WEEK 5 — CREATE AN INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD

To wrap up the course we created an interactive dashboard to show key metrics at a glance and help make informed business decisions quickly.

DASHBOARD DESIGN SLICERS DESIGN BEST PRACTICE

A dashboard should show the most important information A slicer allows you to filter one or more Choosing where to place your metrics and
on one screen. Choose a few key items to tell your story. PivotTables or PivotCharts at once. You can visualisations is an art, but there are some guidelines
use any fields in the data set. There is also to help.
a special type of slicer called a timeline
slicer that filters by date.  If most of your readers use a left-to-right
language, then they will probably start looking at
To create a slicer, click in the PivotTable or PivotChart and your dashboard from the top-left, move right, and
story. select Insert Slicer from the PivotTable/Chart Analyze then move down (like the letter Z). Position your
Ribbon. You can create as many slicers as you have fields. key metrics in the top row. This is called Z-pattern
design. There is a similar pattern called the F-
pattern. Both emphasise the top row being
Start your design by wireframing using pencil and paper, important.
markers and whiteboard or even sticky notes.  Group related items together.
 Use slicers or dropdown lists to allow your users
DASHBOARD LAYOUT On the Slicer Ribbon select from the style options to to interact with the dashboard to focus on and
Dashboards are usually laid out using a series of tiles, change the colours of your slicer or you can create a highlight the areas that are important to them.
these can be created by changing the colour of groups of custom style to match your dashboard by either  Move detailed metrics to a separate sheet so they
cells but using shapes can give you greater control over duplicating an existing style and modifying it or create a do not clutter the main dashboard. Use hyperlinks
where each element on the page lives. There are a wide new style. to allow users to move between the sheets.
variety of different shapes at Insert > Shapes.
Use Slicer Settings to display or hide the header and items
THEMES AND COLOURS with no data, among others. On the slicer ribbon, you can CODE SNIPPETS
With themes, you can change your dashboard colour also adjust the number of Sub RefreshAll()
scheme by selecting a different theme. However, themes columns in a slicer. ActiveWorkbook.RefreshAll
End Sub
can also change the font, which can affect the layout. Use Report Connections to connect the slicer to several
Instead, you can just change the colour scheme using the PivotTables. OR to only refresh PivotTables in the active sheet:
Colors dropdown on the Page Layout Ribbon.

HYPERLINKS LINKED IMAGES Sub RefreshPivotTables() 'Only refresh pivot tables

Dim pivotTable As PivotTable
You can use hyperlinks to link to a different place within an Some items, like SparkLines, cannot be put into For Each pivotTable In ActiveSheet.PivotTables
Excel workbook, allowing for easy navigation. You can link Shapes. Use Paste Special > Linked Picture to pivotTable.RefreshTable
to a cell reference or defined name. To create a hyperlink, show a live snapshot that behaves just like the Next
right-click > Link or Insert > Link. real thing. End Sub

Data Visualisation in Excel — Quick Reference Guide