What is Dashboard Automation?

In this video, I’ll show you exactly how it works and how it’ll save you oodles of time. I’ve written many articles to help Telecom Pros speed up how quickly their Dashboards can be updated. But I don’t want you to focus only on the time you’ll save. Instead, consider the insights you’ll have when …

A pro sports team’s new coach always says this

“We’re gonna work on fundamentals: blocking, tackling, passing the ball.” As Telecom Pros, we love the shiny and new: 5G, mmWave, network slicing, #MIMO, URLLC, CRAN. OK, so we like acronyms, too. But when the excitement of sexy new technology wears off, there’s still a mobile network to maintain. And what does that mean? Reports. …

Sequential Numbering

Ever been in a meeting or a conference call reviewing an Excel workbook? If the Row numbers are not shown on your printout, it can be hard to find exactly what the speaker is referring to. That’s much easier when the first column is a sequential number. Having each row identifiable by a unique number …

Dashboard Automation with GETPIVOTDATA

Do you use Excel Pivot Tables? If you do, then you know that Pivot Tables are a great way to categorize, sum, and average a table with many rows of numbers. If you aren’t yet using them, you really should. This article assumes you already use Pivot Tables comfortably. But more importantly, Pivot Tables are …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Dynamic Named Ranges

Dynamic Named Ranges are unquestionably one of the most important tricks for automating Excel Telecom Dashboards and recurring reports. Dynamic Named Ranges (DNR) are exactly what the name implies: an Excel named range whose size can change automatically. It’s hard to imagine a real-world example of a recurring report which does not benefit from Dynamic …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Error Correction

It happens all the time: equipment in a Telecoms network stops reporting traffic statistics. It’s often a problem, though not always the one you think. The problem can be caused by a failing component somewhere along the data delivery path. You might think that’s the problem. More likely, the device is under excessive load, and …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Exclusion

Here’s a problem I’ll bet you struggle with all the time.  You’ve got sites in your network with problems.  High handover failures, high dropped calls, other failing KPIs.  It might include sites on the edge of a coverage area with no handover neighbors, or sites which are close to lakes and other bodies of water, …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Normalization

An objective common to almost every Telecoms activity you’ll do in your career is to share your work with others. Sharing in this sense can take many forms: Document steps taken. Identify a problem. Teach a task to others. Reveal a hidden truth. Propose another plan. Brainstorm fiercely. The context for each of these tasks …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Seasonality

We make lots of reports in Telecoms.  Telecoms seems to be built on reports. Reports and acronyms.  Reports for every piece of equipment, for every circuit, for every service, for every product.  We make reports for forecasting, budgeting, both CapEx and OpEx, analyses, models.  Tons of reports.  Reports of all the reports. One of the …

Excel Telecom Tricks – Synthetic Fields

With any tool you use frequently to solve many problems, there’s sure to be lots of tricks and shortcuts that can make your job so much easier.  Microsoft Excel is one of those tools for Telecoms, and there certainly are tricks and shortcuts.  Learning them will help you become more proficient with Excel, and give …