Stop 07 · BI Tools & DashboardsTopics · 7/9

Building an Interactive Dashboard

In short

A static report answers one question. An interactive dashboard lets the regional manager click their region and get their own answer, so you stop getting 'can you make one for Pune?' emails.

Applying Phase 5's dashboard design principles hands-on inside a real BI tool — adding filters, drill-downs, and a clear visual hierarchy so the dashboard actually gets used.

The jaadu presses one switch on a wall board while all the lamps respond.

Think of it like this

The room switchboard

One switch on the board turns off every light in the hall together. You don't walk to each lamp. In a good dashboard, one click on a city filters every chart on the page together, because they're all wired to the same data.

Watch it happen

One click, every chart updates

Manager

City chart

Trend chart

KPI cards

click: Pune

1/5The manager clicks the Pune bar in the city chart.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Layout with a reading order

KPIs on top, trend in the middle, breakdowns below. People read top-left first.

Slicers and filters

Give the 2 or 3 filters people actually use, like date, region and product. Not fifteen.

Cross-filtering

Clicking a mark in one chart filters the others. Power BI does it by default; Tableau uses dashboard actions.

Tooltips carry detail

Put secondary numbers in tooltips, so the chart stays clean but the detail is one hover away.

How it works

Design before you drag

1
Who and why
Name the user and the 3 questions they ask every week.
2
Sketch on paper
Draw boxes for KPIs, trend and breakdown. Takes five minutes, saves hours.
3
Build the KPIs
Get the headline numbers right and checked against a known source first.
4
Add interaction
Add slicers and cross-filtering, then test every combination once.
5
Watch someone use it
Sit with a real user. Where they hesitate is what you fix next.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Twenty charts on one page because everything seemed important.

Do this instead

Five to seven visuals per page. Move the rest to a detail page people can drill into.

Oops

Filters that silently don't apply to some charts.

Do this instead

Test each slicer against every visual. If one chart shouldn't filter, label it clearly.

Your mission

A one-page sales dashboard

~45 min

Quick check

Where should the headline numbers usually go on a dashboard?

Go deeper

1Add a filter/slicer to your BI dashboard and test the interaction.
2Apply the 'most important metric top-left' principle from Phase 5 to your layout.
3Get feedback from someone unfamiliar with the data on whether it's clear at a glance.