Vizible Difference

A project needs such a toggle in Tableau. My initial design used a scaffold data source with 2 rows. However my excellent colleagues Ryan and Parinita showed me a better one. This design doesn't need an extra data source. Instead, it needs two images as shape. A scaffold data source is supposed to be extracted bu not refreshed. We need to disable its refresh on server. Otherwise the server may throw an error message.

So I am here documenting this design and the credit goes to Ryan and Parinita. In the process, I added deselecting action to the button. Below are the steps.

1.Create a parameter

2.Create a calc field 

3.Create a toggle button based on Shapes using the above calc field.

4.Set up parameter action for the toggle

5.Set up filter action for deselecting button.

In building a living or production business dashboard, we always expect data to be up to date. This is a concern that can not be relieved by soly knowing the refresh time stamp (tableau provides this information). It doesn't mean that the data is up to date. So we decide to create our own data monitor.

The main business data sources are time series. We have transaction data usually up to the second, minus the delay in data preparation pipeline.

Following previous post on Iris Classification via Clustering in Tableau, we are going to analyse and compare the quality of clustering in Tableau by using 1,2,3 and 4 variables based on the Iris data set. We will use both automatic clustering and pre-specified number of clusters.

In the Iris data set, we know there are 3 clusters or classes of flowers. In some of the cases with a combination of measures/variables, Tableau can figure out automatically there are 3 clusters.

This is a blog about an event at 2019. My Tableau Public dashboard was originally published on 7/16/2019.

A colleague gave a talk on this classic example of machine learning or data science: Classify Iris according to a simple set of observation data. He did his demo in Python. I kind of understood what the example was about. But I figured we can recreate the same classification using Tableau's native clustering function.

Since the version 2020.1, Tableau has a new dynamic parameter feature that solves a long standing problem: Making a date range filter with end date default to the max date in the data source.

Here is how it works:

1.Create a field Max Date = {Max(Order Date)}

2.Create a parameter End Date as follows. Set value when workbook opens to be the above Max Date.

3.Create your regular Start Date parameter and a date range filter

Here we got an example workbook for you to download.

There are probable half a dozen ways to do it, under different circumstances. Each technique may have its own advantages.

Here is my favorite technique, which is

1) independent of date dimension. 

2) can be used from a secondary data source.

3) applicable in labels, references and annotations.

It has served me well in a number of designs. Just want to share the techniques here with you.

Here are the main steps for getting them.

Last Date

1.Create Top 1 set in Date dimension.

Video tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGZPuI0oXo

Following the previous post, my colleague said the trick doesn't work for him, because his buttons are placed in different sheets. BTW, a button here means any data mark where action is initiated via selecting. Note that when the buttons are on different sheets, a button may stay selected but won't be dimmed.

Then I devised a new scheme where buttons are on 2 different sheets.