Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User

Attention [Quick Tip]

Posted on May 25th, 2010 in Charts and Graphs - 24 comments

Dashboards can be overwhelming with lots of details and context. A simple way to drag users attention to
important stuff in the dashboard is to use alerts. See this example to understand what alerts mean.

How to display alerts in Excel Dashboards?

The easiest way to display alerts is to use Excel 2007s Conditional Formatting feature Icon sets.
[Excel 2007+]

Assuming you have a table in dashboard like above (data),

1. Select the alert column and go to Conditional Formatting > Icon sets > 3 Traffic Lights (unrimmed)
2. Now, go to Conditional Formatting > Edit Rules
3. check Icons in reverse order and Show icons only buttons and you are done!

[Excel 2003]
1. Add an extra column next to Alert column.
2. Here type the formula =IF(C1,CHAR(152),"")[assumes column C has alert data]
3. Select the column and set its font to Wingdings 2 and color to Red. The Char code 152 is a big black
circle in wingdings 2 font.

Do you use Alerts in Dashboards?

I think alerts add richness to dashboards and prompt users to take action. But too many alerts can be
distracting. I have used alerts by showing red color dots or circles in dashboards to draw my managers
attention to certain points.
What about you? Do you use alerts in dashboards? How do you automate them? What technique do you
use? Share your ideas and tips using comments.

More resources on Excel Dashboards:

KPI Dashboards in Excel 6 part tutorial
Dynamic Dashboards in Excel 4 part tutorial
More Dashboard tips, resources, templates
Share this tip with your friends

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Google

Email

Print

24 Responses to Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User Attention [Quick Tip]

1.

Alex Kerin says:

May 25, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. Ive also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrices Sparklines
for Excel as an alert which could also provide another piece of information.
Reply

2.

Alex Kerin says:

May 25, 2010 at 1:36 pm
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. Ive also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrices Sparklines
for Excel as an alert which can also provide another piece of information.
For Excel 2007, your formula should do the same as the Excel 2003 version, so that non-alert rows are
blank if they are 0, the unnecessary green icon will show
Reply

3.

Rohit1409 says:
May 26, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75%
and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their
respective alert.