An alternative title could be "Highlighting without Ignoring the Rest of the Pack".

In a recent viz of the day, one member was highlighted against the rest. The rest was painted with the same grey color.
That doesn't show the rest of different players, which I found was not satisfactory. I felt that we still need to show that those are distinct players. I ended up by hand tuning the colors to make them in different shades of grey. The highlight of the chart remains intact.
I have been thinking about a systematic approach for solving such a problem:
- Highlight one member in a bright color
- Make the rest of the pack in a gradient color scheme.
- When not selected, that member fits into the gradient according to the sorting.

So I came up with a solution recently when working on another project. Again, I will use the superstore dataset where one of the sub categories is highlighted and the rest is in a gradient color scheme. The selected one can be dynamic. Below is the result. Click the image to view the interactive version.
To create the above, follow the steps below:
- Create a parameter [Sub Category] with the list of subcategories
- Create a calc field "Legend" which contains only [Product Sub Category]
- Drag Legend to the Color shelf. Sort it the way you like. Now the color shelf will populate and memorize the colors for every sub category name.
- Open color editor and find a gradient color palette (Grey Warm here). Assign it to Legend members. If based on Sum(Sales), the resulting color palette look like a continuous color. But it is still discrete.
- Change the underlying formula of Legend as follows:
- Open the color editor and assign a new color (Orange here) to 'True'. This way Tableau knows there are CountD([Product Sub Category])+1 colors in the chart. 17+1 colors in this specific case.

Note that "Legend" might affect your chart structure because it's a new dimension. If so, use ATTR(Legend) instead in the color shelf.

Now we are done!

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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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