Nobody blogs about failure, right? In meetings and during training sessions I often talk about both failure and success. Specifically, I often mention my definition of dashboard failure which is if the user asks:

“Can I download this data into Excel?”

This will, of course, happen but your role as a designer is to identify what the question is that the dashboard has provoked (good) but left unanswered (baaaaad). By coaxing out of the user(s) of the dashboard what it is that they would want to do with that data in Excel you take yourself a step closer to a complete, rounded dashboard that:

+ gives insight into a clearly defined question,

+ has a flow that mirrors the likely flow of questions, and (critically)

+ provides the data that allows the user to answer any questions that the dashboard has itself raised without any subsequent rework.

Keep going until no-one asks for or needs Excel. Keep succeeding.