The Importance of Connecting Directly to the Primary Data Sources

The most important part of dashboard-building is accessing the relevant data sources. Without data, you can’t have any dashboard. Data is to a dashboard what flour is to cake, and there are many ways to get the needed data into Excel for dashboard creation. A very common way is to paste a copy of the data into an Excel sheet. People log in to their social media platforms, accounting software, resource-planning applications, sales applications, and HR software to grab an export of the data they need for their dashboard-building. For them, the convenient way to get data into Excel is to export data from the source and paste it into Excel.

There are many ways to get data into Excel other than by exporting it from the source and copy-pasting it into Excel. In this chapter, we will examine all the different ways to get data into Excel and what the peculiarities of each way are. For dashboard-building, you should...