Innovative Tableau

Chapter 71. 3 Innovative Ways to Use Parameter Actions: Tip 3

Using Parameter Actions to Use Measure Names in Calculated Fields

One more of my favorite tactics is to let my users choose which measures are being displayed in a chart (see Chapter 64 from Practical Tableau, O’Reilly, 2018). Once again, this tactic is now even better because you can set up a parameter action that changes the measure being displayed by just clicking a dimension member on a control sheet.

First, set up a parameter containing the names of the measures from which you want to select. Here is a parameter built with all the measures that come with the Sample – Superstore dataset:

Next, set up a calculated field that gives Tableau instructions for what to display when each parameter value is selected:

Now create a chart using the newly created calculated measure. To illustrate, here I replace the Sales measure in the line graph from Chapter 70 with the new calculated field that is controlled by the Select Measure Example parameter. If I choose Profit instead of Sales in the parameter control, the line graph updates to display the selected measure:

This time, for the control sheet, let’s use the special ...