Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By : Mark Polino
Book Image

Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013

By: Mark Polino

Overview of this book

Accounting systems like Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 hold a wealth of information. Excel 2013 provides a great tool for linking to, extracting, analysing, and presenting that rich data to help companies make better, faster, and smarter decisions.Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 covers how to get the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. The book shows in detail how to build great-looking dashboards that enhance a company's decision-making process.This book shows you how to get at the rich, detailed information contained in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and present it in an attractive, easy-to-understand way using Excel 2013. This guide will take you from the basics of setup and deployment to creating secure, refreshable Excel reports. Using a whole host of tools available within Excel, this tutorial will show you how to visualize your data using simple conditional formatting techniques, easy-to-read charts, and allow you to make your data interactive with Slicers. Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013 provides a way for you to easily build that interactive dashboard that your CFO keeps asking for.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Color Scales


Excel 2013 provides another conditional formatting option that is a kind of mix between icon sets and data bars. It's called Color Scales. Color Scales behave more like icon sets but are closer in appearance to data bars. We don't have a place for them on our main dashboard, but we do have a spot in some of the source pivot tables that we'll also use for drillbacks.

Let's see how Color Scales work. To set up Color Scales:

  1. Select the Revenue worksheet.

  2. Highlight cells B6 through E9.

  3. From the Home ribbon, select Conditional Formatting | Color Scales.

  4. Select the first Color Scale (Green – Yellow – Red Color Scale):

With this selection, Excel 2013 will automatically make the largest number green and the smallest number red, thus making it easy to see key highs and lows:

Adjusting Color Scales

To adjust the Color Scales, follow these steps:

  1. Highlight cells B6 through E9.

  2. From the Home ribbon, select Conditional Formatting | Manage Rules.

  3. Click on the Edit Rules button.

  4. Changing the Midpoint...