Innovative Tableau

Chapter 84. How to Add Custom Integrated Insights to a Dashboard

When I discuss data visualization strategy, I often talk in terms of explanatory (i.e., descriptive) and actionable (i.e., prescriptive) analytics. Explanatory views are the most common and can be thought of as high-level overviews of what happened. Most weekly or monthly reports, particularly if they’re consumed as static documents, are explanatory dashboards. Explanatory dashboards certainly provide value and have a place, but they’re only a starting point for deeper analysis.

Actionable views go a step further than explanatory views and attempt to answer why something happened and provide ideas for how to act. For example, an explanatory view might show that sales spiked 25% last month, and an actionable view would add value by showing it was the 15% off email campaign that caused the spike. Ideally, actionable views also prescribe what should be done about the insight. For example: we saw the email campaign worked; next we should test the discount amount to maximize our profit ratio.

Even though explanatory or descriptive insights can be easily ascertained by most audiences, actionable or prescriptive insights and recommendations are much more difficult to come by. I know some really smart people are working on ways to replace analysts with robots, but in the meantime, I found a simple way to allow you and your end users to add their own actionable insights and recommendations to a Tableau dashboard.

How ...