Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

By : Bernard Obeng Boateng
5 (1)
Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

5 (1)
By: Bernard Obeng Boateng

Overview of this book

Microsoft Excel's BI solutions have evolved, offering users more flexibility and control over analyzing data directly in Excel. Features like PivotTables, Data Model, Power Query, and Power Pivot empower Excel users to efficiently get, transform, model, aggregate, and visualize data. Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel offers a practical way to demystify the use and application of these tools using real-world examples and simple illustrations. This book will introduce you to the world of data modeling in Excel, as well as definitions and best practices in data structuring for both normalized and denormalized data. The next set of chapters will take you through the useful features of Data Model and Power Pivot, helping you get to grips with the types of schemas (snowflake and star) and create relationships within multiple tables. You’ll also understand how to create powerful and flexible measures using DAX and Cube functions. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to apply the acquired knowledge in real-world scenarios and build an interactive dashboard that will help you make important decisions.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Overview and Introduction to Data Modeling in Microsoft Excel
6
Part 2: Creating Insightful Calculations from your Data Model using DAX and Cube Functions
9
Part 3: Putting it all together with a Dashboard

Making your dashboard interactive

While the elements described are very useful in creating dashboards, the key objective is to engage your reader. Your dashboards should have options for them to interact with the data, explore different scenarios, and come away with insights that matter to them.

Excel offers several features and techniques to make dashboards interactive. Here are some ways you can make your Excel dashboards interactive.

Slicers

Slicers are interactive controls that allow users to filter and slice the data displayed in a dashboard. By connecting slicers to tables or PivotTables, users can easily select specific data subsets or filter by various criteria, such as dates, categories, or regions. Slicers provide a user-friendly way to explore data and customize the dashboard’s view.

Let’s proceed to add a Region slicer to our dashboard. The objective is to make the user see the key indicators on the dashboard filtered by the selected region in...