One of the most powerful features of PowerPoint is the ability to easily add interactivity without complicated programming. Interactivity in a dashboard can be a tricky element. Typically interactivity is added as a “drill down” to allow the audience to see more details about a particular element. On the down side, it’s very difficult to easily absorb the information when you change from one window to another. It frequently requires your audience to flip back and forth. PowerPoint provides a unique ability to overcome this limitation that I like to call “dashboards in motion.”
For my example I’ve created buttons at the top of the screen to allow Rick to drill down to dashboards displaying the same information for individual years. These buttons link to a separate slide for the respective yearly details. I’ve applied a shadow effect to indicate which button has been pressed. You can also link directly from the dashboard elements (i.e. click on a chart to see more details.) For more about PowerPoint interactivity see my tutorial on Dynamic PowerPoint.