My gosh! Things take a long time to get done around here!

For example, about three weeks ago I posted a long article about a really clever new idea, called a Cycle Plot chart. The idea came from an article by Naomi Robbins, writing in the January 2008 edition of the Perceptual Edge newsletter. Dr. Robbins pointed out that there are many problems with the traditional ways most people chart seasonal data. To fix these problems, she introduced Cycle Plots.

When I saw her chart, I thought of a simple way to set it up in Excel. It took me about two hours to create a variety of charts like this chart, while I watched American Idol on TV one night. No problem.

Then it took me two long days to write and post the article. That's not much of a problem.

Then things got complicated.

My original plan was to create usable versions of the Cycle Plot charts and make them available for download. So I wrote in the article that the download would be available by early March.

But then I put myself in the position of an Excel user in business. The worst thing you can do is to come up with a new type of report that everyone likes, but which takes a long time to produce each week or month. Because none of our other work ever goes away when this sort of thing happens, few Excel users can afford to have many "successes" like that.

So I decided to do everything I could to eliminate the extra work that a new figure like this might require. I decided to set up the cycle plot charts as my first Excel dashboard insert.

Both Dashboard Reporting With Excel and Plug-N-Play #1 use only trend lines and area charts. Here's why:

• Most business performance should be presented showing trends, and using traditional line charts typically is the most effective way to present that information.
   
• Performance often needs to be compared to a standard -- a budget, a forecast, a prior period, a competitor, etc. -- and area charts provide a useful way to present that information.
   
• Line and area charts are easy to create in Excel.

However, Excel dashboards can use a wide variety of chart designs, like cycle-plot charts. But the big question is, What's the easiest and most effective way to set up those charts?

I think that Excel Dashboard Inserts are the answer.

An insert typically will consist of two workbooks, a report workbook and an Excel database workbook. The report workbook will contain worksheets that you can move easily into your existing dashboard reports. My plan is that within a few minutes after downloading an Excel Dashboard Insert, you'll be able to set it up in an existing dashboard report, copy your own data to the database, and generate a report using the new chart.

I hope to have several inserts completed in April, including the cycle-plot insert. Watch for an announcement in the next issue of this newsletter.

By the way...Do you ever see chart designs in publications or on the web, designs you'd like to use with your own data in Excel? If so, please scan the chart or copy its image, and then email it to me. I'll see what I can do to set the design up as an insert.

There's been a lot of discussion here in the US that a recession is coming. Or maybe it's here already. Or whatever.

Whether it's here or not, it's a good idea for Excel users to pay more attention to our company's marketing and financial performance. Therefore, I'm going to cover more of those topics in the future.

Recently, for example, I posted Should You Raise Prices? Or Should You Lower Them? There's seldom a definitive answer to this question. But I present a formula and some charts that will help companies wrestle with this issue more easily.

Suppose you think it's a good idea to raise prices to increase your profits. But if you do that, unit sales could fall. Or perhaps you want to lower prices to increase unit sales, causing profits to rise. But if unit sales don't increase enough, profits could fall.

In either case, before you act, you should know precisely where your unit sales must be so that your new profit margin is no worse than it is today. The article with its formula and charts will help you to answer that question easily.

Within the next several weeks I'm going to begin to offer frequent web-based seminars -- webinars -- about a variety of Excel topics.

By offering webinars I want to help Excel users in several ways:

• Many people would like to create their own Excel dashboards and good-looking reports...quickly! A webinar that will be about three hours long will offer a way to do this. 
   
• Over the past 20 years I've accumulated a massive backlog of useful workbook samples and ideas for business users of Excel. It would be impossible to for me to write articles about all of them. I hope that webinars will let me offer that information easily, while teaching a lot about Excel.
   
• I'll be able to reduce the large backlog of visitor questions that I haven't had the time to answer. (I'm sorry if your question is among the questions I've ignored. I hope to cover it in an upcoming webinar.)
   
• There really are techniques we can use to speed up and simplify Excel reporting and analysis. These same techniques can reduce spreadsheet errors. They also can provide an effective growth path for Excel reports, a simple way that spreadsheet reports can move from using databases in spreadsheets to using "real" databases on a server. I'll explain these techniques with webinars
   
• I've got other plans for webinars, which I'll discuss once I have them better defined.

Watch the next newsletter for specific dates and times for the first few webinars. If you haven't set up exceluser.com as a "safe sender" in your email program, you might want to do it now.

More later,

Charley