profit for a given period, etc. Target Value A Target Value (or Goal) is defined by a calculated field that resolves to a value, or by an absolute value. It is the value against which the current value is evaluated. This could be one of the following − A fixed number that is the goal all the rows should achieve. E.g. Sales target for all the salespersons. A calculated field that might have a different goal for each row. E.g. Budget (calculated field), department-wise in an organization. Status Thresholds and Status Status is the visual indicator of the value. Excel provide different ways of visualizing Status as against Target Value. You can use Bullet chart to visualize KPIs. You can illustrate the status thresholds by shaded regions of a column and the status as a column superimposed on the status thresholds. You can define and visualize KPIs in Power View also. Defining KPIs in Excel To define a KPI, you need have the following in place − Base Value Target Value Status Thresholds (e.g. Poor, Good, Excellent) For example, to define a KPI to monitor sales performance, you need to do the following − Identify the cell(s) that contain the calculated values of total sales. This is for Base Value. Define Target Value that can be absolute or varying. Define the Status thresholds that help you visualize the Status. Visualizing KPIs with Bullet Charts You can visualize KPIs with Bullet charts, in which the following will be clearly depicted. The Target Status Thresholds The Value (Status) Visualizing KPIs with Power View You can visualize KPIs that are defined in Power View using icons. You can also produce an aesthetic report in Power View with the KPIs that can be included in your dashboard. As you can observe, in the Power View you could portray the results as follows − Table visualization with icons for displaying KPI status. 100% Stacked Bar Chart visualization depicting the percentage achieved with respect to the Goal. You can also notice that it gives a clear comparison of the performance of all the Salespersons. Card visualization depicting the KPI status of the Salespersons along with the Region they belong to. You can interactively scroll through the Tiles to display results for different Regions that would give scope to assess performance region-wise also. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards Tutorial PDF Version Quick Guide Resources Job Search Discussion Dashboards are popular visual displays of data, mostly comprising of charts / graphs with striking attention seeking components. There are various tools available in the market to create dashboards. If you are a Microsoft Office user with reasonably good mastery on Excel, then creating dashboards in Excel is a wise decision. This is because Microsoft has introduced several powerful features in Excel, making your job of handling large datasets from various data sources simple and less tiresome. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Excel features effectively in dashboards. They include features that can make a dashboard dynamic and interactive. Audience This tutorial has been designed for all those readers who depend heavily on MS-Excel to prepare charts, tables, and professional reports that involve complex data. It will help all those readers who use MS-Excel regularly to analyze data. Once you get an understanding of the several Excel features that come handy in creating Excel dashboards, creating dashboards will become a trivial task for you. Prerequisites Before proceeding with this tutorial, the reader should have a preliminary understanding of Excel workbooks, Excel charts, Excel PivotTables, Excel Data Model, Excel Power PivotTables and Power PivotCharts and Excel Power View reports. All these topics are available as full-fledged tutorials in our tutorials library. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards – Useful Resources ”; Previous Next The following resources contain additional information on Excel Dashboards. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this topic. Useful Video Courses Excel Dashboard Crash Course Featured 64 Lectures 3.5 hours Yoda Learning More Detail Power BI (Part I): Building Interactive Dashboards 25 Lectures 1 hours Lenny Wu More Detail 2021 TOP MS EXCEL Templates and Dashboards with applications 15 Lectures 1 hours Smarter Academy More Detail Excel Pivot Tables and Dashboard: Simple & Quick Course! Most Popular 7 Lectures 58 mins Praharsh Chaubey More Detail Excel for Everyone Best Seller 16 Lectures 1 hours Ritu Arora More Detail Excel Data Analysis Course with Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts Most Popular 52 Lectures 3.5 hours Nasiru Musa More Detail Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards – Advanced Excel Charts ”; Previous Next You are aware that charts are useful in conveying you data message visually. In addition to the chart types that are available in Excel, there are some widely used application charts that became popular. Some of these are also included in Excel 2016. In case you are using Excel 2013 or earlier versions, please refer to the tutorial – Advanced Excel Charts to learn about these charts and how to create them with the built-in chart types. Types of Advanced Excel Charts Following advanced Excel chart types will come handy to include in your dashboards − Waterfall Chart Waterfall charts are ideal for showing how you have arrived at a net value such as net income, by breaking down the cumulative effect of positive and negative contributions. Band Chart Band chart is suitable to represent data across a time period graphically, confiding each data point to a defined interval. For example, customer survey results of a product from different regions. Gantt Chart A Gantt chart is a chart in which a series of horizontal lines shows the amount of work done in certain periods of time in relation to the amount of work planned for those periods. Thermometer Chart When you have to represent a target value and an actual value, you can emphatically show these values with a Thermometer chart. Gauge Chart A Gauge Chart shows the minimum, the maximum and the current value depicting how far from the maximum you are. Bullet Chart Bullet chart can be used to compare a measure to one or more related measures and relate the measure to defined quantitative ranges that declare its qualitative state, for example, good, satisfactory and poor. You can use Bullet chart to display KPIs also. Funnel Chart Funnel chart is used to visualize the progressive reduction of data as it passes from one phase to another. E.g. Sales Pipeline. Waffle Chart Waffle chart is a good choice to display work progress as percentage of completion, goal achieved vs Target, etc. Heat Map A Heat Map is a visual representation of data in a Table to highlight the data points of significance. Step Chart If you have to display the changes that occur at irregular intervals that remain constant between changes, Step chart is useful. Box and Whisker Chart