Nowadays, it has become an everyday practice in organizations to collect data and present them in the form of Dashboards and Pictograms. And Tableau has emerged undisputably as the best tool for the job over the last decade. A lot of young professionals are searching online for the best Business Analytics free course or the best Business Analytics basics course that covers Tableau to get the hang of this important and useful tool. Despite the immense popularity that Tableau commands in the Data Analytics realm, many users are still unaware of the best techniques and shortcuts to make the most out of it. So, in this article, we will go through some of the top tableau tricks you should know in 2022, also check these tricks on our free online course app. Scroll down to see more!
Top Tableau Tricks to get your work done faster
You have probably just completed a Business analytics basics course and have an elementary-level knowledge of Tableau. However, to ace your first Data Analytics job, there are some important tricks and techniques you need to be familiar with. These minute tips aren’t typically given in any Business Analytics free course but you may already know a few of them. Hopefully, this blog will teach you a few new tricks you can use to make your Analytics job even more interesting.
1. See the Changes while changing a calculation on the Dashboard
A Data Analyst has to either create or edit calculations on a daily basis and then check how these changes impact the sheet we are working on. However, it is possible to edit a calculation and, at the same time, move over to the dashboard to see how that calculation affects the entire dashboard while the edit window is still open. It is as simple as shown in the GIF below. (For this and all GIFs in this blog, right-click ad open them in a new tab to view them with better clarity.
2. Make a Stacked Bar in the Grand Total
Take an instance where you are using Superstore data, and you created a bar chart by region and category, putting Region on Rows, Category on Columns, and then a copy of Category on Color. If you add a grand total to this, usually, the total comes in as a single color, making it difficult to understand the proportion of each item in the total. But not anymore! You can easily turn this total into a stacked bar by simply making a copy of the Category field and dragging it into the color block. This will make the grand total a stacked bar.
3. Make Simple Unit Charts with One Single Distribution
Normally, to create a simple unit chart (unit progress bar) you simply need to add white constant lines (or whatever color your background is). Place these lines at 10%, 20%, 30%…100% to create a really easy-to-read chart.
However, there is an easier way to do this without 10 different constant lines. You can do this with a single distribution! The below gif first shows how to add reference lines one by one and then, it shows how to do the same with a single distribution.
4. Remove Gray Band in Filter
Sometimes while using a filter, you might accidentally click the name of a particular value instead of clicking the checkbox corresponding to the value. Then you would have seen a gray band appear over that value.It’s very simple to get rid of this irritating band. You just have to click in the white space within the filter object, and outside of the values. To do this, you may need to make the filter object larger and it click a few times until you find the sweet spot. If you hold down “ctrl” button and then left-click, the highlight will be removed. Just like that!
5. Additional Table Search Options
While connecting to a table or stored procedure, if you want to search for its name, you can easily do so by clicking the magnifying glass icon. However, if you do a right-click in the search window, you will get additional search options such as: exact, contains, and starts with. See the GIF below.
6. Make changes to Published Data Source
Tableau introduced an update that let’s us edit published data sources, in 2021.4. Yet, many people are unaware of this and continue using previous versions. Well, here is the most efficient way to edit a published data source. You need to create a local copy of the data source, and then replace the published data source with this local copy. Then, you should close the published data source, and make your changes/additions to the local data source. After this, you should publish that local data source backup to the server with the originally published name. While publishing the data source,take care to check “Update workbook to use the published data source.”
7. Show All Values in Filters
In the example GIF given below, we have filters for Category and Subcategory where Subcategory is set to only show relevant values. The Bookcases Subcategory gets selected with the gray band. If we uncheck the Furniture Category, the Bookcases option disappears from the Subcategory filter. If we right-click the Subcategory filter and click edit filter, the Bookcases option is missing. But, if we click the menu icon at the top right of the filter window and change it’s value to “All Values in Database”, it will show everything, including Boookcases option.