Adding an Image Button to Preview Viz on Phone

Currently phone is the de facto platform for viewing vizzes, especially for those public vizzes. Not surprising. However, it's not so easy to view vizzes on phone at all. Here is a little effort to make it a bit easier to view any viz on phone. This enables the greater distribution and dissemination of vizzes, and also makes it easier to check dynamic data on the go.

The solution is adding an image button at the top-left corner of your viz. With a single touch on the button, user will be able to preview the entirety of the target viz.

Try the image button in this viz on your phone: https://goo.gl/yqYDBv or click the image below to access the viz.

So, how to create this image button?

1.Publish your initial viz (without image button) to the Tableau Public server first and get the URL of the viz, such as the one below (ignore the string starting with ? and after.)
https://public.tableau.com/views/MexicoIntentionalHomicideRate2010-2017/MexicosIntentionalHomicideRate2010-2017

2.Create the image URL by attaching the following string to the above URL.
.png?:showVizHome=no

The resulting image URL will be
https://public.tableau.com/views/MexicoIntentionalHomicideRate2010-2017/MexicosIntentionalHomicideRate2010-2017.png?:showVizHome=no

Give it a test before you go further.

3.Create an image object in dashboard with this image:

Note that the white area is transparent. Make the image object floating. Place it at the top-left corner of the target viz.

4.Fill the URL of the image object with the image link in Step 2.

That's it. Publish the viz again. And test the button.

On enterprise Tableau server or Tableau online, just add .png to the URL of your target viz. This will make the preview of any viz on phone a bit easier.

Let us know if this works for you by leaving comments.

(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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Vizible Difference

In search of data visualization excellence

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

2. Create an show/hide button

3. Add annotations

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