There are 2 parts in construction of a dashboard like this.

1. Defining the vision, layout & metrics that you want.

2. Creating the dashboard in Excel (or any other tool)
While it does not seem so, it is the Step 1 that takes a lot of time and hard-work.

Step 1: Defining the dashboard metrics, layout & vision

This is the most time consuming part of any dashboard. There is no one way to do this step. So I am going list a set of guidelines for you to
follow.
Speak with your audience & define what they want: For any dashboard, you will have some audience. So speak with them, understand
what their information needs are. List down everything they want to know. Some parameters you want to consider are,
o Metrics / KPI they are interested

o Frequency of the need (weekly, monthly or yearly etc.)

o Granularity of the information (example: person level, department level, company level)

o Type of the need (information, analytical, mission critical etc.)

Understand the sources of data: Another tricky part of a dashboard development is to get right data. In corporate environments, your
data sources may be spread across and follow their own formats. So you need to plan ahead for all these differences, otherwise, you will
end up doing lots of extra work.
Prioritize the information: Once you have listed down various metrics, KPIs, information pieces to be used in the dashboard, list them
down in the order of priority. Metrics or KPIs that are most important and indicate the overall health of the system (or project, initiative
or company) should be on top.
Remove ruthlessly: Now comes the tricky part. You must remove items, metrics and information that is low on value from the end
dashboard. This is where your persuasion, negotiation skills come in handy.
 Make a rough sketch of the dashboard: Even before you make something in Excel, just make a rough sketch using pen and paper (or
MS Paint or PowerPoint). This way, you can validate the design with end users and get buy-in early. (related: use excel for screen
prototyping)
There are more ideas and tactics you can follow. But if you follow the above guidelines, then 80% of your work is done.

Step 2: Designing Excel Dashboard

This step becomes easier once you have clarity of vision and listed down what you want (and what you dont want). And if you find this difficult,
there is always help.
In this, let us learn how to construct the particular dashboard you see above.
1. Arrange the data: For a simple dashboard like this, you can arrange the data in this fashion.

2. Create Dashboard Layout and Load data: Once the data is in-place, create a blank layout. You can follow any template. I liked the
Michigan State Dashboard template and created something like that.
 Once the layout is ready, link to the source data (using Copy & Paste as links).

3. Use Conditional Formatting & Formulas to Display Icons: Once the data is loaded, next step is to show icons. This can be done easily
with Conditional Formatting and simple formulas. (tip: display alerts in dashboards using conditional formatting)
4. Format: Now format everything so it looks awesome.

That is all. You are done!

an be overwhelming with lots of details and context. A simple way to drag users attention to important stuff in the dashboard is to use alerts. See
this example to understand what alerts mean.
 How to display alerts in Excel Dashboards?

The easiest way to display alerts is to use Excel 2007s Conditional Formatting feature Icon sets.
 [Excel 2007+]

Assuming you have a table in dashboard like above (data),

1. Select the alert column and go to Conditional Formatting > Icon sets > 3 Traffic Lights (unrimmed)

2. Now, go to Conditional Formatting > Edit Rules

3. check Icons in reverse order and Show icons only buttons and you are done!
 [Excel 2003]

1. Add an extra column next to Alert column.

2. Here type the formula =IF(C1,CHAR(152),"") [assumes column C has alert data]

3. Select the column and set its font to Wingdings 2 and color to Red. The Char code 152 is a big black circle in
wingdings 2 font.
Using if formula instead of index

How to use a formula to create a solid bar this is in 2007.

Using to excel 2010 conditional format data bars gradient bars choose.
How to setup trend line and what figures are used
 First the data:

We had 437 responses to the poll. While this is no way a good representation of all the 300 million Excel users out there, I would say this is a
pretty good sample of Chandoo.org readers.
The key statistics are,
Median Excel age is 14 years

Average is 13.2 years

Minimum is 6 months

Maximum is 26 years (Rod Reed, Haseen I Alam and Jack Nefus)

Message #1: Excel Teens & Tweens are a majority

When I ran the survey, I thought, a majority of people would be in the Excel age group of 3-10 years. But I was surprised to say the least when I
saw the data. More than 45% of the respondents have been using Excel for 11 years or more.
Chart Excel Age distribution
What this means possible explanations
Biased data set (!?!): Since people who started using Excel just a few years ago tend to be not so serious about it,
they may not have responded to the survey or neglected it. On the other hand, people who have been using Excel for
more than a 10 years tend to be more passionate about it and thus they are active on sites like chandoo.org. So they
are prone to responding to surveys or indulging in discussions.

Excel user base shrinking: With the launch of drag-and-drop analysis tools like Tableau and cheap alternatives like
Google docs, Open Office and Zoho, may be Excel user base is shrinking. This could be the reason behind such heavy
concentration of 10-19 year user base.
Message #2: Excel 95 and 97 are very popular versions

I wanted to understand how the year on which users started using Excel correlated with Excel releases. So I flipped the chart and plotted Number
of people by Year. Then I overlaid Excel releases as noted in Excel history time-line chart. Here is what I got,
 Chart Year people started using Excel by Number of people

What this means possible explanation

The big spikes in data coincide with releases of Excel 95 and 97. In fact, you could notice that a large chunk of
users (~30%) have started using Excel between 1995 and 1998. We can attribute this to features like VBA (introduced
in 1993), Windows 95 launch and spreading of concepts like MIS, Business Intelligence, enterprise databases and
business analysis.

Note: this could just be a coincidence.

Additional Charts prepared by Hui:

Hui, our guest author and resident Excel Ninja, prepared an impressive dynamic dashboard from this data set. Using this dashboard, you can
search for a name or year or age and highlight matches and do some fun analysis (like the distribution of names by first letter of first name) etc.
Few sample charts from Huis workbook: