Creating Sankey Chart with Sorting/Grouping

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Sankey charts have many use cases. One of the users asked me how to sort the output/target, group those smaller outputs on the right side in a single category named Others and only keep the top few. That makes sense because they are of lesser importance and it helps viewers focus on the bigger outputs. There we go with a custom design template for the use case.

Here are the steps:
1.Download and open the template workbook

2.Add your data source and UNION it with itself.

3.Rename two dimensions as Source and Target. And rename one measure as Size.

Note that in Sankey chart, we may interchangeably use Source/Target, Input/Output, Left/Right to refer to the same two dimensions on both sides of the chart.

4.Replace template data source with your own data source.

Due to a bug in Tableau's data replacing process, you may notice that the Top N Target Set is not being properly replaced. We have reported this bug to Tableau Corporation. The workaround is as follows. After opening the Set in Editor, you may see that the Set is changed from the template setting (By field before replacing data source) to By formula setting.

Size in the latter setting is grayed out. The fix is simply adding a space after the Size as shown in the image below.

Extra features:
-A parameter is created for you to show the Top N outputs plus Others.
-One can chose to color the branches by Source or by Target
-One can always sort Source if one wishes.

Voila, it's done. All feedback is welcome.

Sankey Chart Series in Tableau
5.A Template Approach to 3-Stage Sankey Chart

4.Creating Sankey Chart with Sorting/Grouping

3.Creating Sankey Chart with Grouping
2.Creating Multi-Stage Sankey Chart via Template Cascading
1.Creating Sankey Chart Made Easy via Template