Dashboard Topic: Excel Gas Dashboard

Web queries have been part of the Microsoft Excel object model for quite a while now, but are not often seen on Excel dashboards. Talented Xcelsius and Excel developer Kalyan Verma (author of the fabulous myxcelsius.com blog), has posted an example of using Excel Web Queries to power an Excel dashboard connected to the American Automobile Association’s database of pump prices of 100,000 gas stations.

The post is entitled Real Time Fuel Gauge Dashboard using Excel Web Query and walks the reader through not only a lesson in the use of Excel Web Queries, but also some principles learned from reading Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. Can you guess which specific principles?

Take a look at this screenshot. Click on the image to enlarge this excel dashboard. Be sure to visit the post at the link above to read more from Kalyan as well as see more screenshots of the Excel dashboard. Most importantly, you can download the .xls file for the Excel Dashboard and play around with the Excel Web Query dashboard for yourself.

Excel Dashboard using Web Queries to Show Gas Prices

If you are new to Excel’s Web Query feature, consult this introduction from Microsoft’s Office Online resource:

Get and Analyze Data From the Web in Excel

Speaking of Microsoft Online, try this query and look who is the first result! Click on the word “Dashboard” below:

Dashboard Search on office.microsoft.com

Update: As noted in the comments below, we have covered similar gas price dashboards previously. Take a look at Ryan Goodman’s Xcelsius Gas Price Data Dashboard. It even has a Dashboard Spy Video!

Tags: Excel Dashboard for Gas Price Monitoring, Web query excel dashboard, myxcelsius.com, excel gas dashboard