Greece is in the news again, and FRED can help you track the developments: FRED has almost 2,000 time series that pertain directly to Greece and a multitude of features to organize and automate your analysis. The first step is to open an account in FRED. Once you do that, you can enjoy some of FRED’s key benefits.

Email notifications: You can save data series in your user account, and FRED will send you an email as soon as those series are updated. Simply navigate FRED while logged into your account and click on the email notification link in the sidebar of the series you’re interested in.

Excel add-in: You can create an Excel spreadsheet of FRED data without ever touching the FRED website. Download our add-in, which allows you to search for and download data directly from Excel and refresh the data with the click of a button.

Dashboards: You can create a dashboard of graphs, tables, and data points. You can return to your dashboard anytime, and the data are always current. You can also make the dashboard public, which allows you to share it with friends, colleagues, and students. You can also add the dashboard to your bookmarks and view it without having to log in. Here is one example of a very simple with a few graphs about Greece. You can make more-complex graphs or choose to display the data in different ways, such as a table or a single number.

Web page widget: If you want your web page or blog to always display the latest FRED data for your favorite series, consider using the FRED widget. You can customize it with up to 10 series—for example, the series for Greece that’s included here in this blog post or the series in the sidebar that applies to the U.S.

API: You can create you own application that pulls data directly from FRED through the API.

How this dashboard was created: First, log in to your FRED account. Click on “FRED economic data” under the seal, then search for “Greece”; this brings up a wide range of series to choose from. Create a graph, then click on “Save Graph” in the sidebar. Repeat the operation for as many graphs as you want. Once you’re ready to assemble your dashboard, expand “My Account” on the top of the page and click on “My Dashboards.” Click the “Create” button and follow the instructions: add a title, add a description, and decide whether to make the dashboard public. Click on “Add Widget,” chose “Graph,” then choose “Saved Graph”; then select the saved graph you want to insert. Repeat with new widgets for other graphs, tables, etc.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann