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.
No! This post is not a mistake. It really is our third blog post in the last three years detailing how to transpose values in Tableau Prep. The tool is rapidly evolving, and the good new is that the process of transposing values is becoming more seamless each time.
Did you know there are at least 3 different types of groups you can create? Which of the types is a best fit for you depends largely on your situation and data.
Google Sheets has some cool functions which allow users to import data to Google Sheets from a webpage.
Have you ever noticed how axes in Tableau worksheets are always at the bottom? That can feel counterintuitive to end users. They have to go all the way to the bottom of the worksheet and read the axes to determine what the worksheet is trying to communicate.
I was recently reading the book Principles by Ray Dalio (who founded one of the largest hedge funds in the world). He has an interesting mind and displayed a chart for visualizing data over time series, ranking values against each other. He mentioned that good thinkers are generally able to identify and visualize trends well. His chart looked something like this.
I provide summary tiles at the top of most dashboards I build to provide easy-to-find, bite-size information for my end users. There are a couple primary approaches to creating summary tiles in Tableau and a few tricks you can utilize to make them look crisp.
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?”
In Excel, you can easily highlight an entire row in a spreadsheet by selecting a row and adding fill to the background of the cells. How about Tableau however? Tableau highlight tables get you close, but one of their shortcoming is they don’t highlight the background of dimensional headers.
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).
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.