Box and Whisker charts are commonly used in statistical analysis. For example, you can use a Box and Whisker chart to compare experimental results or competitive exam results. Histogram A Histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution of numerical data and is widely used in Statistical Analysis. Pareto Chart Pareto chart is another chart widely used in Statistical Analysis for decision making. It represents the Pareto analysis, also called 80/20 Rule, meaning that 80% of results are due to 20% of causes. Displaying Quarterly Performance with Bullet Charts Suppose you have to display the performance of the sales team quarterly on the dashboard. The data can be as given below. You can display this information on the dashboard using Bullet chart as follows − As you can observe, this occupies less space, yet conveys a lot of information. Displaying Profit % Region-Wise with Waffle Charts Suppose you have to display the Profit % for the regions − East, North, South and West. You can display this information emphatically on your dashboard with Waffle charts as shown below. This display not only depicts the values, but also a good comparison. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Excel Dashboards – Quick Guide ”; Previous Next Excel Dashboards – Introduction For those who are new to dashboards, it would be ideal to get an understanding of the dashboards first. In this chapter, you will get to know the definition of dashboard, how it got its name, how they became popular in IT, key metrics, benefits of dashboards, types of dashboards, dashboard data and formats and live data on dashboards. In information technology, a dashboard is an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s or department’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance. Dashboards take their name from automobile dashboards. Under the hood of your vehicle, there may be hundreds of processes that impact the performance of your vehicle. Your dashboard summarizes these events using visualizations so that you have the peace of mind to concentrate on safely operating your vehicle. In a similar way, business dashboards are used to view and/or monitor the organization’s performance with ease. The idea of digital dashboards emerged from the study of decision support systems in the 1970s. Business dashboards were first developed in the 1980s, but due to the problems with data refreshing and handling, they were put on the shelf. In the 1990s, the information age quickened pace and data warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP) allowed dashboards to function adequately. However, the use of dashboards did not become popular until the rise of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the introduction of Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton”s Balanced Scorecard. Today, the use of dashboards forms an important part of decision making. In today’s business environment, the tendency is towards Big Data. Managing and extracting real value from all that data is the key for modern business success. A welldesigned dashboard is a remarkable information management tool. Dashboard – Definition Stephen Few has defined a dashboard as “a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives which fits entirely on a single computer screen so it can be monitored at a glance”. In the present terms, a dashboard can be defined as a data visualization tool that displays the current status of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) simplifying complex data sets to provide users with at a glance awareness of current performance. Dashboards consolidate and arrange numbers and metrics on a single screen. They can be tailored for a specific role and display metrics of a department or an organization on the whole. Dashboards can be static for a one-time view, or dynamic showing the consolidated results of the data changes behind the screen. They can also be made interactive to display the various segments of large data on a single screen. Key Metrics for Dashboard The core of the dashboard lies in the key metrics required for monitoring. Thus, based on whether the dashboard is for an organization on the whole or for a department such as sales, finance, human resources, production, etc. the key metrics that are required for display vary. Further, the key metrics for a dashboard also depend on the role of the recipients (audience). For example, Executive (CEO, CIO, etc.), Operations Manager, Sales Head, Sales Manager, etc. This is due to the fact that the primary goal of a dashboard in to enable data visualization for decision making. The success of a dashboard often depends on the metrics that were chosen for monitoring. For example, Key Performance Indicators, Balanced Scorecards and Sales Performance Figures could be the content appropriate in business dashboards. Dashboard Benefits Dashboards allow managers to monitor the contribution of the various departments in the organization. To monitor the organization’s overall performance, dashboards allow you to capture and report specific data points from each of the departments in the organization, providing a snapshot of current performance and a comparison with earlier performance. Benefits of dashboards include the following − Visual presentation of performance measures. Ability to identify and correct negative trends. Measurement of efficiencies/inefficiencies. Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends. Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected data. Alignment of strategies and organizational goals. Instant visibility of all systems in total. Quick identification of data outliers and correlations. Time saving with the comprehensive data visualization as compared to running multiple reports. Types of Dashboards Dashboards can be categorized based on their utility as follows − Strategic Dashboards Analytical Dashboards Operational Dashboards Informational Dashboards Strategic Dashboards Strategic dashboards support managers at any level in an organization for decision making. They provide the snapshot of data, displaying the health and opportunities of the business, focusing on the high level measures of performance and forecasts. Strategic dashboards require to have periodic and static snapshots of data (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually). They need not be constantly changing from one moment to the next and require an update at the specified intervals of time. They portray only the high level data not necessarily giving the details. They can be interactive to facilitate comparisons and different views in case of large data sets at the click of a button. But, it is not necessary to provide more interactive features in these dashboards. The following screenshot shows an example of an executive dashboard, displaying goals and progress. Analytical Dashboards Analytical dashboards include more context, comparisons, and history. They focus on the various facets of data required for analysis. Analytical dashboards typically support interactions with the data, such as drilling down into the underlying details and hence should be interactive. Examples of analytical dashboards include Finance Management dashboard and Sales Management dashboard. Operational Dashboards Operational dashboards are for constant monitoring of operations. They are often designed differently from strategic or analytical dashboards and focus on monitoring of activities and events that are constantly changing and might require attention and response at a moment”s notice. Thus, operational dashboards require

