[Updates on the technique:
1. Seamless Sheet Swapping with Containers
This fixes the problem of displaying tooltips in lower worksheets.
2. Sheet Swapping with Pie/Tree Map/Packed Bubble Charts
It shows how to turn on/off gridless charts in sheet swapping.
]

In this blog, we propose an approach that solves the problem of sheet alignment, no matter how many sheets you have.

Sheet swapping/selecting is an interesting technique that has broad applications. In short it allows us to display multiple sheets on one canvas, one at a time. It provides a good alternative to the story points and enables various display options. A big advantage over story points is one can use global filters.

A popular approach to it is using a container and dropping all the sheets into the container. Each sheet is set to the Entire View. The problem is, although one sheet is shown at a time, we still see the ghost of the remnants of the other sheets. It takes extra spaces at the top and the bottom of the container. The sheets will shift up or down when selected. The effect is quite visible to human eyes and looks annoying.

Here we propose a containerless approach without the shifting issues. The steps are as follows:
1.Set up the selector as a parameter which is described here
http://kb.tableau.com/articles/knowledgebase/creating-sheet-selector-for-dashboard
In my example, I assigned the parameter values as 1,2,3. The descriptions are Line, Bar and Circle.

2.Create a filter and set it up as described in the above KB article.

3.Drag all the sheets to the dashboard in Floating mode. Set them to entire view and turn on the selector. No container please.

4.In the Layout Manager (lower left corner), set up the position for each of the 3 sheets the same:
x=0;y=0;w=800;h=600. Move the Chart Selector to the top.
That's it. You will save yourself from the worrisome sheet alignment issues.  Click the following image to go to the interactive version.
In the container approach, it saves us a few steps of positioning the worksheets. But it causes us the pain of misalignment. In our approach, we position every chart the same, which is a bit manual but repetitive. Not a bad exercise though. The charts thus positioned are exactly on top of each other without a single nano-meter of shift.

Similar approach is applied to a recent viz where the selector is based on action filters. Check it out here:
http://vizdiff.blogspot.com/2016/02/tableau-ambassadors-2016.html
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(Refresh the page if you want to view the gif image multiple times. Or go to Tableau Public and click the button at the top-right corner.)

Jake and I collaborated on a dashboard. He told me that he learnt a way to create an in-place help page in Tableau. He first saw it at a conference somewhere and couldn't recall who the speaker was. So I am blogging here about it but the credit goes to somebody else. If anyone knows who the original creator is, leave a comment below.

The key idea is to float a semi transparent worksheet on top of the dashboard, where a help text box is strategically placed on top of each chart. This way, we can explain how to view each chart and what data points are important, etc. This worksheet is collapsible by a show/hide button. 

Below I would like to show how this worksheet can be constructed.

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

  • Double click the empty space in Marks panel and add two single quotes. Make the null pill a text label. This creates a single null mark.
  • Set the view as "Entire View"

2. Create an show/hide button

  • Go to the target dashboard
  • Drag a floating vertical container to the dashboard, making it cover all the area of interest.
  • Drag the Single Null Mark sheet and drop it into the above container. Hide the sheet title.
  • Create an open/close button for the container and place the button at the top-right corner.

3. Add annotations

  • Format the sheet background opacity as 70% in the layout manager             
  • Select area annotations and place them anywhere of interest. 
  • Write help text and format it to highlight important messages.  
  • The text can serve as functional guide and/or insight guide.

Here is an example. Feel free to download the workbook and explore. Click the "i" button at the top-right corner to view the in-place help. 

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