I was recently working on a project where we wanted to compare weekly performance, but it only made sense to compare weeks once they were complete. As a result, we routinely came across situations where we wanted to compare the last full week to the previous full week.
All in Tableau Calculations
Sometimes, when analyzing your business, you want to know how values month to date compare to this same point last month. We wrote a post about how to write these calculations in Tableau a while ago, but we’ve updated our methods and have some simpler formulas now! Check out the video below to learn the simplest way to write Month to Date and Previous Month to Date formulas.
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).
Tableau provides flexibility when working with dates, but sometimes getting it to do exactly what you want requires a custom touch.
If you’ve ever gotten stuck writing date calculations in Tableau, this webinar is for you!
One of the most popular blog posts on the OneNumber blog was Calculating Year to Date Versus Previous Year to Date in Tableau.
Tableau doesn’t have a great native feature for comparing year to date values to the same time period from the previous year, but it can be accomplished with a few calculations!
Last week, I published a blog post about the power of compound interest and embedded related a Tableau Public dashboard (also below).
A few months ago, a blog reader, Om Parekh, reached out to me with a question. He was working on a project where he needed to compare each day to the same day the previous year. For instance, how did the third Wednesday in February, 2020 compare to the third Wednesday in February, 2019?
I was recently working on a project that incorporated building management. One aspect of the management of the buildings was to ensure that regular inspections were done on each floor of each building weekly.
Imagine you are asked the question, “How do this month’s sales compare to this same period from last year?” The simplest way to address this in Tableau would be to create some calculations.
Summary tiles are a great way to quickly communicate a few meaningful measures to your end users in a dashboard. Adding indicator arrows and allowing the colors of the summary tile to change can make them even more impactful.
You probably know that you can only set one number format per field in Tableau. That means that if you create a dynamic measure driven by a parameter (check out this blog post for details) you have to choose a number format. You could choose percent, decimal or currency, but you can’t get the format to swap.
Tableau is a fantastic tool because of its flexibility, but it takes some time to master. Nowhere is this more evident than date calculations. Many of our most read blog posts deal with topics like comparing Month to Date vs. Previous Month to Date.
I’ve gotten asked by multiple students if it’s possible to create a currency formatted field where the unit at the end of the number can be a K or M depending on the size of the value. Let’s imagine we are working with a chart like this…
It seems like just about every organization I work with has a little twist to the way they like their dashboards presented which varies slightly from the next organization. Recently, I was working with a team that largely provided their reporting on a weekly basis and displayed the Week End date in a DD-MMM format.
Imagine you are looking at a Tableau visual and want to to view the data translated into your local time zone. Transactions take place all over the country in different time zones but you’d like to see them all in local Pacific Time (for instance).
Level of Detail Expressions are one of the most powerful and least understood features in Tableau's calculation toolkit. Watch the below webinar recording to learn how they can be used to get more out of your Tableau workbooks.