All tagged Tableau Filters

Do you want to build a customizable, dynamic date range filter in Tableau?

For example, imagine you want the filter to default to the last 14 days ending with today's date, but you'd like your user to be able to adjust the end date and number of days in that filter.

That combination of functionality is not available out-of-the-box in Tableau, but with some creativity, parameters and calculations, it's possible!

One of the primary purposes of a dashboard title is to provide context for users. It should give them a sense of what they are looking at, and what they are looking for.

My favorite way to add value to a dashboard title is to have it reflect filter selections. For example instead of saying "How is our hospital system performing?" it could say "How is Trinity Northern performing?" when the dashboard is filtered to a single hospital.

Filtering on a date range in Tableau is pretty straightforward, right? But how about if you want to filter on that date range AND you want a comparison date range filtered at the same time? That's trickier.

For example, you set a filter from January 1st to March 15th 2024 and you want a comparison period of January 1st to March 15th 2023 to automatically be set, how do you do that?

If you want to reference data that isn't visible in your Tableau worksheet, you're going to need a trick to 'hide' that data rather than filter it out of the worksheet entirely. For example, if you want to calculate year over year growth but only display the latest year, you can't filter the prior year out of your worksheet or Tableau will not be able to reference the prior year values.

Hiding data with a filter in Tableau is an expert trick you should know about. One of the best ways to 'hide' data with a filter is to use a Table Calculation filter. Table Calculations filters are one of the last steps processed in Tableau's order of operations. They are even processed after your standard table calculations (e.g. Percent of Total, Rank, Percent Difference) are computed.

I was recently working on a project for a client that had a lot of dimension filters - anywhere from 5-10 on each dashboard. This allowed us to drilldown to the level of information we needed!

But a problem arose when we wanted to reset the filters and select new values. How could we do that? Did we really need to reset each filter individually? That’s so inefficient!

Users love filtering and sorting options in Tableau dashboards, right?

Odds are, you know you can use a parameter to change the top number of values displaying in a worksheet. However, did you know you can also use a parameter to change whether it's the Top 10 or Bottom 10 values displaying? Did you know that same parameter can control whether the sort order is ascending or descending? It's true!

How often do you build a Tableau dashboard and feel like it has too many filters? This happens to me all the time! You don't know what to do with them, right? Make two rows of filters? Ugh. Make a massive column? That's a lot of screen real estate. Add show/hide buttons so users can toggle a layout container on and off the page? That doesn't seem ideal either. What if someone doesn't realize they can show filters?

Every application seems to have it's own syntax for IF logic statements, right? SQL, Excel and Tableau IF statements all look a little different.

Check this video out for a deep dive into the world of logical operators, simple and advanced IF statements in Tableau!

When you have a worksheet with many values, one of the best ways to present it to your user is to filter on the most relevant values. Those will often be the highest or lowest values. Tableau has a built in dimension filter which allows you to pick the top (or bottom) number of values you would like to display (e.g. Top 10).

You know what Tableau doesn't have out of the box? The ability to select the top *percent* of values to filter on. Don't sweat it though, because we've got you covered! With a parameter, calculation and filter application, we can filter on a top percent of values and give end users the options to change the top percent of values being displayed.