Tableau Dashboards: Techniques for Dynamic Visuals

Let's create dashboards and we'll talk about creating stories. Now, this is where my PowerPoint doesn't really help that much. I just have to go into creating the dashboard.

How do you create a dashboard? Well, you have the buttons down here at the bottom. You can also go to dashboard and choose new dashboard. And then here is where you go to create your dashboard.

Dashboard is the menu I chose and I chose new dashboard. Also at the bottom, you have the three buttons. You want to choose the second one with the plus sign.

If you did that successfully, you should see something that looks like this. What does this say in the middle? It says drop sheets here. This automatically tells you what to do.

Now, the first thing we want to address is the menus, the part of the interface that starts in the upper left. This is defaulting to a phone format, device preview. This is not necessarily the size that I want for my dashboard.

So you have to address the size. You have default, you have phone. It actually is just default.

You could choose device preview. You can say what device, desktop, tablet, phone. I don't want to do any of that.

I'm just going to leave it as the default. This is where you get to control size. You have three options, range.

If you know the minimum and maximum size within which you want to display your dashboards, you'll choose that. If you're very specific about the size of your dashboard, choose fixed size. Why would I choose fixed size? Because when you click the dropdown under custom, you can choose webpage, laptop browser, full screen, desktop browser, PowerPoint.

These are the specific sizes. Letter, landscape, if you need to print it out or you need to give it to someone who tells you, this is the size the dashboard needs to be for our project. And so you're given several standard sizes.

The option we want to choose for this exercise is automatic. Automatic is very similar to responsive for a web browser or a phone where whatever you put in will automatically adjust based on what you're displaying. Now, now that we've chosen automatic, I'll let you know that if you have a paid Tableau version, they're going to suggest that you don't do this.

They're going to say, this is not necessarily going to be your best option. But for our purposes in the free version of Tableau, we choose this because this is what's going to work best in terms of arranging the different parts of the worksheets and dashboards. It'll make the best fit for us.

Now you want to bring in your sheets. The nice thing about this is you hover your mouse over any of these sheets, you get a preview. You don't have to guess what you're bringing in just based on the name.

You could just hover your mouse and you'll see. So I want to bring in the pie chart. So I'll click here and I'll drag it and I'll bring it in.

It takes up the entire space. You don't have much options for customizing the size because you only have one thing. You'll get more options when you add more elements to your dashboard.

What else could you add? Besides other sheets, you can also add objects. You can add a text box. You can add a horizontal container, a vertical container.

By the way, this is a vertical container that contains the legend. They had to create a vertical container because where else are you going to put the legend? They had to put it somewhere. If you don't like this as part of the chart, you can delete it.

If you click on the X, it may even ask you to delete the entire container. But maybe you like this and you would like it to be floating. You can put this as a floating object on top of your worksheet and then it'll just be floating on top.

You can insert an image, a blank area. You can even insert a webpage that people can navigate inside the dashboard. A real live webpage.

People can go there. Navigation. You can link to another dashboard.

So you can have your dashboard look like a webpage that goes from one dashboard to another and then back to the original, like page one, page two, home, and so on. So you can go back and forth. There are other things that you can add that will not be available to you unless you have Salesforce.

If you have Salesforce, then these are features that are built into your account on Salesforce that you can bring into Tableau. Of course, Tableau is created by Salesforce. So that's why you're able to do that.

All right. Now that I have this, this is a little too much. I want to be able to bring in something else.

So I'll bring in a bar chart. So I'll go over here and I'll drag this. Now you get choices.

Do you want this to be on the left side? Do you want this to be on top? Do you want this to be on the right? Do you want it to be on the bottom? Wherever this phantom text is, this is where you can choose where to position it. Now, I think I'm going to add it here. And when I let go, it does that.

Now I have options to move things around. I can take this and say, well, you know what? I think you should be here. And so you have control now of moving things around.

But it's still just like two sides. I would like to add a title here. Maybe I want to take this out because I think it takes up too much space.

So wherever you click on, be careful because this is controlling this. It's not controlling this. So I have to click here and then this is where I can control this.

