Performance Dashboard Tutorial

Introduction
This documents describes how to set-up the Excel templates provided by L3
Analytics. The configuration is straight forward: fill in all fields from the spreadsheet
Setup Dashboard to personalise the template and we then press one button to
create the dashboard.
Several options are available to customise dashboards for everyones needs. Some
help can be found for each field within Excel Comments but it is recommended to
also read this detailed guide to make sure you use all required features to answer
your business questions.
Please note that while those templates can be highly personalised, you may need
additional customisations for your organisation. If you need further assistance to
create your own dashboards, L3 Analytics will be happy to help you:
www.l3analytics.com/contact/

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1 Design
1.1 Company Name
The first step is to fill in your company name. For example, for us it would be L3
Analytics:

Your company name will appear within the dashboard title:

1.2 Dashboard Version

Three versions are available for this Performance dashboard:

Dashboard V1 presents two charts and a single vertical axis to change

metrics using drop down boxes:

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Dashboard V2 displays a text zone to add comments instead of the second

chart:

Dashboard V3 also has a text zone but users can display metrics on two
vertical axis:

1.3 Colour Scheme

Then, we can choose a colour for our dashboard:

We just need to select the cell and use the shading tool to select our colour:

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This scheme colour will be used for the dashboard headers:

1.4 Text Colour

We can either choose black or white for our text colour. You may choose White to
better see title names with a dark colour scheme:

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2 Personalisation
2.1 Select Period
Then, we need to define a period. This depends on the intended usage of your
dashboard. For example, to analyse performance every week I would choose a
weekly dashboard:

The period matters because it will be used to compare performance between two
date ranges on a regular basis:

Please note that this period will also be used as the default interval on the charts for
the horizontal axes.

2.2 Select Comparison

You may choose a standard comparison to compare data with the last period (i.e.
this month against last month) or a custom period to compare with the year
before (i.e. this month against the same month last year):

Please note that if you select a custom weekly period, you will actually compare the
two last weeks against each other. Comparing the current week with the same one
the year before cannot be achieved with this free template but L3 Analytics would
be happy to help you if you need any help on this point.

2.3 Currency Symbol

The currency symbol needs to be entered to display any revenue metrics within the
dashboard:

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2.4 Size of Change

Our template highlights the percentage of change when the change against the
comparison period is greater than either 5, 10 or 20 percent:

For example, on the below screenshot, the first and second % change are
highlighted whereas the third one is not:

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3 Metrics
3.1 Name your Metric Groups
The next step is to name the metric groups. Names are automatically duplicated on
the right table:

This will be used as the title for each metric table:

3.2 Name your Metric

For each metric group you can choose up to three metrics:

For example:

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3.3 Define Format

For every metric we then select the right format (i.e. % for the bounce rate or
Currency for the turnover):

Example:

3.4 Define Desired Action

A raise in a metric can have a positive impact (i.e. conversion rate) or a negative
one (i.e. bounce rate). Selecting either Positive or Negative will highlight
important changes in green if the impact is positive and in red if this is negative:

Example:

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4 Name your Segments

Note: this feature is only included in some dashboard templates
Instead of creating several dashboards you may add segments to display the exact
same metrics but for a subset of your data (i.e. only people coming from abroad):

Note that if you need more segments, simply enter more segment names directly
below the Segments table
On the dashboard, selecting a segment from the drop down box will update all data:

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5 Complete
Once all fields are correct, click on the button Set-up Dashboard (macros must be enabled):

Note: this will only work once per template, you cannot correct mistakes and rerun the dashboard
setup process but you can copy elements to a clean copy of the template.

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The result can be viewed on the worksheet Dashboard:

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Unused dashboard versions, setup and instructions worksheets can be deleted:

Only the worksheets Dashboard and Data Summary should remain visible:

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6 Update
Once the dashboard has been setup, we need to update it at the end of each period
by filling in the Data Summary worksheet and clicking on the button update.

6.1 Date
We need to select here the date of the ending period. If we needed to insert data for
a weekly dashboard, from the 7th of October to the 14th, I would write 14/10:

For a monthly dashboard I would have filled in 31/10 and for a daily one, I would
have selected the date of the day.
Please note that the date should automatically be updated with the format ddmmm. You may have filled in a wrong value if you see a different format.

6.2 Metrics
The data for each metric group and segments needs to be inserted in the following
table for the desired period. There are two ways to add those values:

Manually: we can copy/paste figures from any data sources

Automatically: we can use tools such as APIs to automatically push values
into the cells

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6.3 Update button

Clicking on the button update dashboard will copy all data into hidden worksheets
(one per segment) and will automatically update the dashboard:

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