Session Data DashboardsThis rule depends on the size of the business.

For a small business, you may choose to create a single strategic dashboard for the
executive manager and the heads of departments. In this case, the dashboard
contains several KPIs for different departments. Each person in the audience will
find the required data for his department. For a large business, the situation is
different. Each department will have a separate dashboard with their required data.
In either situation, if you have a mixed audience, make sure that you identify the
data requirements for each group while keeping in mind the scope of the whole
business, each department, and each individual.Connect the data with the
audienceThe rule here is simple and easy to follow. Include in your dashboard just
the relevant and important data. Do not include items just because you can, or to fill
a space. Irrelevant and unnecessary data would distract the attention of your
audience from the important message that you want to convey. There is no golden
rule to the amount of data you should include on a dashboard; however, you can
figure out what important data to include by identifying your audience and their data
requirements. Just relevant and important dataDeciding how often you will need to
refresh the data on the dashboard before actual development will save you time and
effort while designing the dashboard and sourcing the required data. The type of
dashboard could help in this matter. For example, if you intend to design an
operational dashboard, you need real-time data, so the data refresh rate will be quite
high. However, a strategic dashboard needs less frequent data refresh. Identify the
refresh rateExamples of dashboard toolsThe main rule of business
intelligence software is to simplify complicated data and transform it into a form that
can be used across all departments in the organization. The transformation process
is highly impacted by the business intelligence tool being used as well as by user
capabilities. There are many available software tools to help you develop
professional dashboards, such as Tableau, Zoho Reports, Segment, and Sisense.
Tableau is one of the most powerful professional business intelligence tools for
dashboarding. The next section discusses the reasons for choosing Tableau. Why
Tableau?Tableau has been trusted by more than 50,000 users around the world
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for many reasons. Tableau is an easy tool that is both fast to learn and to apply.
You do not need to code anything, as any function can be applied by drag-and-drop
features. In addition, there are many built-in features that allow you to manipulate
data easily, such as table calculations and connection to programming languages
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such as R and Python. Tableau can connect to more than 40 types of data
sources. These include file-based data sources such as Excel or CSV files,
relational databases such as Teradata or SQL Server, and cloud-based data
sources such as Google Analytics.186