I have to build an analytic dashboard with Excel, and would like to know whether there is any chart library you would recommend.
The charts should be attractive and easy to use by standard users.
I've tried Microcharts, and they look very promising, but I'd like to evaluate more options before reaching a decision.
Thanks a lot.
If you are looking for custom charts in Excel, two resources that I turn to first are:
Jon Peltier of Peltier Technical Services
Chandoo of Pointy Haired Dilbert
For dashboards, specifically I would recommend the six part series by Robert "Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel" (Robert also has a blog, Clearly and Simply, that has great content and a list of other sites that you may find useful under the sidebar "Blogs and Links")
For the theory behind dashboards, Stephen Few has a book "Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data" that goes into detail on best practices. He also wrote and article about dashboards focusing on good vs. bad designs.
You may also consider taking a look at Tableau if you want the end users/decision makers making their own dashboards.
Related
How can I add a lot more details to each process step of a Visio process diagram e.g. an (Excel) table?
For all kind of purposes I have to draw process diagrams. Visio is one of the best tools I know in this direction, but it lacks (or I don't know), if (a lot) more details should be added to a process step.
I've asked countless people about the best approach, but till now I only heard about the following, and non of them is really good:
Use index numbers for process steps and then embed the Visio process diagram into word. Reference the process steps by index number and describe it in detail. (disadvantage: having multiple documents, if changes are made changes need to be reflected in multiple documents what is time-consuming).
Don't use Visio at all and draw a process diagram in Excel. Excel is perfect for adding a description to a simpler diagram, right next to the process steps. (disadvantage: only possible for simpler workflow diagrams, Excel is not a process drawing tool)
Link process steps to other sub-process diagrams. (disadvantage: everything is spread into a lot areas and a detail grade of a table is still not really possible to attach it)
I can't believe in the year 2017 this is still a problem and hundert of thousands of people must have this challenge, so I'm quite sure I must be overlooking something.
Is it for example possible to embed an Excel diagram into a Visio document and link from the process steps to a specific row of this table (auto-referencing/-sorting in the best case)? If this is the best practice how to print this on paper after creation?
A research on the web shows me I'm not alone and people doing all kind of hacks to get it done, but none of these looks is looking very practical. In the worst case I can live with a solution which is basically only working in a digital document and I can print it separately in two steps.
Any help would be very welcome because it really bugs me to struggle over this simple barrier my feeling tells me that there must be a much better solution and I'm overlooking something. I'm also willing to use another tool than Visio if this is possible with it in a practical way.
As often, as soon as posted (after long research) I found a possible approach:
MS Blog: https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/05/01/automatically-create-process-diagrams-in-visio-from-excel-data/?eu=true
Alternate Description: http://www.free-power-point-templates.com/articles/how-to-automatically-create-process-diagrams-in-visio-using-excel-data/
Youtube Video-Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6_vop2kHCg
Alternate (Visio only) approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=432EvYZs26Y
I'm still more than open to better ideas and approaches. If there is a simpler better way todo it, please post it here. It would be also interesting to go the Excel/Visio route in the opposite direction. Manage all data in Visio and beeing apple to export it excel in a nice way.
Bonus (adding/connecting Data/Excel to a Visio Diagram): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxYu78sOxSY
I have some stuff to do in SharePoint for my departure, but i am really overhelmed by the features and i don't get a right overview what i can do with which feature (e.g. Excel Services, Performance Point, Dashboard, Chart Controls, ...).
My first problem: I should make some kind of customer satisfaction monitoring. E.g. after each project with the customer, he should fill out some interview about his satisfaction with the results. Then there should be a graphic in sharepoint which monitors the increase or decrease of customer satisfaction. How could i do a table (or list) which should hold scores (from 1-5) for each question and calculate a average score for each date when the customer filled out a interview form.
I am a real beginner with sharepoint. I am reading some books at the moment (but some of them for sharepoint 2007 and we are using sharepoint 2010). I tried to google it but i could not find a real clear answere or howto.
While you said you are a beginner.I will vote for an Excel Dashboard ( Web Based ).
You can pull the data in excel and draw a chart ( may be bar graph over months ) and then put this excel in SP document library to render a Web Excel based dashboard.
Easiest and scalable.
I would suggest creating a SharePoint survey. You can set up the questions in the manner you described and I believe there's a "overview" view that displays the results graphically. You could also display the graphics using something like the Bamboo Poll web part (http://store.bamboosolutions.com/sharepoint-poll-web-part.aspx).
Here's some info on creating a survey: http://blog.fpweb.net/creating-adding-to-and-modifying-a-sharepoint-survey/
Here's another good article on creating simple web parts to display your results:
https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/pages/create-a-polling-web-part-with-sharepoint-designer-and-the-dvwp.aspx
We (my company) runs a website which have lots of data recorded like user registration, visits, clicks, what the stuff they post etc etc but so far we don't have a tool to find out how to monitor entire thing or how to find patterns in it so that we can understand what kind of information we can get from it? So that Mgmt can take decisions based on it. In short, the people do at Amazon or Google based on data they retrieve, we want a similar thing.
Now, after the intro, I would like to know what technology could it be called;is it Data Mining,Machine Learning or what? Where should we start to convert meaningless data into useful Information?
I think what you need enters in the "realm" of: parsing data, creating graphs, showing statistics about some elements, etc.
There is no "easy" answer, I can only answer parts of your question.
There are no premade magical analytical tools, big companies have their own backend tools tunned to parse the large amounts of data and spit out data summaries that are then used to build graphs or for statistical analysis.
