All in Tableau Dashboards
Do you need to build a dashboard in Tableau Cloud but you don't know where to start? We've got you covered!
In this video, we cover connecting to data, building data visualizations, filtering, number formatting, worksheet formatting, Table Calculations, compiling a dashboard and publishing your work.
Join us for a thorough breakdown on how to build your first dashboard in Tableau Cloud!
Do you want to show and hide sheets on your dashboard with only a click? Dynamic Zone Visibility lets you do exactly that. This is far more dynamic than filter actions, as we can show or hide any number of sheets and their elements from a single interaction.
There are a few key steps to getting this right, so follow along to see how to implement this into your dashboards too!
Tableau's Dashboard Actions are powerful tools that we can use to add significantly increased levels of interactivity to our dashboards. Interactive dashboards are part of what makes Tableau such an engaging product for our data analysis.
Of all the actions in Tableau, Filter Actions are some of the most common and useful. They allow us to click on one worksheet and filter another, or filter a worksheet on another dashboard entirely!
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?
Do you have an object in your Tableau dashboard that should be expanding and contracting but isn't?
There are a number of reasons you might set up an object to expand and contract. Maybe it's a detailed sheet that should only display when the user makes a selection from the summary sheet at the top of the dashboard. Maybe it's a parameterized worksheet swap. Maybe you've set up a simple show/hide button for your user.
Regardless, when an object is in a layout container and isn't expanding and contracting as desired, it's frustrating!
Do you ever find yourself working on a data-related project and wonder "What are we doing here?". While data-related endeavors can drive massive values, many of them are fairly directionless. Maybe there's a top-down mandate to "become more data-driven" without much thought about what that actually means.
We believe that the highest purpose of data analysis is to support informed experimentation. Creating dashboards with facts and figures is helpful, but it's really only the first step in the process.
Ready to learn about those additional steps and how you can drive value in your organization? Check out this video on the purpose of data analysis!
One of the most important steps to developing a successful Tableau project is the ideation and whiteboarding phase. In the modern world, we often don't get to do that whiteboarding in person. That poses a real change. Whiteboarding in person is instantaneous. It's easy to erase one idea and sketch another. That becomes a lot more challenging in a remote, online environment.
Even the best online sketching tools are a bit clunky, not to mention it's hard to sketch well on a computer screen with a freehand or stylus.
Over the years, I've had an up and down relationship with layout containers in Tableau dashboard. I remember they saved me on my first big project when I needed to design a worksheet with a dynamic height.
However, then I eventually soured on them. I found them cumbersome and I didn't like how they would show up automatically and force me to lay items out in a particular order.
Over time, I've come back around and have a healthy respect for containers. In fact, I use them in the majority of dashboards I build now. Here are a few key ways I use containers:
Navigating around the dashboards you’ve built can be difficult. How do you build a good homepage? How can you easily toggle from one dashboard to the next without it feeling clunky? Is it even possible for Tableau dashboards to feel easy to navigate?
In today’s video, we answer all those questions. We’ll build a great homepage that allows you navigate to all your dashboards, using icons and buttons. We’ll create dropdown, hamburger menus and a home button to help your users navigate to other dashboards, or go straight back to the homepage.
These skills can make your dashboards feel slick, professional, and user-friendly!
Effective data dashboard design is an art. It requires meticulous attention to detail. It includes visualizing the right data, displaying the appropriate level of granularity, designing an efficient layout, and making a number of minute design decisions so the data hits your user "just right".
If you're looking for a checklist of design elements to review before your next dashboard rollout, you've came to the right place! In this video, we discuss the following 15 design best practices:
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!
Sometimes, users need to see the same data multiple ways to develop thorough insights. Providing your user the ability to switch worksheet types (e.g. swap a map for a bar chart) is a great way to provide them with flexibility in analysis!
One of my favorite tricks in Tableau dashboarding is to allow users to swap worksheets! You can hook a parameter up to a calculation which filters/swaps between multiple sheets in a Tableau dashboard.
Users love text tables. No matter how much we steer them toward data visualizations that do a better job of exposing patterns, outliers and areas of interest, many users are still most comfortable viewing data in a table.
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One of my favorite solutions is to have the text table expand / appear when users make a selection and collapse / disappear when they deselect a value.
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.
Tableau is a powerful analytical tool, but learning its ins and outs can feel daunting. Whether you are a first time user, shaking off some rust, or trying to get a colleague up to speed, this video is designed to give an overview of the Tableau interface and get a user comfortable with creating worksheets, calculations and dashboards.
