10 tips to create your dashing Dashboard…

Why we create a dashboard?

Collecting lots of data from the data warehouse and been able to visualize all the data in a single view.Dashboard is the easiest way to display the data in one place for the technical and non-technical audience.Dashboard can show a single data story with a many charts. Therefore, a Dashboard is very useful as it can compare multiple types of data and show many variation of data simultaneously.Once the dashboard is created using sheets for the end user, here are the 10 most powerful tips to make dashboard user Friendly and visually appealing to the audience…….

These are the steps to create beautiful dashboard

I have worked on Coffee Dataset to demonstrate the worksheets and Dashboard.

1.Resize of the dashboard

Let’s start work with formatting the dashboard. Ex. 1400X800 to avoid the Scroll bar

Resize Dashboard to 1400X800

2. Format your Dashboard

Go to Format and select Dashboard

If you know already how you want your dashboard then you can start changing shades, fonts, background before you start dragging the worksheets in dashboard. Then select all the worksheet you want in your dashboard.

Here is how font, Alignment, Shading and Border can be changed, to the dashboard and all the worksheets.

3. Title of the Dashboard and to all the sheets (Center, Font size, font style)

Go to dashboard, Select show Title ,change the Title of dashboard. Also give Font size according to dashboard. Change color and Style of the font as well.

4. Change the layout (add border, background and Padding)

Go to layout, Change background of the font and change the color.

Border — pick little thicker border to enhance the worksheets.

Background- Pick lighter background and enhance the look, choose same palette of the border color.

Padding is a great way to create space between different elements in your dashboard. It can make the dashboard look less cluttered and can influence the order in which users look at your charts.

Outer Padding — outer side of the Border.

Inner Padding- Inner side of the border.

Border

5. Consist of Font style and Font type

For visually appealing dashboards, make sure to use same font type, style and size across all the sheets for the consistency. Give color to font as well. Hide Axis if you don’t need it.

6. Eliminate scrollbar and fit entire view

select 1 sheet and go to more option on the right side of the sheet. there click on more options, Fit to entire view. That way the entire view of the worksheet can be fit in the given area.

7. Placement of Filter and Legends and use of Global Filter

Quick Filter: Quick Filter Creates an interactive selection panel on the right top corner of the data view. We can implement Quick Filter on Dimensions or Measures.

Global Filter: Global Filter helps to share the same filter using the same source data across multiple (or) all worksheets within a workbook. We can apply global filter for all the work sheets using the same data (or) It can be applied to only selected worksheets.

Go to Format and click on the Filters. You will get the Filters on the right side of the dashboard. you can drag the filter on the sheet or make it global to keep it on the right side, if you are applying the same filter to multiple sheets.

8. Remove Zero line /Grid lines

Go to Dashboard and remove Grid line so the dashboard looks neat and clean.

For visually appealing dashboards, make sure to use same font type, style and size across all the sheets for the consistency. Hide Axis if you don’t need it.

9. Use area chart v/s line chart

To make it more attractive use area chart instead of line chart. Area charts are ideal for indicating the change among different data sets.

10. Use Stack bar v/s Horizontal bar

stack bar and Horizontal bar are very popular in tableau, when showing comparisons between categories. It gives appealing visualization to the dashboard and make it elegant dashboard.

Here is the final Dashboard look like ….