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Pivot Tables & Dashboards

Pivot tables and dashboards summarize and visualize data in useful ways. [1] Pivot tables rearrange spreadsheet data to view it from different perspectives, identifying sums, averages, and other metrics. [2] Dashboards display various visual data types together to convey related business information quickly through tables, graphs and charts. [3] Both pivot tables and dashboards are customizable tools to analyze past performance and inform future decisions.

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Eric Anastacio
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222 views2 pages

Pivot Tables & Dashboards

Pivot tables and dashboards summarize and visualize data in useful ways. [1] Pivot tables rearrange spreadsheet data to view it from different perspectives, identifying sums, averages, and other metrics. [2] Dashboards display various visual data types together to convey related business information quickly through tables, graphs and charts. [3] Both pivot tables and dashboards are customizable tools to analyze past performance and inform future decisions.

Uploaded by

Eric Anastacio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Pivot Tables and Dashboards

1. What are Pivot Tables?


A pivot table is a statistics tool that summarizes and reorganizes selected columns and
rows of data in a spreadsheet or database table to obtain a desired report. The tool
does not actually change the spreadsheet or database itself, it simply “pivots” or turns
the data to view it from different perspectives.
Pivot tables are especially useful with large amounts of data that would be time-
consuming to calculate by hand. A few data processing functions a pivot table can
perform include identifying sums, averages, ranges or outliers. The table then arranges
this information in a simple, meaningful layout that draws attention to key values.
Pivot table is a generic term, but is sometimes confused with
the Microsoft trademarked term, PivotTable. This refers to a tool specific to Excel for
creating pivot tables.
2. How pivot tables work
When users create a pivot table, there are four main components:
A. Columns - When a field is chosen for the column area, only the unique values
of the field are listed across the top.
B. Rows - When a field is chosen for the row area, it populates as the first column.
Similar to the columns, all row labels are the unique values and duplicates are
removed.
C. Values - Each value is kept in a pivot table cell and display the summarized
information. The most common values are sum, average, minimum and
maximum.
D. Filters - Filters apply a calculation or restriction to the entire table.
For example, a store owner might list monthly sales totals for a large number of
merchandise items in an Excel spreadsheet. If they wanted to know which items sold
better in a particular financial quarter, they could use a pivot table. The sales quarters
would be listed across the top as column labels and the products would be listed in the
first column as rows. The values in the worksheet would show the sum of sales for
each product in each quarter. A filter could then be applied to only show specific
quarters, specific products or averages.

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3. What are Dashboards?
A dashboard is a way of displaying various types of visual data in one place. Usually,
a dashboard is intended to convey different, but related information in an easy-to-
digest form. And oftentimes, this includes things like key performance indicators
(KPI)s or other important business metrics that stakeholders need to see and
understand at a glance.
Dashboards are useful across different industries and verticals because they’re highly
customizable. They can include data of all sorts with varying date ranges to help you
understand: what happened, why it happened, what may happen, and what action you
should take. And since dashboards use visualizations like tables, graphs, and charts,
others who aren’t as close to the data can quickly and easily understand the story it
tells or the insights it reveals.
4. Challenges of the Day (To be used with companion excel file)

A. Building a Dashboard
 Build a dashboard with cash received per day of the week.
o One Pivot Chart per day of the week.
o Customized to show a line fluctuation.
o The chart must be able to update itself on a weekly basis as you refresh
the tables.
B. Answering Questions using Pivot tables
 Using the table that starts on Column K in the ‘tables’ tab
o How many orders are complete?
o What is the order amount for the South Region?
o What is the total number of orders for the Midwest?
 Using the information on ‘Cash Receipts’ tab
o What is the most profitable day of the week?
o What is the least profitable day of the week?
o What is the customer’s favourite product?
o What is the customer’s least favourite product?

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