Problem with sharing spreadsheet data
I want you to take a close lookn at this spreadsheet and tell me in just three seconds
how this business is doing, ready? Three, two, one. Okay, did you get anything meaningful out of that data? Now how about this? This is much of the same data that we just looked at but is there something more meaningful here? Yeah, we've got some big numbers.
We've got some trending lines. We've got some valuable information which will help us manage our business or our teams that much more effectively.
So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create a professional dashboard just like this one by using any Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet and many other tools that you already use in just a matter of minutes, hello everyone,
Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And when it comes to managing your business, you are dealing with spreadsheets
and you're dealing with an awful lot of data but it can be really challenging to look at a spreadsheet such as this and determine, are things going in a positive direction,
in a negative direction, which of these figures, which of these numbers is most important or less relevant to us, and how can we communicate that to other members of our team or perhaps even our clients? Well, there is a much easier way,
and dare I say, a much more fun way to link your spreadsheets and also other data
so you can create a live, real-time dashboard that you'll be proud to share with others, but perhaps more importantly, will allow you to keep tabs on what's most important to you. So in order to create our dashboard, we are going to be using a tool called,
Why Geckoboard is a better solution
Geckoboard, not only is Geckoboard very simple and easy to use but it integrates directly with your spreadsheets and other apps and services that you may already be using to run your business.
So here we are with inside Geckoboard and after creating your first dashboard, we need to start adding some widgets. We are given a complete blank canvas so we can start to build out the visuals and the key metrics which we want to track.
So here I'm going to select add widget in this case and what it's going to do is going to bring me to my integration page. As you can see, spreadsheets are one of the most popular ways to connect your data to a dashboard whether you use Excel or Google Sheets but you will also notice there is a large quantity of other services and applications you can connect as well.
More on that a little bit later. I'm going to select Spreadsheets in this case and I've already connected my Google Sheets account. So I have access to all of my spreadsheets down below and you can add as many accounts here as you like.
In this case, I'm going to select my Pitch Sales Sample data here which just has a few key metrics here but the problem is is that no one has visibility to this other than myself
or maybe I would just like to include this in a broader dashboard which we are about to create.
Selecting key data to share on the dashboard
Next, what we need to do is select which of these data points or which of these cells
we would like to include in our widget. So in this case, I'm going to select the quarters here but I'm also going to select the units sold. That's really what I want to show on my dashboard, the quarters and how many were actually sold.
Next up, we're going to come up and select Create visualization. And down below, we can continue to edit our selection up above but now we get a preview of the different things that we can display with the data which we've selected.
The nice thing is that it's only going to give us options for the things that are relevant to this data point. So for example,
because I've chosen something with numeric values, as this or I could choose a column or a bar chart. I think I'm going to go with this column chart in this particular case.
When I'm happy with the type of visualization, which I have, I just need to select Continue and now I can customize the look and feel of this widget. So for example, I may want to give this a title and I'm going to say this is Units Sold, so everyone knows exactly what we're looking for here.
But it gets better because what I really want to do
Adding goals to dashboard data
is also add some target ranges to this graph. Make it that much more meaningful
to anyone who is laying eyes on this data. So under Add goal, I'm going to choose this option here and I can either input manually what that goal will be or maybe I keep track of that goal within the spreadsheet itself.
In many cases, you may have a cell where you express your goal and this is also going to be the place where you go to update that. So it only makes sense to link it to that particular spreadsheet cell.
But in this case, I don't have that goal. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come up here and I'm going to type it in, and in this case, I'm going to say 250 is our goal.
I can choose if it's either less than or more than, because remember, maybe this is a bug reports or something that is maybe more negative and we want to keep those numbers down but look what's happened over here to the right.
Not only do I have that range highlighted in a different shade but it's also showing me that in Q2 and in Q4, we hit that goal because it's changed those bar colors to green. So I'm going to hit save in this case.
If I need to, I can come here and adjust the formatting, right? If these were dollar values or something along those lines, so I can change decimal places. I can change the values here, whatever I like, but I'm pretty happy with the way things look here so I'm going to select Add to dashboard.
Now it's going to load my dashboard
Moving and customizing widgets on the dashboard
and we're going to have this new widget, Units Sold, placed in the top, left-hand corner. Now the great thing is I can customize this any way I want. I can drag it somewhere else. I can bring it out a bit more if I want to make it perhaps a little more prominent or a little wider.
So why don't we bring that back to the top left
but now it's a little more prominent so everyone can see what our Units Sold is.
Let's go ahead and add another widget, but this time, I'm going to show you the power of gauges and how that can really spruce up your dashboard. So to add our second widget, we just need to go to the top, right-hand corner, select Add widget
and we will be returned to the option to choose where we would like to connect that data from. Remember, your dashboard can be made up of connections outside of a single spreadsheet or a single tool, but for this example, I'm going to stick with my spreadsheet.
