All in Tableau General Knowledge
Does your dashboard feel cluttered because you're trying to communicate too much supporting information to your user? Making sure you cover everything your user needs to know can leave your output feeling more like an essay than a data-driven dashboard.
Info buttons are a staple of Tableau dashboards. They allow you to pack so much additional information to a dashboard without cluttering the view for users.
Do you know the difference between measures and dimensions in Tableau? How about discrete and continuous fields? These are common points of confusion for Tableau Desktop users. Knowing the difference allows you greater control and customization as you leverage fields for visualization in Tableau. In this video, we review what you need to know to use discrete and continuous fields to build the visuals you want to see!
Can Tableau do conditional formatting like Excel? A lot of people will tell you that it’s not possible. However, they’re wrong! It might take a little creativity, but it can be done! Check out the video below to learn how you can select and conditionally format cells in a Tableau highlight table.
Tableau formatting is a world of its own. While there are loads of options, there are also some under the radar tricks which can help you build workbooks faster and cut down on repeat work.
Let me guess, you have a value (maybe a null) displaying in a Tableau filter and you want it to go away? You don’t want to leave it just sitting there because it’s ugly and your users are insatiably curious. You know if you leave it they are going to select it and you’re going to have to answer questions about what this “null” value means and why it’s a filter option.
Have you ever created a worksheet in Tableau only to have the dreaded 'Abc" text sitting there as a distracting eyesore for your users? You don't have to live with that! Check this video out for a few methods which can help you get rid of that pesky placeholder.
Tableau is a wonderful data visualization tool, but like any software, it has limitations and idiosyncrasies which make it difficult to work with at times. Thankfully, Tableau is aware of this and even created an ideas forum to crowdsource feature requests from users. In this video I talk about 10 ideas I would love to see Tableau incorporate into their products.
Having a lot of zeroes in a crosstab or highlight table can be clunky and visually overwhelming. Lots of zeros can divert your users' attention away from actual data values because the visual looks cluttered.
Reference lines in Tableau can serve a number of purposes. They can provide a constant point of reference, display an average, represent a dynamic, field-driven value, heck, they can even keep your axis length fixed to help users limit data comprehension issues due to change blindness.
When I first started using Tableau, I swear that I spent more time trying to unhide stuff I accidentally removed than I did actually building dashboards. Maybe you’re in the same boat or know someone who is. Hopefully we can help you out if that’s the case! Check out the video below to learn how to unhide almost anything in Tableau Desktop.
Worksheet filters provide Tableau Desktop developers and Tableau consumers to customize the worksheet they are looking out. There are a number of distinct worksheet filter types in Tableau. If you want to learn more about the filtering types and how you can utilize them, check out the video below!
Dealing with nulls in Tableau calculations requires a bit of specialized product knowledge. For instance you can’t write IF [Dimension] = NULL THEN “X” END. If you want to reference a null value, you need to use ISNULL. If you want to replace a null value with another value, you can use IFNULL. If you want to replace all nulls with zero, you can use ZN. Check out the video below to learn how these functions work and learn which kinds of use cases they are most helpful for.
Have you ever run into a situation in Tableau where you add labels to the ends of your lines, only to find out those labels are overlapping the lines and are borderline illegible?
Did you know there are at least 3 different types of groups you can create? Which of the types is a best fit for you depends largely on your situation and data.
If you come from an Excel background, you’re probably familiar with the classic “Nested IF” statement. Nested IF statements are possible in Tableau, but they look a little different. Check out the video below to learn how to write these in Tableau (and some formatting tips for keeping them clean).
I recently learned something crazy about Tableau. If you add a total to your worksheet and then try to filter another worksheet by selecting a total value, it doesn’t work! Maybe you’ve experienced this too and thought you were crazy. The unexpected solution to this problem is to add a separate total worksheet to a dashboard to use as a filter action. Tableau’s own documentation recommends this.
