How should a dashboard strategy be conceptualized? How do you translate the accumulated data into an effective business compass for the decision maker? Start your journey here

In the previous Blog post we understood the main aspects and types of Dashboards. In this second of a 4-part Blog post, we start preparing ourselves for the much-anticipated Dashboard.

The Big Picture

The place to start is the business requirements analysis document, we prepared (or received) before we planned and implemented the application. The Dashboards’ elements should already be described right there.

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How should a dashboard strategy be conceptualized? How do you translate the accumulated data into an effective business compass for the decision maker? Start your journey here

The importance of Dashboards

Dividing information systems’ role into two main focus areas, we have the operational processes on one hand (OLTP) and the analytics on the other (OLAP).

Considering the ultimate goal of supporting and driving the business, OLTP systems streamline the daily work, govern the processes and control the data as it is being accumulated in the database. OLAP solutions are tasked with...

What separates an Excel model from a professional business application? Besides good programming practices it’s the user experience * Excel VBA User Forms allow you to deliver mission-critical business applications that will make your customer WOW.

Today I launched my third course in the Computer Programming and Databases with Excel VBA and SQL program.  This course, titled Beyond Excel Boundaries with User Forms: Deliver a Professional User Experience, covers User Forms implementation as the user interface for Excel-based business applications.

This launch today made it an easy...

When developing, delivering and maintaining software solutions, you need to manage the Dev-QA-Prod cycle. This is no different when developing an Excel based application * Here’s how I do it

The Basics of Development Lifecycle

After you finish developing a scoped application, you need to pass it over to QA – Quality Assurance. The QA folks are abusing the software and document their exceptional findings: logical errors, software errors, user experience issues, environment conflicts, and the like. Often, issues classified as important will bounce back to development for fixing....

What makes this course unique * What is this course about * What did it take to produce this course * Is this course right for you?

Not that I planned to launch this new course when everybody is glued to the computer screen waiting for the Corona scare to pass by, but today is the day, and it’s out!

Those of you who follow me for a while, already know the wide portfolio of services and products I offer, all about developing business software with Excel VBA and leading many others to become such consultants.

IF you’ve completed my flagship course: Computer Programming with Excel...

When using external function libraries in VBA, you need to choose between late biding and early biding * What is it, why chose one over the other and how is it done properly?

When the offered VBA functionality is not enough

With VBA you can flexibly write just the code you need for your program. It is a flexible, functional programming language that is also aware of the Excel Object Model. You can easily access and manipulate almost all of the Excel objects: Worksheets, Cells, Charts, Tables, Shapes, Printing settings and much more.

However, there are objects and tasks that are not readily...

Dashboards typically come from the Business Intelligence world. Updating the operational DB come from the transactional world. Why not connect the two for a full insight-to-action experience?

In a project I delivered this week to a new customer in Australia, it hit me that I have combined dashboards with updating data records for long time. Intuitively, as I envision the customer’s line of thought, I usually allow the user to cross the lines and open an update screen straight from a dashboard.

What’s the Big Deal?

In the traditional data-centric approach to business information...

Microsoft dominates the Enterprise. Google Offers native “cloud” office solutions. Microsoft is storming the cloud with full power. Google is widely used for email, web-search and gaining a foothold in Enterprise too. How will this play out?

The idea for this Blog post came as I was forwarded a similar question on Quora to answer. I’ll offer my perspective for the discussion on this question.

1. Microsoft was always best at identifying new tech trends too late, but successfully bridge the gap and win the market. That’s because they’re much better as a marketing...

Why protect your Excel Worksheets? How to do it right? How to employ a protection strategy in a tight business application based on Excel? Can you protect your IP vested in your VBA code? Read this before you deliver your next Excel project to your customer

All Protection Options Available for You

Before we explore the business motivation and possible strategies for protecting your work, let’s recap all of the protection options we have in Excel:

• Password-protect your Workbook file. This option will require a password you set, when the Workbook is opened. The Workbook will not even...

What can you do as an Excel developer? Can you make a living out of it? Is it worth anything in the job market? Here’s my take…

What Kind of an Excel VBA Developer are You?

You might be surprised this question is even raised. Intuitively, once you’re an “Excel VBA Developer”, then you’re an “Excel VBA Developer”. Right?! Well, let’s look closer.

Consider Joe. Joe is an accountant in a large corporation. He is an avid Excel user, really stretching the grid and built-in functions. Joe started recording some Macros to automate some tasks....