Sorting 100% Stacked Bars by Percentage

The 100% Stacked Bar Chart is the one where each segment is a percentage, which adds up to 100%.

Someone asked me recently how to sort the bars according to a segment's percentage. I thought it must be easy: Just google it. Then I tried myself and didn't find a satisfactory reference. So I decided to write one. In the process I did get inspirations from these two sources: Sorting a stacked bar chart using a parameter and a solution by Zhouyi Zhang in the Tableau's community site. Here I am going to present two solutions: using LOD (Level of Details) and Table Calculations.

LOD vs Table Calculations

Both are good for implementing most of Tableau designs. One or the other, depends on our choice. The main difference is:

LOD: It's context sensitive. We need to use context filters in the chart if necessary.
Table Calculations: Regular filters work well. We have to set computing directions correctly.

LOD solution

The key is to create a parameter [Para Segment] based on Segment and a parameterized segment percentage [Para Sales %] using LOD. With LOD, we ensure that this value can be used in Sort function. Note that we use ZN() to get 0% when the segment in question doesn't exist.

Then sort [Sub Category] vertically and Segment horizontally by the same field of [Para Sales %]:

Note that one sort is ascending and the other is descending. Here is the result:

Table Calculations Solution

Tableau often allows more than one solutions to one problem. Here I am going to show another solution based on table calculations.

First let's create a calculated field for the selected segment's percentage. Make sure to set the computation along Segment! Use ZN() to get 0%.

With a negative sign as a discrete value, this can be used as an ordering item by being placed at the leftmost position on Rows. Hide the header afterwards. BTW this is a sorting technique when the value is derived from table calculations. We can't use it in Sort function because of table calculations.

Last but not the least, sort Segment by Selected Sales ascendingly. Horizontally, this will keep the selected segment always on the left.

Voila, both LOD and table calculations methods will give us the same result. We can sort the 100% stacked bar chart by a segment's percentage.

Feel free to download the demo workbook. Leave comments if questions.

(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.