Start from the CSV
This guide uses a handful of the sample's columns: employee_id, gender, salary, grade, department.
Template examples
How to design your Gender Pay Gap dashboard, widget by widget.
A pay-gap dashboard is one pair of filtered averages, plus a matrix that explains why they differ. Here’s how those cards come together, built using the real Gender Pay Gap template.
The building blocks
Five widget types cover almost every dashboard. Each one needs a specific shape of column.
KPIOne numeric column, summed, averaged, or counted
salary → Avg Salary - WomenChartA date or category column, plus a measure
grade + salary → by gradeMatrixTwo category columns and one measure
gender + grade + salaryRankingA category column and a measure, ranked
department + salary → top departmentsDetail tableWhichever columns people need to inspect
all 12 columns, sortable and filterableTwo ways to build every widget
Point and click
Add widget → pick a type → fill in Title, Value column, Calculation, and Format → Review → Add widget. Three steps, and every field has a default to start from.
Describe it
Type what you want in plain English. This is the faster path for anything the point-and-click form doesn't have a field for yet - like a second, smaller comparison number on a KPI.
Worked example: Gender Pay Gap
A filtered average: Avg Salary - Women
Add widget → KPI. Value column: salary. Calculation: avg. Format: currency. Filter: gender is Female.
The same card, the other filter value: Avg Salary - Men
Same Value column, same Calculation, same Format - just swap the filter to gender is Male. Two nearly-identical KPI cards is how the headline pay-gap pair gets built.
Rank departments by pay
Add widget → Ranking. Rank by: department. Value: salary. Calculation: avg. Format: currency. Show top: 5.
Explain the gap: Gender × Grade
Add widget → Matrix. Rows: gender. Columns: grade. Value: salary. Calculation: avg. Format: currency. Pay is close within every grade - the overall gap comes from how many of each gender sit in each grade, which this grid makes visible.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Only numbers add up.Sum and average work on numeric columns only - gender, grade, and department can be counted or grouped, not averaged.
- Format doesn’t follow automatically.Choosing "avg" doesn’t switch the card to currency by itself. "Avg Salary - Women" needed Format set to currency explicitly.
- A filter changes which rows, not the calculation."Avg Salary - Women" and "Avg Salary - Men" use the identical Value column and Calculation - only the filter’s value changes. Keep the calculation the same when comparing two filtered versions of one metric, or the numbers won’t be comparable.
See it built