Innovative Tableau

Chapter 3. Set Actions

As of Tableau Desktop 2018.3, you can also use actions to change set values. I started with parameter actions because parameters are the key to many of my tips and tricks within Tableau. Parameters provide complete control over the user-generated inputs being selected (i.e., the allowable values), but set actions provide their own unique flexibility. Most notably, set actions allow you to do the following:

• Multiselect, even when the data type is String (parameters require a single select with qualitative data types)
• Use empty sets (parameters require a value to be selected)
• Instruct Tableau as to what to do when the selection is cleared (parameter actions do not currently provide this option).

How to Use Tableau Set Actions

To illustrate how to use Change Set Values actions, let’s design a user experience that allows users to control the values in a grouped bar chart by clicking custom regions on a map in the following dashboard:

Here is how the Map view started out in the Authoring interface:

Note that this map is created from a dimension called Custom Territory to draw the region borders and labels. You can learn how to make maps with custom territories in Chapter 29.

To use set actions, there must be a set on the view. Because I want to allow ...