Innovative Tableau

Chapter 61. 3 Ways to Use Tableau in the Flow

I bet my career on Tableau because of its flexibility, but a close second reason is Tableau’s authoring experience. One of my favorite aspects of Tableau’s authoring experience is the ability to update my analyses in the flow, without having to interrupt my line of thinking or take redundant steps to answer new questions. This provides the benefits of rapid iteration and reducing the risk of distracting stakeholders in my audience.

This chapter shares three of my favorite applications of using Tableau in the flow. I show you a clever way to reverse-engineer table calculations, how to update calculations on the fly, and how to save advanced calculations for future use.

How to Reverse-Engineer Table Calculations

To show you how to reverse engineer a table calculation, I have set up the following chart with one of my favorite applications of this feature. On the first row, we are looking at sales by month; on the second row, we are using a quick table calculation to compute the month-over-month difference in sales.

With this view, the first row is a trend, and in the second row, Tableau is doing the math for us to visualize the month-over-month change:

Table calculations are identified with a delta (Δ) symbol on the pill they are being used on, which is why we see this distinction on the second Sales pill on the Rows Shelf. Tableau ...