So far in this series I’ve written 4 articles building our Project Tracker. I’ve set up the Updates table and created progressively more complex Pivot Tables by using Lookups, Synthetic Data and Bucketization.
But let me stop for just a moment to talk about where I’m going with this. I’ve written before about Excel Dashboards. In Stop Monthly Reporting Madness I described a 3-step process for Excel automation: Update, Refresh, Share. This 3-step process works for Trackers and Dashboards and just about any Excel Workbook for managing a fixed dataset that accepts changes over time. Exactly how you realize this 3-step Mantra really depends on the nature of the underlying data and your own creativity.
Generally, when I create a new Excel project, my objective is to do as much of the work as possible up front, when I’m creating the workbook. Once completed, the workbook shouldn’t need to be changed, only data added. The workbook just reliably does what it was setup to do. Day-in, day-out, as I use the workbook, it is as simple and as automated as possible. That 3-step process is always my goal: Update, Refresh, Share. Continue reading “Excel BTS Project Tracker – New Date Format”