Do you have a field that needs leading zeros added? Maybe a postal code or ID that got formatted as a number and as a result dropped the leading zeros? If that's the case, check out this video for a couple alternatives to get those leading zeros at the beginning of your field again!
All in Tableau Calculations
Does Tableau have a PROPER() function? No! But can we convert strings to proper case anyways with some ingenuity? Probably! Check out this video to learn how you can apply proper case to single word, multiple words and even deal Irish style names in Tableau!
Do you need to create a calculation in Tableau which differentiates between weekends and weekdays?
In the past, we’ve covered how to write a calculation which allows you to compare today to the same day of the year in Tableau. In that scenario, we used the day of year number for comparison. That works well if January 27th from this year should be compared to January 27th of last year (for example). However, what if you want to compare so that equal days of week are being compared?
Recently, I received an email from a blog follower wondering if a single field in Tableau could categorize data at multiple date unit levels (e.g. year, quarter and month). With a bit of calculation creativity, we were able to write a calculation which…
Groups are an incredible feature in Tableau, but they are limited. For instance, you can’t leverage a group for a blend or cross-database join.
If you need to use the output of a group for data preparation, you will probably want to turn it into a calculated field. Rather than doing it slowly by hand, why not leverage a quick calculation which can speed up the process?
Check out the video below to learn how you can easily turn a group into a calculated field in Tableau.
Sometimes when I’m creating summary tiles for Tableau dashboards, I like to add arrows or percent increases/decreases to let consumers know how current values relate to the comparison period.
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.
This might be a record short post for the OneNumber blog! I hope I can save you the five minutes I wasted writing custom string calculations trying to combine Date and Time fields in Tableau.
A student in one of my Tableau classes recently told me they were searching for a solution to one of their problems and came across my blog post Month to Date vs. Previous Month to Date in Tableau. Score!
I asked if it solved his problem and he mentioned that his use case was slightly different. Instead of answering the question, “How do month to date sales compare to previous month to date?” he was trying to answer, “How do month to date sales compare to month to date sales for each month from the past year?”
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).
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.
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!