In the following example we work through a real world example of a data visualization. We’ve chosen an example that involves Operations data – this is fairly non-domain specific so hopefully it can demonstrate some important points. The first, and most important point is that you have to define your audience.
We receive many questions about [...]

I attended beginning this week the Microsoft BI Conference in Seattle where Microsoft presented an interesting new product that might change the way you build your Excel dashboards in the future: "Gemini", an End-User Business Intelligence plug in for Excel.
End-User Business Intelligence has been around for quite a while with some of the most prominent [...]

Chandoo and Robert over at the PHD blog have a nice a 4 post series of posts about Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel.

Show only 10 items of a huge list, but give the user the chance to scroll down without having to go to the list of raw data.
Let the user choose how [...]

This blog post is the first in a series of blog post that features the winners of the 2008 Excel dashboard competition.
“A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”
—Stephen [...]

Before we go and review the 2008 Excel Dashboard Competition Winners I have to make you familiar with  the Dashboard Squint Test.
Software usability experts and web designer use a quite effective way to assess the organization of a web page or a user interface, the so called Squint Test. You squint your eyes and make [...]

Here the announcement of the Excel Dashboard Boot Camp hosted by the two experts Jon Peltier and Mike Alexander:
Microsoft MVPs Jon Peltier (Peltier Technical Services) and Mike Alexander (DataPig Technologies) are joining together to bring you our first annual Excel Dashboard and Visualization Boot Camp!

Every good discipline needs a missing link. Evolutionary biology had a missing link between humans and the ‘lower’ animals. Physics has a missing link between quantum mechanics and general relativity. The Information Visualization community discovered the Missing Link Between Information Visualization and Art.
Now we discovered the missing link in Excel Data Visualization.
As we can see [...]

After much deliberation and debate, we are pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Excel Dashboard Competition. We were impressed by many of the entries, and thanks to all of you who entered. It’s good to see MicroCharts being put to effective use, and adding value in such a variety of business scenarios and [...]

You have finished your great looking, very efficient Excel dashboard. Now, how do you share it? How do you make sure the users have a timely access to the latest update? This can be a serious issue, specially if you have a more tech oriented audience, and it must be addressed at the planning stage. [...]

This is the first of two twin posts where we’ll discuss the alpha and omega of Excel dashboards: data access and dashboard publication. These are two weak areas in Excel, and they should be approached carefully when planning for a new dashboard. Let’s start by reviewing the available data access options.
Copy / Pasting data
Are you [...]