Advanced Excel and PowerPoint — Lesson 2: Pivot Analysis, Dashboards, and Visualization

Learning Objectives

• Create PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers, timelines, and summaries
• Select and format charts for clear decision support
• Build dashboard layouts with conditional formatting and controls

Detailed Topics

• Create PivotTables: Create PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers, timelines, and summaries
• Select and format charts for clear decision support: Select and format charts for clear decision support
• Build dashboard layouts with conditional formatting and controls: Build dashboard layouts with conditional formatting and controls

Guided Demonstration

1. Review the requirement, environment, dependencies, roles, risks, and expected outcome.
2. Demonstrate the relevant configuration, analysis, code, or administration workflow step by step.
3. Capture settings, outputs, logs, screenshots, calculations, or test evidence.
4. Compare the observed result with the stated acceptance criteria.

Hands-On Activity

Create an interactive Excel management dashboard.

• Document assumptions and the planned sequence before making changes.
• Complete the activity and preserve evidence of normal and exception behavior.
• Record issues, corrective actions, and reusable operational or development notes.

Troubleshooting Focus

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

Validation Checklist

• The requirement and expected outcome are clear.
• The selected configuration, design, query, code, or process is documented.
• Normal, boundary, failure, security, and operational conditions are reviewed.
• The result is supported by evidence and the next improvement is prioritized.

Lesson Outcome

Learners can explain and apply Pivot Analysis, Dashboards, and Visualization in a realistic scenario and validate the result with documented evidence.