The OneNumber Blog — OneNumber

A few weeks ago, we took a look at how to build donut charts in Tableau. Building a donut chart is similar to building many other views in Tableau. It’s simple to set up, but how do you get it looking really great?

This question comes up in my classes. Often, it’s the way we format our charts that has the biggest impact on our end users. So, while this week’s video pertains to donut charts, I hope that it holds some tips and tricks for adding layers of interest into our other views and charts too!

Mar 8
Mar 8 Date Values (Green) vs. Date Parts (Blue) in Tableau

Tableau Dates

Visualizing time-series data is one of Tableau's best and defining features. Tableau provides a flexible method for visualizing dates so you can easily display chronological values and compare time periods.

However, with that flexibility comes a lot of a lot of options which can feel overwhelming and complex. For instance, why are there two different ways to visualize months and what's the difference? What does that mean if a date pill is green versus blue?

Mar 1
Mar 1 How to Swap a Field with a Tableau Parameter

Tableau General Knowledge, Tableau Calculations, Tableau Parameters

Parameters are a powerful tool in Tableau. They allow your end user to customize the view that they're seeing by selecting your pre-defined parameter values.

But where do we begin when using parameters? Well, the "Swap-A-Field" Parameter is the perfect place!

Feb 22
Feb 22 How to Automate a Tableau Prep Flow

Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep is a powerful tool for cleaning, structuring and preparing data for analysis in Tableau Desktop. The Tableau Prep Builder software provides the ability to create data workflows which can be run manually. That's fine when data is updated infrequently, but it doesn't work well when data needs to be refreshed every day or every hour.

Feb 15
Feb 15 Multiple Color Legends for a Single Measure in Tableau

Tableau General Knowledge, Tableau Calculations, Tableau How-Tos

When you put a single measure on the color tab in your Tableau worksheet, you get a single color legend. That makes sense.

But sometimes it can be frustrating. For instance, what if two different segments of your business have significantly different Sales values?

Feb 8
Feb 8 Combine Multiple Filters into a Single Swappable Filter in Tableau

Design

How often do you build a Tableau dashboard and feel like it has too many filters? This happens to me all the time! You don't know what to do with them, right? Make two rows of filters? Ugh. Make a massive column? That's a lot of screen real estate. Add show/hide buttons so users can toggle a layout container on and off the page? That doesn't seem ideal either. What if someone doesn't realize they can show filters?

Feb 1
Feb 1 How to Build Donut Charts in Tableau

Donut Charts are a very visually-appealing chart type, used to show part-to-whole relationships. They’re simple and effective, and are a great tool to add to your dashboarding arsenal. While they’re not a built-in chart type in Tableau (unlike a bar chart, pie chart, or line graph), we can build them with a few extra steps!

Jan 25
Jan 25 How Calculate (and Filter) to the Max Day in a Data Set in Tableau

Tableau Dates, Tableau Calculations

Let's say you want to filter a Tableau worksheet to only contain data from the latest date in the data set. That's pretty simple if the latest date is consistently today or yesterday. You can just use a relative date filter! But what if the most recent date in the data set is less consistent?…

Jan 18
Jan 18 How to Tableau: Pivots in Tableau Desktop

Getting the structure of our data correct for Tableau Desktop can make a huge difference. Tableau is pretty picky about the way it wants our data to be formatted. Generally, each column should be a new dimension or measure.

Jan 11
Jan 11 Tableau Join Types Explained (Left, Right, Inner, Outer)

Data

Joins in Tableau Desktop are one of the primary methods for combining multiple tables of data horizontally. One of the great things about joins are their flexibility! You can choose if you'd like to keep all data from both tables in your result set, or if you prefer to keep only matching records.

Jan 4
Jan 4 How to Tableau: Quarter to Date vs. Prior Year Quarter to Date

Tableau Calculations, Tableau Dates

Tableau is a great tool for operationalizing time period comparisons. One of the classics is comparing quarters.

For example, you might want to know how this quarter compares to last quarter. That's a great way to compare values if your business isn't very seasonal. However, what if you sell sunscreen? You can bet that comparing fall to summer is always going to look like a bummer.

Dec 28
Dec 28 How to Build a Circle Timeline Chart in Tableau

Tableau General Knowledge, Tableau Dates

When it comes to displaying data over time, it's easy to fall into the trap that you should always use some form of line graph. While line graphs are a great default when displaying chronological data, they aren't always your best option!

Dec 21
Dec 21 Why Aggregations Are Important in Tableau Calculations

Tableau Calculations

Aggregations are functions which allow you to consolidate numerous rows of values into a single output. SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT and COUNTD are some of the most used aggregations in Tableau.

Aggregations play an important role in Tableau calculations. If they aren't used properly, calculations will return incorrect results!

Dec 14
Dec 14 How to Tableau: Cross-Database Joins

A huge benefit of using joins in Tableau is that we can combine data from multiple tables into a single table for analysis. When those tables are in different databases, it can be a little tricky to work out where to start. If you know how to join tables within the same database, that's great! Cross-database joins only take a few more steps to execute, and I'll walk you through them in today's video.

Dec 7
Dec 7 Tableau IF THEN Logic Function Explained