By: Eric Parker
Eric Parker lives in Seattle and has been teaching Tableau and Alteryx since 2014. He's helped thousands of students solve their most pressing problems. If you have a question, feel free to reach out to him directly via email. You can also sign up for a Tableau Office Hour to work with him directly!
Tableau is optimized to perform date comparisons and calculations relative to a standard calendar. If your organization’s year starts on the first of a month other than January, Tableau can still handle that relatively well. The flexibility breaks down when the calendar year doesn't start on the first of the month and the comparison periods (e.g. semester or trimester) don't align with Tableau's pre-built periods (quarters, months, weeks).
You can easily create a calendar in Excel, integrate it with your existing data, and develop period-over-period comparisons like, "How many students have enrolled in our college at this point in the semester compared to the same point last year?". Check out the video below to learn how!
Here are the resources mentioned in the video.
How to Calculate Date Difference in Business Days (in Tableau)
Data Scaffolding in Tableau (Creating a Series of Values Based on Only a Start and End Date)
Data Blending in Tableau - How it Works and When You Need it
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