I can go over here and let me see. I want to make this floating. Choose floating.

Then you can take this and you can move it. You have to click this part. Then I can put it right here.

Now, when you click on it, it's actually selecting. It's interactive. So you have to be careful there.

And then you have this legend thing. Maybe I don't want this legend. I don't care about the total.

I'll click the X. Are you sure you want to delete both containers? The legend and this container here? Yeah, delete both of them. Okay, now I have more room. And then I can click here and I can move this like up there.

And I just got to click back and then I have everything here. I want to put a title here. So I'm going to take a text box and I'm going to drag it up to the top.

Oh, wait, it's just giving me one side. No, you're not dragging it right. You have to drag it up here.

There you go, like that. It'll be above both. And then you're going to enter in your title.

My Superstore Dashboard for Sales. Make this a lot bigger. Let's do 24.

Make it bold. And I'll choose blue. I'll center it.

Maybe I'll leave it left aligned, but I can control that as well. I'll click OK. Holy mackerel, I didn't want it to be that big.

That's what happens. Now you have to adjust the size. So you'll go here and you'll drag this up.

And now you have a nice title. You can change stuff like the background color. Since this is free floating, I'll probably need to move this down a little bit.

Or maybe move it over here. I want to add a sidebar here of horizontal container. So I'm going to take horizontal container and I'm going to drag it over here.

And again, I want it to fit on both sides. So you have to sort of like drag it. So let's see.

Can I? Actually, I think I like the title there. And then I just need to resize this. It's OK if it appears huge at first.

I want to bring in an image. So I'm going to take an image object. I'm going to drag it in here and put it inside the container.

Because that container is open. And I'll choose and select an image. I'll go over to the desktop.

Class files day. Tableau. Tableau level one.

Finally, we get to use images. And I'll choose Superstore. I'll click OK.

You have to choose fit image and center image. If you don't choose it, it looks weird. I'll show you what it looks like.

I'll click OK. Where is it? It's actually in here. But because the image is so wide, so large, you can't even see it.

So I have to edit the image and say center and fit. And you're only seeing the white space of the image because the image is huge. Now, the image is one of the things where you can add a hyperlink.

So that when people click on the image, they could be taken to a website or taken to somewhere else. Of course, you should add all text. I'll type Superstore.

And now when I click OK, it's not weird anymore. And again, you can resize things to adjust them. But you'll have plenty of time playing around with this.

You can put in a spacer. I'll put in a blank space. I'll just drag here.

Just drop that. Puts in a blank space. I can put in another horizontal container.

I'll just drag it down here. Let go. In this horizontal container, I would like… And so I can resize this and play around with this.

I could put it in the middle or whatever. And I could play with shading and all that stuff. I want to add a web navigation button.

Because I want to go from this dashboard to another. So I'll choose navigation. I'll drag it here.

And I'm going to choose another one. And I'm going to do that. And there's my second navigation.

I need to create a second dashboard. So I'm going to duplicate. That's the easiest way to do it.

Because I've done all this work. I put the title and then I change the font color. I don't want to do all that over.

I inserted the image. I even added the navigation buttons. But I don't want to start creating navigation until I create something to navigate to.

So I'm going to choose duplicate. And then this is dashboard 2. I'll just rename this and call it dashboard 2. I could call it page 2. But I'm just keeping things simple. Okay.

So this is going to be the home. So navigate to dashboard 1. Pretty simple. I'll enter the title.

And I'll call this home. Or I'll call it page 1. I could add a tooltip. No, I'm not going to add a tooltip.

I can add a border. I can change the font color. I can choose the background color.

Make it different. It's automatically going to assign a default background color. I'll click okay.

And then over here, I'll do the same thing. But this time, I want to go over to dashboard 2. And I'll go over here. And I'll just type page 2. I'll click okay.

And here, I just need to duplicate the same thing. Dashboard 1. And I'll call this page 1. Nice thing about this is I'm just typing the same thing. Page 2. Dashboard 2. If you don't choose something for the link, then the color doesn't change.

I'll click okay.