Counting Consecutive Occurrences in Tableau

I was asked a question: How to find out the IDs that showed up consecutively 5 times during the last 14 days?

How would you solve it?

Here I came up with 2 solutions. The 2nd one is a little simpler. Note that in either solution, we need to Show Missing Dates to make the calculations be based on contiguous dates. BTW, the last 14 days is irrelevant to the solution.

1. Solution with Running Sum

The idea is, CountD per Day for each ID equals 1 if it shows up, 0 if it doesn't. Then we calculate Running_Sum(CountD(ID)).

If Running_Sum - Lookup(Running_Sum,-5) = 5, we have 5 consecutive days for the ID!

2. Solution with Moving Window Sum

Here we create a 5-day moving window sum, using a lesser known window function feature:

Window_Sum(CountD(ID), -4,0)

If the 5-day Window_Sum=5, we have 5 consecutive days!

The last two arguments in the above formula are Start and End positions of the window. We can define them relative to the current position 0. We can also use First() and Last() to define the positions.

Thus we have following equations:

Window_Sum(CountD(ID), First(), Last()) = Window_Sum(CountD(ID))

Window_Sum(CountD(ID), First(),0) = Running_Sum(CountD(ID))

Window_Sum(CountD(ID), 0, Last()) = Reverse Running_Sum(CountD(ID))

A companion workbook is included for download.

Feel free to leave comments below or contact me at twitter @aleksoft .

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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.

1. Solution with Running Sum

2. Solution with Moving Window Sum

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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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