In one of the viz designs, we are using a data set that already includes the running sum, which is precalculated to save us some computations.

When calculating the totals per quarter or per year, we just need the numbers in the last month of the period, namely the number in the last month of the quarter, or the numbers in the last month of the year. This requires special calculations for both subtotals and grand totals.
Tableau Zen Master Jonathon Drummey has written profoundly on this topic in 2012 which served as my source of inspirations. In his blog, he showed how to manipulate the subtotals and grand totals.

In his examples, he showed how to use right most dimension for the custom calculation of both subtotals and grand totals. The aggregation result in his example is fairly simple. In our case, we found it not enough to give correct results for both totals.

In our solution, we used all the dimensions and derived a formula that allows to calculate subtotals and grand totals differently.
Note that we used both Month and Quarter Min()/Max() to set conditions. For quarterly subtotals, we used
  • Min(Month) != Max(Month) and Min(Quarter) = Max(Quarter)
For yearly totals, we used
  • Min(Month) != Max(Month) and Min(Quarter) != Max(Quarter)
In case necessary, subtotals and grand totals can be calculated using different formulas. Note that formula can be further expanded to accommodate more dimensions.

The workbook for the above solution can be found here.

PS.
Note that the subtotals and grand totals seem to work using any linear aggregations. But there are cases where complex aggregations may not work such as ratio SUM()/SUM(). You will see AGG() as aggregation function in Tableau.



4

View 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. 

0

Add a comment

Blog Archive
Loading
Dynamic Views theme. Powered by Blogger. Report Abuse.