If you use Tableau, you might be wondering how to organize your dashboards effectively. That's where containers come in handy. In this series of videos, I'll cover everything you need to know about using containers in Tableau.

→ I'll explain what containers are and why they're important.

→ I'll show you how to create and customize containers in Tableau, including how to adjust their size and position on the dashboard.

→ I'll demonstrate how to add worksheets to containers and how to control the layout of those worksheets within the container.

→ I'll also cover how to resize containers and how to align them with other objects on your dashboard.

Throughout these tutorials, I'll provide helpful tips and best practices for using containers effectively. I'll also answer common questions you might have about using containers in Tableau, such as how to use containers with filters.

By the end of these tutorials, you'll have a solid understanding of how to use containers in Tableau to organize and present your data effectively. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced Tableau user, this tutorial is sure to help you take your dashboards to the next level.

So, if you're ready to learn how to use containers in Tableau, watch these tutorial now!

In this video, I show you how to resize marks (in this case circles) dependent on how many marks are in the view. For example, if all possible marks are in the view (100%), the circles should be small. If only 10% of possible marks are in the view, the circles should be large.

I show how to do this on a map, but it can be extended to scatter plots, box plots, dot plots, jittered bar chart, and more.

This week we explored the cost of 20g of protein in various foods. During Watch Me Viz, I showed how to create toggles to allow the user to filter by vegan and vegetarian foods. I did this with parameter actions; if you want to learn more, watch the video below.

In the end, though, my fancy filtering with parameter actions didn't quite work out. I hadn't account for the option when the user might want to look at all foods. So I ended up using basic filtering. I overcooked the whole process, but I bet you'll learn something anyway.

I then went through the entire dashboard design process using containers, padding, shading and more. Check that out if you're interested in learning how to use layout contains.

Here's the #WatchMeViz recording, followed by the interactive viz. Enjoy and thanks for watching!

In a previous tip, I showed you how to calculate day over day change and build 3 KPI cards.

However, this does not cover the case when you need to ignore weekends. In this #Tableau tip, I show you how to calculate daily change excluding the weekends.

You can copy/paste the calculations from below the video. Enjoy and good luck!

Calculations

In this tip, I going to show you how to build 3 different KPI cards for measuring day over day change. In just a few steps, I’ll show you how to calculate:

1. Sales for the most recent day
2. Sales for the previous day
3. Difference in sales between those two dates
4. Percent difference in sales between those two dates

I'll then show you how to create these 3 different methods for displaying the KPIs so that you can create those that are most useful for your audience.

RESOURCES

• Data - https://data.world/vizwiz/sample-car-sales
• Month over Month Change - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViD3vclgNv8
• Year over Year Change - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuxYr4_l2ww

I found the subject of this week's data set on the Instagram account of The Map Zone. It's a simple map of what's called the "Gay Travel Index". 

The annually updated SPARTACUS Gay Travel Index informs travellers about the situation of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) in a total of 202 countries and regions. The US-Index provides information about each of the 50 federal states of the US.

The index attempts at finding a balance between measuring the rights of the local LGBT community and considering the demands of queer holidaymakers. Our aim is to monitor the safety of queer people in each country and also increase the awareness on grievances. 

When I saw that the data was a ranking over time, I thought I'd give a curvy bump chart a try. I used this blog by Kevin Flerlage. He makes it super simple to follow along. During WatchMeViz, I showed how to use one of Kevin's visualizations from an old Makeover Monday as a template. I showed how to take the data we had for this week, transform it to the write shape needed for the template, then how to swap out the data source with the new one we created.

Honestly, when I swapped out the data sources, I was convinced that I would have messed things up along the way, but alas, I didn't and I was basically done. I spent time formatting, adding in more categories, and a bit more. Check out the viz below or here and follow along with Watch Me Viz to see how to build one yourself here.

In this week's Watch Me Viz, I showed the problem this tip helps solve. An area chart in Tableau only allows a single color. Like this…

What we want is an area chart like this with two colors. 

In 9 simple steps, I’ll show you how to build it. Follow along with the video. The 9 steps are listed at the bottom of this post.

