What are Context Filters?

A context filter in Tableau is a powerful feature that allows you to isolate a specific subset of data and create a temporary data subset 

When you apply a context filter to your visualization, Tableau first applies the context filter and then performs calculations and aggregations based on the filtered subset of data.

How do they work?

By creating a context, you can optimize the performance of your visualizations by reducing the amount of data being processed.

When a context filter is applied, Tableau performs the following steps:

1. Identifies the data that meets the context filter criteria.
2. Performs calculations and aggregations based on the filtered data.
3. Evaluates any other filters and calculations based on the context data subset.

A context filter allows you to control the order in which Tableau applies filters and calculations.

Tutorial

In this video, I'll explain:

1. The difference between regular filters and context filters
2. How context filters can significantly improve Tableau performance

I'll finish up by showing you a couple of the most common use cases for Context filters to drive the concept home.

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In this video, I show you the difference between table calculations and level of detail expressions with the % of total calculation. I review: 

In this video, I show you how to use level of detail expressions to only return sales through the latest completed week. This method will work as weeks complete; you will not need to edit any of the calculations to ensure weeks that close in the future get included in the chart.

I must admit I got a bit stuck with this week's dataset. It was very straightforward and I didn't like how anything turned out. With some ideas from the live audience on YouTube, I started comparing exports, imports and the trade balance. I then thought about a trick I had taught the Data School about using a timeline to filter.

Great, that's it! Wrong! The layout I had in my head was all wrong. I had to move some things around and then getting everything to line up took ages! Why or why isn't formatting easier???

Then, after creating the BANs, someone suggested that it would be good to show a zoomed in version of the line chart for the dates selected. I added those as sparklines with each BAN and it turned out so much better.

Check out and download the viz here.

Tableau (as of this writing) does not allow you to customizing reference line tooltips. So how can you work around that? Simple! Check out this video and download the workbook to see how it's done.

Enjoy!