Excel Dashboards – Introduction ”; Previous Next For those who are new to dashboards, it would be ideal to get an understanding of the dashboards first. In this chapter, you will get to know the definition of dashboard, how it got its name, how they became popular in IT, key metrics, benefits of dashboards, types of dashboards, dashboard data and formats and live data on dashboards. In information technology, a dashboard is an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s or department’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance. Dashboards take their name from automobile dashboards. Under the hood of your vehicle, there may be hundreds of processes that impact the performance of your vehicle. Your dashboard summarizes these events using visualizations so that you have the peace of mind to concentrate on safely operating your vehicle. In a similar way, business dashboards are used to view and/or monitor the organization’s performance with ease. The idea of digital dashboards emerged from the study of decision support systems in the 1970s. Business dashboards were first developed in the 1980s, but due to the problems with data refreshing and handling, they were put on the shelf. In the 1990s, the information age quickened pace and data warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP) allowed dashboards to function adequately. However, the use of dashboards did not become popular until the rise of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the introduction of Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton”s Balanced Scorecard. Today, the use of dashboards forms an important part of decision making. In today’s business environment, the tendency is towards Big Data. Managing and extracting real value from all that data is the key for modern business success. A welldesigned dashboard is a remarkable information management tool. Dashboard – Definition Stephen Few has defined a dashboard as “a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives which fits entirely on a single computer screen so it can be monitored at a glance”. In the present terms, a dashboard can be defined as a data visualization tool that displays the current status of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) simplifying complex data sets to provide users with at a glance awareness of current performance. Dashboards consolidate and arrange numbers and metrics on a single screen. They can be tailored for a specific role and display metrics of a department or an organization on the whole. Dashboards can be static for a one-time view, or dynamic showing the consolidated results of the data changes behind the screen. They can also be made interactive to display the various segments of large data on a single screen. Key Metrics for Dashboard The core of the dashboard lies in the key metrics required for monitoring. Thus, based on whether the dashboard is for an organization on the whole or for a department such as sales, finance, human resources, production, etc. the key metrics that are required for display vary. Further, the key metrics for a dashboard also depend on the role of the recipients (audience). For example, Executive (CEO, CIO, etc.), Operations Manager, Sales Head, Sales Manager, etc. This is due to the fact that the primary goal of a dashboard in to enable data visualization for decision making. The success of a dashboard often depends on the metrics that were chosen for monitoring. For example, Key Performance Indicators, Balanced Scorecards and Sales Performance Figures could be the content appropriate in business dashboards. Dashboard Benefits Dashboards allow managers to monitor the contribution of the various departments in the organization. To monitor the organization’s overall performance, dashboards allow you to capture and report specific data points from each of the departments in the organization, providing a snapshot of current performance and a comparison with earlier performance. Benefits of dashboards include the following − Visual presentation of performance measures. Ability to identify and correct negative trends. Measurement of efficiencies/inefficiencies. Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends. Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected data. Alignment of strategies and organizational goals. Instant visibility of all systems in total. Quick identification of data outliers and correlations. Time saving with the comprehensive data visualization as compared to running multiple reports. Types of Dashboards Dashboards can be categorized based on their utility as follows − Strategic Dashboards Analytical Dashboards Operational Dashboards Informational Dashboards Strategic Dashboards Strategic dashboards support managers at any level in an organization for decision making. They provide the snapshot of data, displaying the health and opportunities of the business, focusing on the high level measures of performance and forecasts. Strategic dashboards require to have periodic and static snapshots of data (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually). They need not be constantly changing from one moment to the next and require an update at the specified intervals of time. They portray only the high level data not necessarily giving the details. They can be interactive to facilitate comparisons and different views in case of large data sets at the click of a button. But, it is not necessary to provide more interactive features in these dashboards. The following screenshot shows an example of an executive dashboard, displaying goals and progress. Analytical Dashboards Analytical dashboards include more context, comparisons, and history. They focus on the various facets of data required for analysis. Analytical dashboards typically support interactions with the data, such as drilling down into the underlying details and hence should be interactive. Examples of analytical dashboards include Finance Management dashboard and Sales Management dashboard. Operational Dashboards Operational dashboards are for constant monitoring of operations. They are often designed differently from strategic or analytical dashboards and focus on monitoring of activities and events that are constantly changing and might require attention and response at a moment”s notice. Thus, operational dashboards require live and up to date