Excel Dashboard

How to train your users to create their own Business Intelligence reports? #4 of 5: Sample Training Content

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In part #1, I wrote about why is it important to enable business users to create their own BI reports.

In part #2, I wrote about three pre-training preparations – 1. Data 2. Tool 3. Understanding Culture.

In part #3, I wrote about 1. User Experience 2. Trainer 3. Training Content.

In this post, I am going share sample training content that uses Excel 2010. Before I share sample content, here are some tips

1. use YOUR data!

2. Show them the end goal & then walk through the steps to get there

 

Here’s a sample training content for a 4 hour-long excel training session (divided into basics & advanced) including hands on lab time.

Here you go:

GOAL:

Excel analysis services business intelligence dashboardBASIC-I

  1. Open the Template
  2. Explore the Field List
  3. Explain the concept of “dimensions” & “measures”
  4. Create a Simple Pivot Table – Row Labels & Measures
  5. Add column labels & report filters

Excel Pivot Table SSAS Step 1

Basic-II

  1. Sorting
  2. Turning off grant totals
  3. Creating a hierarchy
  4. Changing the Pivot Table Design

Excel analysis services business intelligence dashboard step 2

 

Advanced-I

  1. Remove fields from Pivot Table
  2. Add more than one pivot table
  3. Add slicer
  4. Connect slicer with every pivot table

Excel analysis services business intelligence dashboard step 3

Advanced-II:

  1. Add Pivot Chart
  2. Add one more slicer
  3. Add hierarchy structure to pivot tables
  4. Add conditional formatting
  5. Format chart

Excel analysis services business intelligence dashboard step 4

Conclusion:

In this post, I shared a sample training content that uses Excel 2010.

Slicing/Dicing data in multiple Excel Pivot Tables with ONE slicer:

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Background:

This week I created a couple of Excel Dashboard’s for a project that I am working on. As a part of the that, I decided to include slicers for these Excel Dashboards. And the reason I did that was because data in multiple pivot tables needed to be sliced with one click. In this blog post, I’ll show you steps to connect an Excel slicer to multiple pivot tables:

Steps for Excel 2010:

1. Based on your requirements, decide if multiple items on a dashboard (excel sheet) need to be affected with one click

2. Now, for the purpose of this blog post, let’s assume that you have two Pivot Tables like shown below:

two excel reports slicer 1

Note: the Two Excel Pivot Tables are created by connecting to same cube. And the slicer comes from the same cube.

3. And what if you need to slice data in both pivot tables by one common slicer? Let’s say we want to slice the data in the two pivot tables that we have by Product Category – here’s what you do (assuming that the tables are related in your data source and slicing makes sense)

4. click on any of the pivot table and you’ll see PivotChart Tools in the toolbar

pivot table charts tools5. Switch to Analyze Tab & click on insert slicer & Select the field that you want as slicer & click OK

pivot table insert slicers6. you’ll see a slicer on your sheet now:

slicer on pivot tables

7. Let’s format the report to make it look better:

#1: move the slicer such that it does not overlap any of the pivot tables.

#2: In this case, I want to move the slicer to the top of the sheet and change the slicer to have 5 columns. Here’s how you can do that:

select the slicer > from the toolbar > slicer tools > column

slicer tools option excel

#3 I also changed the slicer style from the slicer tools to match its color palette with that of the Pivot Tables:

8. Note that the slicer is connected to just ONE pivot table. Let’s connect it to both pivot tables

9. From Slicer Tools options > Pivot Table connections > check all pivot tables that you want the slicer to be connected to:

pivot table connections excel

10. Done! Test your slicers, with one click you should be able to see that the data gets sliced in both pivot tables:

#1: Sliced by Bikes

excel pivot analysis data 1

#2: Sliced by Accessories

excel pivot analysis data 2That’s about it for this post. Your comments are very welcome!

Related Posts:

Comparing Slicers in Excel 2010 to Standard PivotTable Filters