Dashboard Planning
Before creating a dashboard, decide:
- Who will use it?
- What decisions should it support?
- Which KPIs are important?
- Which charts are required?
- Which filters are needed?
- What data source will be used?
Example — Sales Dashboard
Audience: Sales Manager
Questions:
- How much did we sell?
- Which product sold the most?
- Which city generated the most sales?
- Which employee performed best?
- How are sales changing over time?
Preparing Dashboard Data
Dashboard data should be:
- Clean
- Consistent
- Structured
- Free from unnecessary duplicates
- Correctly formatted
- Properly typed
An Excel Table is often useful as the source.
Practice
Prepare a clean sales table containing:
Order ID, Date, Employee, City, Product, Category, Quantity, Sales