Dashboard Design in Excel - Beyond the Basics

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Presenters:
Richard Hetherington, Temple University
Merima Babic, Temple University

Requirements:
Computer with necessary software provided to registrants
Workshop software provided: Excel 2016

Intended Audience/Prerequisites:
This session is intended for analysts with a good working knowledge of Excel, including chart development and writing formulas. Also, it is beneficial if attendees have prior exposure to any dash boarding tool. 
 
Description:
Institutional Research offices have a unique perspective on key university information and should therefore become a more involved strategic partner in identifying key reporting metrics. IR should not only become more involved in identifying these core metrics but should also steer efforts to define why these key metrics are critical, their directional significance, and how to put these metrics in front of university decision makers in a timely, succinct, and meaningful manner. While there are several dash boarding tools on the market, most require significant financial and IT resources which many IR shops may not have. In this session, we plan to provide the tools and techniques necessary to developing robust, interactive dashboards using Excel. While most IR practitioners use Excel, many are just skimming the surface with its available functionality. This session will cover much more than standard pivot charts and bar charts. The session will be structured as a hands on, example based workshop, covering, enhanced visualizations, multi-worksheet interactivity, integration with existing data extraction scripts and output files, criteria selection methods, dynamic conditional objects and formatting, year to year scalability, distribution methods and just enough VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) to add enhanced functionality and security to your dashboards. The topics covered in this session will not only provide the techniques necessary to develop dashboards, but will enhance one's Excel toolbox for the broad array of work performed in IR.
 
Intended Learning Outcomes:
Institutional Research offices have a unique perspective on key university information and should therefore become a more involved strategic partner in presenting key university metrics. While there are several dash boarding tools on the market, most require significant financial and IT resources which many IR shops may not have. In this session, we plan to provide the tools and techniques necessary to developing robust, interactive dashboards using Excel. This session will cover much more than standard pivot charts and bar charts, but rather, will provide a hands on, example based workshop, covering enhanced visualizations, multi-worksheet interactivity, integration with existing data extraction scripts and output files, criteria selection methods, dynamic conditional objects and formatting, year to year scalability, distribution methods and just enough VBA to add enhanced functionality and security.