A question I’ve seen asked many times in different guises is how to keep an aggregation static and unaffected by filters for comparison purposes in Tableau. Dependent on the circumstances of how the data is set up in the background and how the visualisation needs to be filtered is how the solution is derived. Unfortunately I can’t be clearer than that, as everybody who’s familiar with Tableau knows every solution is different – and there are often multiple techniques availbale to reach the same goal.
In this post I’m going to detail what I feel is the simplest way to do a comparison of individual values against an aggregated value – for example how an individual stores sales compare against a group average, or how a regions new business leads compare against the entire country.
The key to this is to have the aggregation not affected by the filtering to allow for comparison. Read more…
If you have created tables in Tableau you might have noticed once you get to a six dimension columns in the table the left hand columns begin to merge into one column. This only happens when using dimensions as column headers, not measures as when displaying multiple measures in a table this can be achieved by putting only 1 pill, the Measure Names, on the shelf. If you want to know how to add measures read my article describing how to display multiple measures in a table.
Tableau is not really designed for showing tabular data but sometimes it’s useful to show line item data as part of a drill down in a table, or perhaps you need to create a report specifically with the purpose of exporting Tableau to Excel. Read more…
Recently I created a tabular report where it was a requirement for the user to be able to sort the list by all of the different measure columns. I generally publish my reports on to Tableau Server where sorting is easy by using the Tableau toolbar but I wanted to see how to do this without using the toolbar.
I began to think about ways to do this using parameters and calculated fields as a Dimension has the option of Sort By Field. Luckily I didn’t have to think to hard about how to do this as I stumbled across a blog post which describes how to set up dynamic sorting with Tableau. I slightly modified the more complicated of the 2 techniques described in that article, which I describe here.
For this example I’m going to use the Superstore Sales sample data Tableau provide and create a table showing the Customer State on the rows and the measure values Profit, Profit Ratio and Sales in the columns. If unsure how to do this check my other post on displaying data in tableau as a table. Read more…
I’ve just had a frustrating hour trying to work out why my attempts to blend data between an Excel file and a data extract wasn’t working. I was trying to blend on 2 fields – a text field called Metric, with the same field name in both datasets, and a date field called Date in the spreadsheet and InvoiceDate in the extract.
Tableau was clever enough to join the Metric fields automatically but I had problems joining the Date fields. I thought it would be a simple telling Tableau to join where Date = InvoiceDate but unfortunately there were a few more steps involved. Read more…
My current employer is still using Tableau Server 6.1 – or 6.1.6 to be precise. I’ve been trying to work out how the extracts work when pulling from a SQL Server so the same extract can be shared by multiple dashboards. The reason for this is that some of my extracts take a long time to update which is not ideal when the same extract is used in multiple dashboards and instead of refreshing it multiple times for each dashboard it would be more efficient to update just once and all dashboards using it will be updated together.
What I was wondering was if when you connect to a data extract in Tableau is whether the published extract is updated when any dashboard based on this extract is updated. It seems this isn’t the case. Once the extract is published it remains as it was a publication time for all time I believe. It appears that when you connect to that extract and publish the workbook Tableau actually duplicates the extract and updates this duplicate whenever the dashboard is updated. In other words the extract published individually to the server doesn’t alter but the duplicate Tableau made embedded in the dashboard does update. Read more…
One of the most useful things for me in Tableau is the ability to create a hierarchy in a few seconds. I have used this for building product hierarchies – i.e. product category, subcategory, group, etc – and also for reporting on regional data – i.e. Country, State, County, City, etc, which is great for using on maps (assuming you have a longitude and latitude at the bottom of the hierarchy). Read more…
I’ve noticed waterfall charts are becoming quite fashionable now. If you’re not sure why this is used, it’s a great way, for example, of showing how total revenue is compiled from it’s components. Using the Tableau Gantt Chart it’s quite simple to build. In this article I’ll give a very quick guide to building your own such as the chart below.
Read more…
I’ve faced a number of issues recently with Tableau report performance not being as good as required. This article is my attempt to combine the different ways to improve the speed I’ve learnt from other sources. The intention is to update this as I learn new techniques to achieve better performing Tableau reports. Read more…
I’ve only just discovered the bullet chart, I’ve had no need to create one until very recently. Both I and my customers find them really useful. They replace the less meaningful ‘traditional’ dashboard tools of guages and dials into something which conveys more information.
The purpose of using them is to compare a value against another value – for example sales this year vs sales last year or order count this year vs budget order count. It compares against the Total of 1 value and the percentiles of that total. In other words it can be seen at a glance if this year is ahead of last year, or to what percentile this year has reached against last year. Read more…
I recently read this in another article and found this extract very useful so thought I’d note it down. It’s a guide to developing a BI roadmap and I find the diagram, the BI Ladder to Success, especially helpful for just showing the things I believe BI should supply. I don’t necessarily they should be a ladder as such as this implies one is dependent on the other, but if your company is very strong on Step 1 – Standard Reports, for example, then the other things further up the ladder become far easier. If standard reporting is weak you’ll find the other steps are still possible but are likely to be far more complex and time consuming.
This is the BI Ladder to Success and can be used when trying to evaluate where you are right now in your organisation and help guide to where you want to get to. If you are working in a business intelligence role it is definitely worth having annual or bi-annual reviews of your BI roadmap. Read more…
