5 Hacky Data Visualization Techniques with Tableau
By: Vanessa Leung
Tags: Tech, Tableau, Data Science, Data Analysis, Data Visualization

5 Hacky Data Visualization Techniques with Tableau

Tackle Tableau limitations in simple hacky ways

Tableau is a powerful and easy-to-use data visualization tools. Yet sometimes the limitation of features will hold us back when we want to create an advanced dashboard.

My Tableau project

Line Separator Pagination Search Box Line Plot with Markers Text with a URL link Other cool Tableau features

1. Line Separator

A line separator could help your audience better understand the relationship between sections and the hierarchy of contents in your dashboard. There are many workarounds to create a line separator in Tableau, we’ll introduce the one using a text box.

Line Separator

1.1 Create a Text Object

Drag a Text box from the Floating Layer to the Dashboard

Drag a Text box from the Floating Layer to the Dashboard

1.2 Configure the Layout Tab

In the Layout tab

a) set the height of the Text box to 1-pixel

b) set the width slightly smaller than the width of the dashboard

c) set the background color as black

In the Layout tab, set height, width, and Background color

Now, you could see a line separator on your dashboard.

2. Pagination

Adding pagination to enable the audience to navigate between dashboards could help provide a smoother user experience and a better understanding of how the contents related to each other. Since Tableau doesn’t have the pagination feature, we’ll tackle it by using the Actions feature.

Pagination

2.1 Create a Sheet for Every Dashboard

Repeat below steps for all of your dashboards

a) Create a new sheet, name it with the number of your dashboard

b) Create a Calculated Field… with a string of dashboard number as content

Create a Calculated Field…

with a string of dashboard number as content

c) Drag the dimension to the sheet

Drag the dimension to the sheet

d) Drag the sheets to the dashboard

Drag the sheets to the dashboard

2.2 Configure Actions

a) Under the Dashboard bar, choose Actions…

Under the Dashboard bar, choose Actions…

We need to have an action configured for every dashboard we want to navigate to. Repeat below steps for every dashboard:

b) Click Add Action > Go to Sheet…

Click Add Action > Go to Sheet…

c) Source Sheets: Select All, this enables the action on all of your sheets, Below, only check the sheet corresponding to the dashboard number

d) Run action on: choose Select, we want to trigger action by selecting the pagination

e) Target Sheet: select the destination dashboard

Configure Source Sheets, Run action on, and Target Sheet in Actions

Now, if you click the pagination on your dashboard, you will be navigated to the corresponding dashboard.

3. Search Box

Search Box is useful when the audience is interested in a specific topic in a large dataset.

Search Box

3.1 Create a Parameter for Search Box

a) Set Data type to String and Current value to null

Set Data type to String and Current value to null

b) Under the dropdown of the search box, select Show Parameter Control

Select Show Parameter Control

3.2 Create a Calculated Field for filtering

a) Use CONTAINS() function to filter data

b) Rename the calculated field as Filter

Create a Calculated Field for filtering

c) Drag the filter dimension to the Filters section

d) Only Select True values

Only Select True values

Now you can type text in the Search box and the dashboard will render filtered data.

4. Line Plot with Markers

Sometimes we want to add a marker on our line plot to emphasize a specific data point. It may be easy to configure in Excel, but not in Tableau.

Line Plot with Markers

a) We first create a line plot in a way we usually do

Create a Line Plot

b) Then we drag our y variable to the Rows shelf again. A duplicated line plot will show below the original one. Under the second y variable’s dropdown menu, select Dual Axis. The two plots will then merge into one.

Select Dual Axis

c) Right-click on the right y-Axis, select Synchronize Axis

Synchronize Axis

d) Under the Marks section, select your second plot. Under the dropdown, select Circle. You can see circle marks on the line plot now.

Marks > Circle

5. Text with a URL link

Medium does not allow directly embed a URL link in the text. However, we can tackle this with the Actions feature.

Text with a URL link

5.1 Create a sheet for the text

a) Create a sheet for the text

b) Create a Calculated Field with the string of text as content

c) Drag the dimension to the sheet as Text

d) Change the Color to blue to indicate it’s link-embedded

5.2 Drag the text to the dashboard as a Floating object

5.3 Go to Dashboard bar > Actions > Add Action > Go to URL…

5.4 Paste the URL in the configuration, run action on Select

Now, you can navigate to the target URL by clicking on the text object.

6. Other Cool Tableau Features

6.1 Auto-generated Captions

If you’re run out of time and want a short caption for your viz, Tableau could do that for you.

Just go to Worksheet > Show Caption

Auto-generated Captions

6.2 Map Layers

Tableau offers a lot of Map features. Go to Map > Map Layers, you could change the background color, show the city border, and even automatically plot the US demographic data on your map.

Map Layers

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Feel free to comment below if you have any questions regarding Tableau.