Microsoft Excel – Dashboards for Business Intelligence — Lesson 1: Dashboard Planning and Data Preparation

Learning Objectives

• Translate business questions into dashboard objectives, audiences, measures, dimensions, and acceptance criteria
• Prepare structured Excel tables with consistent data types, naming, validation, and refresh-ready source design
• Validate dashboard planning and data preparation decisions with documented requirements, evidence, risk controls, and measurable acceptance criteria

Detailed Topics

• Translate business questions into dashboard objectives: Translate business questions into dashboard objectives, audiences, measures, dimensions, and acceptance criteria
• Prepare structured Excel tables with consistent data types: Prepare structured Excel tables with consistent data types, naming, validation, and refresh-ready source design
• Validate dashboard planning and data preparation decisions with documented requirements: Validate dashboard planning and data preparation decisions with documented requirements, evidence, risk controls, and measurable acceptance criteria

Guided Demonstration

1. Review the requirement, users, data, dependencies, permissions, risks, and expected result.
2. Demonstrate the relevant configuration, creation, administration, analysis, or development workflow step by step.
3. Capture settings, outputs, logs, screenshots, calculations, test results, and other useful evidence.
4. Compare the observed result with acceptance criteria and explain any corrective action.

Hands-On Activity

Create a requirement and readiness checklist, then configure or design the first working foundation.

• Document assumptions, prerequisites, and the planned sequence before starting.
• Complete the activity and preserve evidence of normal, boundary, and failure behavior.
• Record issues, corrective actions, reusable notes, and the next improvement priority.

Scenario Analysis

• Identify the business or technical decision that must be made.
• Compare valid implementation approaches and their trade-offs.
• Consider security, privacy, accessibility, performance, support, and operational impact.

Troubleshooting Focus

• Separate symptoms from causes and collect evidence before applying a fix.
• Check configuration, data, permissions, dependencies, capacity, connectivity, and recent changes.
• Validate rollback, recovery, ownership, user impact, and business continuity.

Validation Checklist

• The requirement, scope, inputs, and expected outcome are clear.
• The selected design or configuration is documented and follows approved standards.
• Normal, boundary, failure, security, accessibility, and operational conditions are reviewed.
• The result is supported by evidence and the next improvement is prioritized.

Lesson Outcome

Learners can explain and apply Dashboard Planning and Data Preparation in a realistic scenario and validate the result with documented evidence.