{"id":8665,"date":"2019-11-07T17:16:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T09:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.finereport.com\/en\/?p=8665"},"modified":"2020-09-01T08:45:14","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T00:45:14","slug":"how-can-beginners-create-a-great-dashboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frg.fineres.com\/en\/2019\/11\/07\/how-can-beginners-create-a-great-dashboard\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can Beginners Create a Great Dashboard?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the current trend of big data, data visualization<\/a> has become an interactive display mode that everyone admires. And dashboards<\/a> are widely used to display business performance in enterprises. If we can understand and master this technology earlier, I believe it will be very helpful for our career.<\/p>\n

So how can we create a good dashboard, especially for beginners?<\/p>\n

The picture below shows the characteristics of the excellent dashboard that Stephen Few listed in the Dashboard Graphic Design Competition in 2012.<\/p>\n

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According to the above scoring criteria, how many points can you achieve in your dashboard design?<\/p>\n

If you want a perfect presentation of dashboard, you need the technicians, UI designers, and business people to coordinate the work. But for newbies to data visualization, we can also make cool dashboards ourselves with the right data visualization tool. If some of you have read my posts, you may find that I have written many guides to data visualization and dashboards<\/a>. Last time I shared a tutorial to teach you how to make a sales dashboard<\/a>. Some readers told me that the dashboard production tutorial is a little difficult for beginners, because that sales dashboard is relatively advanced.<\/p>\n

Therefore, today I will give a more detailed tutorial on creating a great dashboard for beginners. I will write down every step, and I bet that no one\u2019s tutorial is more comprehensive than mine.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n

1. Effect\u00a0display<\/h3>\n
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This time I plan to create a simple salesperson performance dashboard. The picture above is a demonstration of the final effect. We can view the total sales, the sales rankings of each salesperson, and the salesperson\u2019s order ranking. In this dashboard, I will also implement the interactive function of charts, as shown below. That is viewers can click on the chart for more information.<\/p>\n

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2. Prepare a data visualization tool<\/h3>\n

The visualization tool I used to design the dashboard here is FineReport<\/strong><\/a>. Its interface is similar to Excel. Users can design great dashboards with simple drag and drop operations. It is easy for beginners to get started. And its personal version is completely free. You can download it<\/strong><\/a> directly from the official website.<\/p>\n

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The choice of tools affects the final result of data visualization. Users can choose the data visualization tool that suits them best according to different needs and preferences. If you are looking for more useful tools, you can refer to this article 9 Data Visualization Tools That You Cannot Miss in 2019<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Set dashboard body<\/h3>\n

After downloading FineReport<\/strong><\/a>, open the Designer interface. Click File > New Dashboard<\/strong> to create a new dashboard template:<\/p>\n

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In the widget list, click body<\/strong> and set the Layout type<\/strong> as Adaptive layout<\/strong> and Component Scale<\/strong> as Bidirectional adaptive<\/strong>. You can also customize the dashboard background using color:<\/p>\n

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4. Drag and arrange components<\/h3>\n

Components can be added to the body and arranged via drag-and-drop operations. With adaptive layout, the size and position of each component will automatically change corresponding to other components.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s drag a line chart, a pie chart and a column chart to display data, plus a button as the dashboard title:<\/p>\n

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5. Prepare\u00a0data<\/h3>\n

Datasets in FineReport are uniquely used to store the data retrieved from databases via Data Connection<\/strong>. Datasets are a 2D data sheets and you can directly view the fields and values in designer.<\/p>\n

In the bottom left panel, there is a Template Dataset window listing all the available datasets. Click the button + to add a new dataset.<\/p>\n

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Then we can write the SQL statement.<\/p>\n

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Here we use SQL statements to create 3 datasets that indicate the sales performance from different perspectives. (In this dashboard, we use FineReport\u2019s built-in dataset. FineReport <\/a>also supports importing data from a variety of databases.\uff09<\/p>\n

Dataset orders by employee<\/strong> summarizes the annual total orders of each employee in an descending order:<\/p>\n

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Dataset sales by employee<\/strong> summarizes the annual total sales of each employee in an descending order:<\/p>\n

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Dataset total sales<\/strong> summarizes the annual total sales of the company:<\/p>\n

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6. Edit components<\/h3>\n

6.1 Line chart\u200a\u2014\u200atrend<\/h4>\n

Line charts<\/a> well represents the trends behind data, for instance, the changing trend of annual sales. Double-click the line chart to begin editing.<\/p>\n

In Data<\/strong> tab, set the Data Source<\/strong> using dataset total sales<\/strong>. Define Category <\/strong>using year <\/strong>and Series<\/strong> using total_sales<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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