Clearly and Simply

Tag: tableau parameters

  • Dynamic Hierarchies with Tableau

    How to add dynamic, interactive hierarchies to your Tableau Dashboard

    The second article of a guest post series on “Expand your Reach in Tableau with Parameters”

    Confirming the hierarchy / Photographer: patries71 (flickr.com)This is the very long expected continuation of a guest post series by Sheel Bhatiani, Lead Software Developer at Cheyne Capital. We started Sheel’s series already back in November last year, but ever since I left you waiting. Please blame it on me, it is not Sheel’s fault. It is my bad. When starting the series, I have simply bitten off more than I could chew and I didn’t find the time to do the final editing and to publish the next article.

    However, better late than never. The wait is over and here is Sheel’s second post. Enjoy.

    My first post Dynamic Sorting with Tableau introduced a technique to expand your reach in Tableau. One Parameter combined with one Calculated Field enables you to add an interesting additional feature to an interactive dashboard: let the user decide the sort criterion and the sort order for a selected view.

    Today’s second article of my guest post series “Expand your Reach in Tableau with Parameters“ will use a similar technique for adding a similar interactive feature: let the user decide which hierarchy shall be shown in a view. Again, the post includes the background, a detailed step-by-step tutorial and the dashboard for direct interaction here or the option to download the workbook via Tableau Public.

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  • Dynamic Sorting with Tableau

    How to add a dynamic, interactive sorting feature to your Tableau Dashboard. The first article of a guest post series on “Expand your reach in Tableau with Parameters”

    Sorting Oranges / Photographer: bighornplateau1 (flickr.com)To me, one of the most interesting sessions of this year’s Tableau Customer Conference was “Tips & Tricks from the Wild”, where five Tableau champions presented some of their best techniques in Tableau. One of these exceptional Tableau experts is Sheel Bhatiani, Lead Software Developer at Cheyne Capital. I liked his tip so much that I asked if he would be so kind to share some of his tricks here on Clearly and Simply. I am very happy to inform you that Sheel not only agreed to write one guest article here, but rather to publish a whole series of posts on how to “Expand your reach in Tableau with Parameters”. Sheel kicks off his series with today’s article. Enjoy.

    Parameters – introduced with Tableau version 6 – are dynamic values that replace constants in calculations. They can be changed by the user of a dashboard or worksheet with an interactive control. This opens a lot of opportunities. Parameters in combination with Calculated Fields enable you to add a whole variety of additional interactivity to your Tableau workbook and dashboard. One of the most interesting things about Parameters is their ability to bring the existing Tableau built-features to the next level.

    Today’s first article of my post series here shows the main concept of how to do this and includes a detailed tutorial how to use this for implementing a user-friendly interactive control to change the sort measure and the sort order of a view on a dashboard: Dynamic sorting with Tableau at your fingertips.

    Are you ready to expand your reach in Tableau with Parameters? Here you go.

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  • Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6

    Use Parameters and Table Calculations in Tableau 6 for a Site Catchment Analysis of Germany

    © R.-B. / pixelio.deFor a recent post called Calculated Fields in Tableau I used a site catchment analysis of Germany to explain how to use and take advantage of Calculated Fields in Tableau. The example posted back then was produced with Tableau 5.2.

    The main disadvantage of that workbook is the fact that you have to change a constant in a Calculated Field if you want to switch to another center location for the site analysis. Inconvenient and even impossible if you only have the Tableau Reader available.

    With version 6, available since November 10, 2010, Tableau introduced an extremely powerful new feature: Parameters. Parameters are user-defined constants that can be used in Calculated Fields. They can be entered by the user of the workbook either on worksheets or dashboards, are valid throughout the whole workbook (e.g. they are global) and can be used in any Calculated Field. Thus, it wasn’t far to seek that with parameters Tableau 6 would easily overcome the main drawback of the Tableau 5 site analysis workbook.

    Today’s post shows how to transform the site analysis workbook to Tableau 6 using parameters. As usual including the Tableau Public workbook for direct access and free download.

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