Tableau date period comparisons and calculations work great as long as you use a conventional calendar. If your organization uses a non-standard calendar (e.g. your fiscal year doesn’t start on January 1st or you have comparison periods like semesters which aren’t native to Tableau), you probably need to create and integrate your own calendar with your data source.
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).
I recently received an email from a blog reader who was trying to solve a problem I’ve come across several times. He was representing populations on a map of the world in a chart that looked something like this.
I’ve known for several years that Google Sheets is the only data source which Tableau Public can automatically refresh for users. Until a few weeks ago, I had never tried to set up a living connection between Tableau Public and a routinely updated Google Sheet. It turns out that Tableau Public is good at holding up it’s end of the bargain, but keeping Google Sheets updated isn’t as simple.
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.
Does sorting in Tableau ever tick you off? Do your users have trouble finding the sort icon on the axis of a worksheet? Are your end users messing up your custom sorts and blaming it on you?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this week’s video is for you!
I recently saw some visuals built in a non-Tableau data visualization tool (not sure which one) that were utilizing emojis in dimension labels. I thought it was a fun way to mix up the standard labeling and text tables we usually see.
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!
My Seattle Mariners fandom was cemented in the 1990s watching Ken Griffey Junior, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Joey Cora, Alex Rodriguex and others tear up the American League. Some of my fondest and earliest memories are attending games at the Kingdome with my dad.
Last week, I published a blog post about the power of compound interest and embedded related a Tableau Public dashboard (also below).
According to a number of questionable sources, Albert Einstein once said “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.”
I’ve been working on a project with a client for several months where we are reporting against a sizable data source. Initially that data source took about 1-3 hours to extract locally which was okay. The faster the better, but I could live with it.
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?