Creating datasets for others

- [Instructor] When people discover that you have some great data skills, one thing you'll find is they'll want to leverage those data skills for others. I know this happened a lot with the technology department in the early days. They were the only group that would have access to the backend of the data and the tools really to query it. The minute they would find an IT person who could build great queries for a business unit, that person was the person who was pinged every time a new query was needed. One of the highest compliments you can be paid, in my opinion, is that the data that you're producing is so valuable and they trust it, that they want you to be a source provider for others, even if you're not in the technology department. I want to spend just a few moments to share with you some of the best practices that I've developed over the years by supporting my clients and teams that I serve. First off, there's no such thing as too much information. It is good for them as it is for you. If you document information with the files, you don't have to remember it, you can just reread it. I would encourage you to document things like where the data is sourced from, and what all was done with it prior to you working with it. Let me show you an example. I'm going to right click inside my folder. I'll go to New. I'll do Text Document. And I'm going to create a ReadMe file. Okay? Go ahead and press Enter. And I'll open up that notepad. This data comes from our research survey. The original data is stored in the original data folder in this drive. The data was direct from the survey tool. It was not touched before transformation. Now, what I mean by that is, someone didn't go in and tweak the file and then send it to me. It came direct from the survey tool and right into my working file. Okay. So I'll go ahead and close that. And now I have a ReadMe file that I can refer to and have any other notes that I want to include there. Okay. I also like to create a working list of files. So let me open up my ResearchData_WorkingFile. And I have an Information tab. I could also name this ReadMe. Okay. This tab will be dedicated to information about the data on the Data tab. So I'll go back to my Data tab. And the first thing I want to do is document my headers. So I'll do Shift, Control and right arrow to select all of them. I'll go ahead and copy them. I'll go to Information. And I'll paste them in. Now I really want to transpose these, 'cause it's easier to read. And then while they're still highlighted, I'll go ahead and remove that formatting. Okay. I give myself a little bit of space here. And then I'll go ahead and wrap the text. Okay. These are all original fields. Now what I mean by original fields is, it wasn't created after the fact came directly from the survey. I'll go ahead and type Yes. And I'll double click and auto-fill all that down. Okay. I'll do Information on this field. Okay. You can name that anything. All right. So first thing here is, this is when the survey was taken by a responder. And I'll scroll down a little bit. There's some work I did on this Promotions. So on Promotions, I'll type this was merged to capture all the individual answers into one column. Okay. I also did the same thing on the Industry. So I'll do Control apostrophe to copy that same text. Okay. Perfect. Anything that I add, I'll go in and include it in the order of where I've added it. And then instead of yes in the original fields, I would say no, because it would be an included field or a calculated field. That way, when anyone looks at the data, they know what was already there and what I added. All right. Let me go back to my Data. And I'll do Control Home to get back to A1. And then I'll save my work. If everyone has the same access level to the data, when they refresh the data, it's great. The tool just automatically refreshes. And this helps them and helps you. However, most people do not have the same level of access to information. So when you're developing data for other people, you want to make sure that the copy that you're providing them is disconnected from that data. Let me show you an easy way to do that. I'll right click my Data sheet tab, I'll choose Move or Copy. I'll create a copy and move it to a new workbook. I'll click OK. I'll go to my Query tab. And I'll delete this query from the workbook. It tells me that anything that I delete will not be refreshable. And that's perfect. I'll go ahead and choose Delete. Okay. Great. Now I need to go back over to my file and pull my ReadMe. I need it, and they need it. So I'll go to my View tab. I'll go to Switch Windows. I'll go back to my research file. All right. I'll go to my Information tab. Going to right click this. Move or copy it. Create a copy. And move it to my book. Move it to the end. Okay. I'll go ahead and click OK there. All right. Perfect. Okay. Let me go ahead and dress this up a little bit, because it's for other people. If it was just for me, I wouldn't care. Go ahead and give this some borders. Perfect. And I like to have everything in line to the top. That's just me. Okay. So now my data is disconnected. My information file is intact. We'll do one last thing. Change this tab color to red. Okay. Let me save this as ResearchData ForTeam. And then I'll go ahead and choose Save. You'll want to make it as easy as possible for others to work with your file. Plan and spend just a little time upfront on the information about the file. It's helpful if you have to refer back to your work. And it's also a time-saver for those who work with your file, because they'll be able to answer some of their own questions just from the information you provide.