Dashboards are a great tool to tell the story of your organization and/or track performance by combining several data points in one place. This workshop will discuss what dashboards are, how they can be used, and basic free tools for creating them.
Topics Covered:
Why are Dashboards Important?
Tools
Pros/Cons
Examples
Why are Dashboards Important?
The word dashboard in the way we use it is a direct reflection of your vehicle's dashboard. In the morning when you start your car you do not: check your tire pressure, oil, gas levels, fluid in your window wipers, or temperature. You allow the dashboard to tell you when or if there is a problem. Your car manufacture but your vehicle in such a way where if there were any issues your car would tell you.
We focus on building dashboards in the same way. If there is something wrong with your organization, if the dashboard is build properly you will know immediately.
Types of Dashboards
Operational Dashboards – This is the most common dashboard type, with metrics updating in real-time showing data related to daily operations. The main purpose of an operational dashboard is to provide a comprehensive snapshot of performance.
Analytical Dashboards – Use data from the past to identify trends that can influence future decision-making. Users should be able to interact with the data on an analytical dashboard, so many of them incorporate pivot tables and drilldowns.
Strategic Dashboards – Track performance in relation to your key performance indicators, to better align actions with strategy. If you are looking for a dashboard to share with your whole organization, consider creating a strategic dashboard. Transparency of data can lead to an increase in motivation.
Benefits
Data transparency – Data the most important asset, more valuable than oil. Unfortunately, if I had someone a 10,000 line spreed sheet it would be very difficult to digest so it does not matter how good your data is if no one can understand it. A well-designed dashboard provides on-demand access of all of your most important metrics.
Access to data – As the name implies, a dashboard gathers multiple data sources, including Excel, into a single interface. That means you can immediately see a detailed overview of your business in one quick glance. Better yet, it reduces the amount of time it takes to compile reports, saving you time.
Data Driven Decisions – This is the WHY! Dashboards provide an unbiased view not only of the company’s performance overall. Dashboards provide a good starting point for decisions, which is one of the biggest advantages of dashboards.
Accountability – While it’s always nice to see what you’re doing right, you also need to see and understand what you’re doing wrong in order to increase your performance. Business dashboards can show you exactly where your trouble areas are and arm you with the information you need to improve. Also, by making the dashboards visible throughout the company, they can hold different departments accountable for both the ups and downs. This also helps to drive moral, what better way to show how well your department is performing against other divisions.
Benefits
FREE!
Collaboration
Work At Scale
Links to Google Products
Version Control
Plugins
External Data Sources
This data set originates from: https://data.memphistn.gov/Public-Safety/Memphis-Police-Department-Public-Safety-Incidents/ybsi-jur4
For this class use:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Clag4PxNux4Y_QaMRE5UrXIX92j6Zn-lvggvDldBkPQ/edit?usp=sharing
For More Detail: How to create a dashboard in Google Sheets by Laura Tennyson is a great reference.
Benefits
FREE!
Access unlimited widget options.
Pull data from up to 12 different sources.
Share Data Studio reports easily.
Build interactive experiences.
Use free Data Studio templates.
Learn with free Google Data Studio tutorials.
For Additional Reference: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-data-studio
FREE!
Integrates
Personalized Dashboards
Secure
No Memory and Speed Constraints
No Specialized tech support
BI Tools
Offers Advanced Services
For this class:
API (source: www.digitalgov.gov/category/code/api/)An Application Programming Interface, or API, is a set of software instructions and standards that allows machine to machine communication—like when a website uses a widget to share a link on Twitter or Facebook.
Catalog (source: Data.gov)A catalog is a collection of datasets. Data.gov has one catalog for all types of datasets at http://catalog.data.gov. The catalog contains both geospatial and non-geospatial datasets.
CKAN (source: ckan.org)CKAN stands for Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, an open source data management system that is the basis of the Data.gov catalog, as well as the open data catalogs of approximately 50 data hubs around the world.
CSV (source: Wikipedia)A comma separated value (CSV) file is a computer data file used for implementing the organizational tool of the Comma Separated List. The CSV file is used for the digital storage of data structured in a table of lists form. Each line in the CSV file corresponds to a row in the table. Within a line, fields are separated by commas and each field belongs to one table column. CSV files are often used for moving tabular data between two different computer programs (like moving between a database program and a spreadsheet program).
Data (source: Federal Enterprise Architecture: Data Reference Model)A value or set of values representing a specific concept or concepts. Data become “information” when analyzed and possibly combined with other data in order to extract meaning and to provide context. The meaning of data can vary depending on its context.
Data Extraction Tool (source: Data.gov)Data extraction tools allow a user to select a data basket full of variables and then recode those variables into a form that the user desires. The user can then develop customized displays of any selected data.
Dataset (adapted from: Wikipedia)A dataset is an organized collection of data. The most basic representation of a dataset is data elements presented in tabular form. Each column represents a particular variable. Each row corresponds to a given value of that column’s variable. A dataset may also present information in a variety of non-tabular formats, such as an extended mark-up language (XML) file, a geospatial data file, or an image file.
KML (source: Wikipedia)Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization of existing or future Web-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers.
KMZ (source: Wikipedia)KML files are very often distributed in KMZ files, which are zipped files with a “.KMZ” extension. When a KMZ file is unzipped, a single “doc.kml” is found along with any overlay and icon images referenced in the KML and any network-linked KML files.
Metadata (source: Federal Enterprise Architecture: Data Reference Model)Metadata describes a number of characteristics or attributes of data; that is, “data that describes data”. (ISO 11179-3). For any particular datum, the metadata may describe how the datum is represented, ranges of acceptable values, its label, and its relationship to other data. Metadata also may provide other relevant information, such as the responsible steward, associated laws and regulations, and the access management policy. The metadata for structured data objects describes the structure, data elements, interrelationships, and other characteristics of information, including its creation, disposition, access and handling controls, formats, content, and context, as well as related audit trails.
Shapefile (source: ESRI Shapefile Technical Description)A shapefile stores non-topological geometry and attribute information for the spatial features in a dataset. The geometry for a feature is stored as a shape comprising a set of vector coordinates. Shapefiles can support point, line, and area features.
XML (source: Wikipedia)XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language, because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements. XML’s purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data especially via the Internet, to encode documents, and to serialize data.Metadata (source: Project Open Data http://project-open-data.github.io)
Learn More:
Comments