A simple example – some data about product sales. Here’s a traditional approach: a table of data and a chart visualising the results.

Now let’s see what we can do with Excel 2007.

Data bars

Data bars are great for showing quick comparisons between data without needing to create a separate bar chart. In the example above, we can see that we are selling more nuggets than anything else despite the budget suggesting widgets would be the best seller. To set up data bars, simply select the columns and, from the Home tab in the Office ribbon, select Conditional Formatting and choose Data Bars. Then select the color you want to use.

Icon sets

Icon sets are key performance indicators (KPIs). Great for showing if the data represents good, bad or indifferent results.

Tip: The default behavior for icon sets is to display green when the value is above 66%, amber when it is above 33% otherwise red. In just about every case, you will want to change the behaviour. To do so, in the ribbon go to Conditional Formatting and select Manage Rules. For the icon set you want to modify, click Edit rules and make your changes. In this example, I want a green light if the sales variance is 1 or above (i.e. met or exceeded target), amber if sales are within 20% of budget, otherwise it’s a red light for the sales team.

Icon sets have two major shortcomings. First, there are only 3 indicators of performance. In the above example, widget sales are far closer to hitting the amber mark than gizmos, and gadgets only just reached amber. An alternative feature to use is called ‘Color Scales’. Not as pretty, but gives a better range of indicators:

Here you can see gadgets are amber, but widgets are nearly there too. Gizmos are deep red – beyond saving.

Back to relying on charts

The second shortcoming with icon sets as key performance indicators is that they give no indication about trends. Sales of nuggets look great, but is it expected or a surprise? In the image below, I have create line charts for each product and stripped away all the chart gumpf to convert them into ‘spark lines’. Now I can see that widgets have had a sudden drop whilst nuggets have had a sudden spike. And gizmos seem to be heading to oblivion.

Compare this information to the original example – It contains exactly the same data but you can instantly interpret a lot more from the information and it takes up less screen space.

For more information about designing useful visualisations, including spark lines and bullet graphs, see previous blog post: Designing Dashboards

Related blog posts:

• Dashboard Design
• Excel Web Access 101

Filed in library under: Microsoft Office; Microsoft BI

Technorati tags: Excel

Conditional formatting is being used within Excel to help visualise the data. You can see immediately that black cars are selling as well as red, despite having a lower target. The traffic lights highlight problems with stock levels. In this case, there isn’t enough stock to meet the target for red cars. But there are plenty of yellow cars to sell. The savvy sales person would come up with a spin to make yellow the new black, red, blue…

So how do you set this up?

Configuring Excel Services

If you have MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition installed, your Shared Services Administration screen should look as follows:

To use Excel Web Access, the minimum you need to do is add the location of your spreadsheet as a ‘Trusted File Location’. A trusted file location can be a SharePoint document library (format http://), web site URL (format http://) or file share UNC (format \\servername\fileshare). For each trusted file location, you can configure additional settings such calculation behaviour (cache lifetime, manual or automatic recalculation), access to external data sources (none by default) and user-defined functions (disabled by default).

Setting up the Excel spreadsheet

To prepare an Excel spreadsheet for display in MOSS 2007, you simply need to do two things:

• Create a named range for the data you want to display
• Store the spreadsheet in a trusted file location (see ‘Setting up Excel Services’)

To create a named range, select the data you want to display and, from the Office ribbon, select the Formulas tab and click ‘Define Name’. Enter a name for your range (ideally one word and easy to remember). To get ready for the next step, count the number of rows and columns that form your named range

This means only the named range will be displayed inside Excel Web Access – all calculations and input fields can be tucked away elsewhere within the worksheet. You can even get clever and create multiple named ranges – one for an input form, to allow users to manipulate the data, and a second one to display the results, based on values in the input form.

Using Excel Web Access

To display your Excel spreadsheet in MOSS 2007, you need to edit a web part page and add the Excel Web Access web part. Then modify the web part properties:

• Enter the location of the spreadsheet (workbook)
• Enter the named range within the spreadsheet (named item)
• Specify the number of rows and columns you want to display

There are all sorts of extra things you can do, depending on how interactive you want the web part to be. You can choose the type of toolbar you want and whether or not people can recalculate the workbook. In the example above, I’ve switched everything off and have automatic recalculation every 5 minutes during the session. I also recommend sizing the web part to fit rather than leaving MOSS to its own devices.

Gotchas

Spot the mistakes I have made in the (recent) past

1. If you want to change the title of the web part, you must first uncheck the box ‘Autogenerate Web Part Title’ in the web part properties (under ‘Title and Toolbar’ heading)
2. If you add rows and/or columns within the named range of the spreadsheet, make sure you adjust the number of rows and columns defined in the web part properties, or the bottom of your named range will disappear from view. You may also need to resize the web part to fit
3. If you move/copy the site to a new environment, make sure you configure the Excel Services settings for the new environment (i.e. configure the Trusted File Location)

Excel Web Access introduces all sorts of possibilities, thanks to the new data visualisation features introduced in Excel 2007 combined with Excel’s ability to connect to external data sources, such as business applications and online services. Displaying the summary information inside a web part eliminates the need to open the spreadsheet in the full Excel application and makes it possible to display Excel data alongside other related information sources.

MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition could get even more interesting if/when Visio Web Access joins the party (mentioned at the Office Developer Conference earlier this year.) For example, Visio and Excel together make it possible to create a fully interactive web-based business scorecard, complete with strategy map. The challenge remains that competition for delivering web-based data visualisations is heating up, thanks to the likes of Google and Zoho.

[Update: 07 May 08] Please check the first comment from Mark Miller, highlighting some of the limitations with the current version of Excel Services. (I should have highlighed it is a v1 feature.)

Filed in Library under: SharePoint, Microsoft BI

Technorati tags: SharePoint, MOSS 2007, Excel