Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #398, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

Everyone loves a pretty dashboard, right?

But building dashboards in Google Sheets is difficult and involves lots of finicky formatting tricks. And even then, it won't look or perform as well as a professionally-developed web dashboard.

Well... no longer!

Today we're looking at the biggest update to Google Sheets since, well, forever.

Google have launched a new Gemini-powered dashboard tool inside Sheets called Canvas.

Here it is building a fully interactive Kanban board from a single prompt, all inside Sheets and taking less than 5 minutes:

Using Canvas, we can build super impressive dashboards that sync with our data in real time, in just a few minutes.

Check out the tutorial below.

➜ News

I.
​You can now copy entire notebooks in Gemini Notebook (formerly called NotebookLM).

​Read more here >>​

➜ Sheets Tip #398: How to build Dashboards with the new Google Sheets Canvas Feature

We've had Gemini in Google Sheets for a while now, and it's given us super useful tools like the AI function.

But this new Canvas feature finally feels close to a true illustration of the power of combining AI with our Sheets.

Availability

Who has access?

Currently Canvas is available to Google Workspace customers on Business or Enterprise Standard and Plus plans, or AI Pro for Education add-on subscribers, or to consumers on Google AI Pro and Ultra plans.

(If you don't have access, then you can use the regular Gemini app to build dashboards using data in your Google Sheet. But this new Canvas tool drastically simplifies the whole process and has many benefits of being inside your Google Sheet.)

How To Build A Dashboard with Canvas

Stage 1: Design

Before you even start building your dashboard, you should think about the goals of the dashboard. Ask yourself questions such as:

• Who will use this dashboard?
• What will they do with the information presented in the dashboard?
• What information do they need to see in the dashboard to perform their role?
• How technically literate are they? etc.

These answers will shape the design of your dashboard and help you write an effective prompt to build the dashboard.

Stage 2: Data

Once you have a clear plan, you need your data in a single Google Sheet (multi Sheet connection not available at the moment). Ideally, data should be in a Tables format, which is best for Gemini.

Stage 3: Access Canvas

if you are on one of the plans that includes the Canvas feature, there are three ways to access it:

1. From the toolbar: Insert > Canvas
2. Using the “Create a canvas” button in the bottom left of your Sheet, next to the Sheet names.
   ​(Both 1 and 2 open the Gemini sidebar with the Canvas option pre-selected.)
3. You can select “Create canvas” directly in the Gemini sidebar too.

Stage 4: Enter a prompt

All that's left to do is type in a prompt to build the dashboard!

My favorite use case is building a Kanban board, which is a project management tool that lets you drag cards into different columns to show the status of projects.

This kind of interactivity is impossible to do using regular charts in Google Sheets, but this new canvas tool can build a fully interactive Kanban board in a few minutes.

Here's an example prompt:

And this is the output it generates in a sheet:

Have a look at the animated GIF image at the top of this email to see the drag-and-drop feature in action.

Once you try it, you'll never build dashboards the same way again.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. AI will help me with all those unfinished projects, right?​