Sorting Stacked Bars in Tableau

Someone came up with a question: how to sort stacked blocks within each stacked bar?

Each bar is a stack of small blocks of various sizes. Usually the blocks are all sorted by the same category, uniformly across all the bars. How to sort each bar individually according to the sizes?

I wondered about the same question before, but never actually solved it. So this is the time to give it a shot. It worked out pretty well. Based on the superstore data set, I created stacked bar chart showing Sales per Year and per Sub-category.

The solution is fairly simple: create a LOD expression of Sales by Year and Sub-category.

{Fixed Year(Order Date), Sub-Category: Sum(Sales)}

Put this new dimension in the Detail shelf. Drag Sub-Category into the Color shelf as an attribute ATTR(). The key of creating that LOD expression is being able to manipulate each block in every stacked bar.

Voila, we have each bar sorted by Sales.

Click the above image to view the interactive version.

Update 10/12/2020: Over at twitter https://twitter.com/IvettAlexa/status/1315579768734183428?s=20, I just learned there is another approach pre-LOD. Here it is https://kb.tableau.com/articles/howto/sorting-segments-within-stacked-bars-by-value This is a better solution I think.

Update 6/22/2023: A slightly change to the above solution at kb.tableau.com: No ATTR is necessary. Instead, place Region pill in Color under the Combined dimension pill in Detail. It works!

(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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