I think the domain you are searching for is statistical data analysis. But there are many parts that go together here.
Best advice I can give you is to set up specific goals for you analysis and then try to see what is the best solution, you question is too open.
ie. if you are interested in visits/clicks/website related statistics Google Analytics is a great tool, and very easy to use.
I hope this isn't too off topic for programming, but I'm sure lots of you would like more information when dealing with clients or managers on this topic.
I'm looking for actual usability testing & research into opening browser links in a new window.
I'm aware of all the reasons why it's a bad idea, but that's not what I'm looking for.
I'm also not looking for 'Jakob Nielson Says so', that won't cut it with my audience.
Cheers.
Murray.
If you need to back up every design decision that you make with a relevant usability study or research paper, you won't be able to get much done.
If you've worn out Jacob Nielson, you could try Johan Petersson
http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/03/target-blank/
When dealing with your type of audience who just don't get it, the following has some good points: http://000fff.org/design-discussion-principles-how-to-get-your-client-to-love-your-design/
It's important to look at the goals of your manager or client who wants you to implement the "open in new window" functionality; they are not stupid, they are probably trying to e.g. keep users on the original site - if you gently point out the fact that the new window doesn't have the back button enabled in all(?) browsers such that it prevents users navigating back to your site, they might come around.
If not, and they have greater authority over the design, you'll have to go with their decision - it could be reversed later if you can show a real world example of it leading the user astray, or if your stats show that the user doesn't return after a new-window exit.
Cracking open "Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines", I see a few studies that could help you. Section "7.1: Provide Navigational Options" cites several sources, which I've copied below. It should be noted however that the strength of the findings was rated only 2 out of 5.
The book itself is free (funded by US tax dollars) and available here: http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/
Detweiler, M.C. & Omanson, R.C. (1996). Ameritech Web Page User
Interface Standards and Design Guidelines. Ameritech (now SBC).
Lynch, P.J. & Horton, S. (2002). Web Style Guide (2nd Edition). New
Haven, CO: Yale University Press. Retrieved November 2005, from
http://www.webstyleguide.com/ index.html?/contents.html.
Spool, J.M., Scanlon, T., Schroeder, W., Snyder, C., & DeAngelo, T.
(1997). Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide. North Andover, MA:
User Interface Engineering.
Zimmerman, D.E., Slater, M., & Kendall, P. (2001). Risk communication
and a usability case study: Implications for Web site design.
Proceedings of the IEEE International Professional Communication
Conference, 445-452.
Google was unable to provide me with any research results related to opening browser links in a new window.
I would assume that the answer depends on the context and scenarios. For instance, when browsing the Washington Post online, I like the linearity of the browsing experience with link replacing the content of the current window, but when using Google Docs, I like that the main page opens a new window whenever I choose to create a new document or open an existing document.
You may want to consider convincing the client to perform usability testing to guide the decision.
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We are trying to implement SCRUM with the Microsoft SharePoint Online. Although we can use tasks and issue tracker to suit SPRINTS and iterations and system testing, we are using an excel speadsheet to produce the burndown chart. However, we have to extract all the tasks first, reformat the data, the feed in the chart values. Does anyone have a quicker way?
We use SharePoint custom lists to help us implement scrum. It's far from perfect, but allows for a lot of flexibility.
What we do is extend the tasks list to include a sprint number (really a lookup to another list), product backlog (another lookup), estimated effort, and estimated time to complete columns (ETC-01 through ETC-10 - we do one or two week sprints). We also have a field to flag whether the row is capacity data or not (one of these rows per sprint per person).
Then we have several views, but one primary view which shows a grouping by "is capacity data" followed by "assigned to". We also total those ETC values. So our summary view can give us a quick look at the total for the team for both capacity and estimated time to complete for any day in the sprint. We currently manually put this in Excel, but have considered automation as well. We have another view that is a datasheet view used for data entry. Almost all of our views have a master-child page where you choose the sprint master to view the sprint backlog details.
So, all of that sounds rough, but it's pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.
The benefit is that we have a lot of flexibility when we need it. For example, our Product Backlog list may have custom columns depending on the project.
We have used 3rd party tools before, but for us it gets a little difficult because we are a consulting company and our clients interact with these tools as well.
G'day,
I can't really comment on the SharePoint aspects as I'm a *nix guy. I thought I'd mention that you should be referring to it as Scrum. It's not an acronym but taken from a word that refers to a part of the game of rugby where everyone binds together and each team member has a particular job to do. So the convention is to refer to it as Scrum.
There are lots of excellent, free tools out there to assist with sorting out your burndown charts rather than just chewing raw Excel data.
BTW Good luck with the SharePoint bits. (-:
Edit: Actually, while looking for a couple of tools I stumbled across the 21 Apps site which specialises in Agile SharePoint solutions. Some interesting looking stuff there.
If you are not constrained by Sharepoint, there are plenty of free and locally installable tools that would simplify your life a great deal.
Example: http://github.com/friflaj/ajellito
Apologies for the blatent plug - we found the same problem with not having a great user experience of doing Scrum in SharePoint - lists are good but nothing really gave the easy to use as a whiteboard experience.
I have used other tools like VersionOne - but really find that add to many features and just get over complicated for most teams to get into.
We create a Scrum for SharePoint solution: 21Scrum
Note: This is only availble for SharePoint 2010 as we have built it to work in the Sandbox for easy deployment.
Andrew