So in this case, I'm going to choose this spreadsheet, the Pivot Table Example so I have some different data to play with.
Adding gauges to your visual dashboard
In this case, I'm just going to pick out a single number to show you a few examples
of how these gauges may work. So in this case, I'm going to choose this one here,
this number 95, and I'm going to say, Create a visualization. Maybe this is the total number of units for the month. Maybe this is the number of calls per day. Maybe it's a variety of things that we want to track on a live basis.
So down below, I'm going to choose my visualization, but because we're looking at a single number, I can either have that target number, that numeric value like we see here, or I'm going to use this Gauge option which I really like a lot.
This can be really valuable to see if you are meeting, exceeding, or maybe even failing at a certain point. So I'm going to select Continue here so that we can see a few more options available to us.
Now, by default, it's making this gauge from zero to 100 but that might not be the case in this particular example. So I'm going to click on Visualization options and I might leave the minimum value at zero but perhaps the maximum value for this particular gauge is about 200.
So 95 is only about halfway along, right? So again, depending on what you're measuring here, you can customize it the way that you want but the real power here is adding a status indicator.
So for example, I want to say what is our success level here. So I'm going to type in that we are successful whenever we are exceeding 125. Here, you can see that little green marker here but it's more than just a marker.
If this gauge makes it past the marker, this entire side of the gauge is going to be shaded in green. Now we don't have to add these status indicators but they can be really, really helpful and also powerful for other members who may be viewing this data.
I'm also going to add a warning level saying that, you know what?
If we ever drop below 50, that's cause for concern and we need to do a deep dive
in terms of what is going on here. So here at the very top, I'm going to say that this are the number of, let's say, Warm Leads. Maybe we're a sales organization and these are the number of leads that we have in any given week. I'm going to hit Save.
In this case, I could change my formatting again like we saw before but I'm going to say Add to dashboard in this example. Once again, we are brought back to our dashboard and now we have our new widget where we can drag and drop and adjust the size
Spreadsheets sync with the dashboard
any way that we like. Now remember, the information that is being used on our Geckoboard dashboard is being connected live and dynamically from your spreadsheets or any other source which you connect to. So here, for example, is that 95 which we just created with our recent widget. But what if things have changed?
I'm going to select this cell and say that perhaps we updated our units and now have 145 warm leads for the coming week. All I need to do is go back to my dashboard
and you can see that it has been updated automatically. In addition, we now have this green shade because we have exceeded our goal.
If I was to change that unit number to something below 50, this would also be shaded in red, a nice, bright and bold way of letting myself know and others that things have changed either for the better or for the worse.
And remember, goals and status indicators can be used on almost any widget or data type which you select. Down here, in this example, we have a conversion rate and we can see by this highlighted box and this check mark
that we have hit our close rate percentage.
Connecting other data sources to the dashboard
And don't forget the many other tools which you can bring into your dashboard. In this example, as I hover over this widget, you can see in the lower left-hand corner, there is a Trello icon.
This is showing me the number of cards I have in each of these four lists for this particular board. And in the bottom, right-hand corner, I have a running list of all of the actions which have been made on this particular Trello board.
So whether you use email marketing, project management or a CRM system, you can pull in that data as well as a part of your live dashboard.
Sharing dashboard via email, link or TV
Now, when it comes time to share your dashboard with others, Geckoboard gives us a number of different ways to do so. If I select the share option at the top of the screen, I can copy this link and share it with anyone.
But the email share may be the most useful especially if you want to send a snapshot at a given time. So for example, maybe every weekday on Tuesday and Thursday, I would like to send this dashboard out to my team.
I can specify the time in which I want to and all I need to do is include the email addresses up here. So instead of reminding people to use the dashboard or just give them a link which you hope they will go and refer to, you can set up a schedule which works for you.
You can also select a direct connection to Slack or invite others to give view-only access, or if you need to, to have others collaborate as well.
But keep in mind, one of the values of having a dashboard like this is sharing visibility to things which others may not necessarily have access to,
or if they do have access to those spreadsheets, they can now see that data in a more meaningful way. In addition, Geckoboard gives us the option to send our dashboard to a TV.
So whether you want to broadcast this to your entire sales team or support team or maybe you want to display this] in the lobby of your office, you can do so.
And if you're managing multiple dashboards you can create a dashboard loop where it will cycle through two or more dashboards at the timeframe which you choose so that you can see multiple sets of data within the same screen.
So if you want to track all of your key metrics in one place and in real time, be sure to check out Geckoboard. You can sign up for free by clicking the link in the description below.
And if you enjoyed this video, you'll enjoy the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
