Innovative Tableau

Chapter 83. How to Add a Filter(s) in Use Alert to a Dashboard

As I am constantly touting the benefits of data visualization and Tableau, I regularly have conversations with the objective of helping analysts transition their reporting from spreadsheets and Excel. It is not that I dislike Excel (though I can’t say the same about spreadsheets as data visualizations). I use Excel almost daily, and it is excellent software for preparing and storing data sources that require fewer than Excel’s roughly one-million-row limit.

Being such a pervasive tool and pioneer in office software, Excel is bound to have a few valuable features that haven’t yet made it into Tableau. Remember when the XFL had the skycam before the NFL made it cool? Orlando Rage—good times. Anyway, one of those features that I really like about Excel that is missing in Tableau is an alert that informs you when a filter is being applied to a dashboard. In fact, Excel tries to give you a heads up in several ways, including:

• A filter icon on the column being filtered
• A caption in the lower-left corner of the view
• Highlighted row numbers

In Tableau, unless a filter is being shown on a dashboard, it’s possible to have no indicators to an end user that the view is being filtered. Even when a filter is being shown on a dashboard, the indication that it’s in use is very subtle (i.e., showing the filter selection). When you’re jumping around between explanatory and actionable views or if your end user is not experienced in ...