STEPS

1. Create the area chart

2. Show what happens when you add a profit to color - you only get one color

3. Duplicate the measure

4. Fix the axes

    1. Top axis starts at 0

    2. Bottom axis ends at 0

5. Choose a color for each area chart

6. Format the axes to get rid of 0

7. Add reference lines to scale the charts relative to each other

    1. WINDOW_MAX(ABS(SUM([Profit])))

8. Duplicate for the negative reference line

9. Formatting

2023 is here and #MakeoverMonday will be here the entire you to help you continue to learn and improve. Come on the journey with us each week. Build your portfolio. Showcase your skills. You just might get that job you've been seeking. It's happened, a lot, by participating every week.

For week 1, we were analyzing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from 1979-2021. The original visualization is quite simple.

We have CO2 and total gases on the left axis and the variance to 1990 on the right. Overall, the chart is pretty easy to read, with the exception of knowing that the red line is always compared to the 1990 value. That definitely needs to be more clear. It's also missing a title, so without the website it is posted on, you wouldn't necessarily know what it's about.

For my viz, I started by reproducing the original, but it doesn't look as good because the data we have starts at 1979. So you miss the big upward curve. From there, I focused primarily on making good looking sparklines that show comparisons with a parameter action. I also showed how to create an "area chart" with multiple colors. I'm going to create a tip video for it; I like how it turned out.

Here's the livestream and below is the visualization for you to interact with. The viz does not render properly on Tableau Public, but hopefully you get the idea.

I hope you continue to join me throughout the year so that we can learn together.

Have a wonderful 2023!

In this tip, I’m show you how to calculate the 3-month and 6-month churn rate in Tableau. To calculate churn rate, all you need to do is:

1. Create 4 calculations

2. Follow the 8 simple steps to build the view

Customer churn rate is the % of customers that you’re losing in a predetermined time period. Churn rate is bad because if you don’t know how many customers are leaving, then you won’t know the impact on your revenue and you would be able to make changes to reduce churn.

Calendar heatmaps are a great way to visualize time-series data over an entire calendar year. Individual days are shaded on a light-to-dark gradient based on a measure that has been added to the visualization.

Creating a heatmap for a single month in Tableau is pretty straightforward. It gets a bit more complicated when you want to view an entire year at once. In this tip, I going to show you, step-by-step, how to create a full year calendar heatmap in Tableau. The workbook is below this video to download.

If you want to drilldown multiple levels in a scatterplot, this tip is for you. In this tip, I show you have to create a 3 level drilldown with a scatterplot.

Naturally after I showed how to create a 3 level bar chart drilldown, someone immediately asked how to do it with a scatterplot. Unlike the bar chart drilldown, the scatterplot will only show you marks for the current level. 

For example:

1. When I’m at the highest level, I see only regions.
2. When I drill down one level, I only see States within the Region selected
3. When I drill down one more level, I only see postal codes that are within the region and state I selected.

This example shows you how to drill down from Region to State to Postal Code. To use this for yourself:

1. Download the workbook
2. Copy all of the calculations into your workbook
3. Swap out the dimensions

Note that you will need to recreate the sets and set actions. This will work with any combination of 3 dimensions.

Quite the interesting topic this week. I get an email from The Economist regularly and there was an article about the wholesale price of cocaine. That led me down a rabbit whole and I found the data, but also for heroin and also for retail prices.

On Watch Me Viz, I stuck with simple lines charts that compared the price for a country to the overall price for all of the countries in the data set. I allow the user to choose a drug and a country.

I then wanted to show how to Dynamic Zone Visibility feature works (if you haven't seen it, be sure to watch it back). In the end, a simple dashboard that compares the measures in two ways, allows for some filtering, looks good, and that's it.

Check out the dashboard below the video.

Tableau comes with some great color palettes that have been designed to work well together. And you can add your own custom color palettes by making a couple of simple changes to the preferences.tps file that comes with Tableau Desktop. For example, you may have a color palette that matches your company’s brand.

In this video I show you how to add 3 different types of color palettes to Tableau:

1. Categorical
2. Sequential
3. Diverging