Innovative Tableau

Chapter 88. How to Make a Global Filters Tab

I often see corporate Tableau dashboards built with nothing more than a large text table and a dozen or more filters along the top or side of the crosstab. Sadly, I’d even go as far as to say that this is what most dashboards look like when I enter a new engagement. Although there is some value in using Tableau purely as a querying tool—most notably the way this type of view helps validate raw data—it misses the point of how data visualization can help us analyze data.

So how do we get users to evolve past the three-decade-old, Excel-like views? If I have stakeholders who simply can’t let go of filters number seven and above, I like to build in a dashboard element that I call the global filters tab. This feature helps prioritize filters, but also provides the flexibility to access lesser-used filters. This chapter shows you how to create a global filters tab in Tableau so that you can keep your dashboards clean while keeping your stakeholders happy.

How to Clean Up Dashboards by Moving Filters to Their Own Worksheet

I’m a minimalist when it comes to dashboard design. I work hard to maintain focus and prioritize only the most pertinent elements for each individual view. For this reason, I actually don’t have a public corporate example of a global filters tab to share with you. So for this exercise, we add one to the Explanatory dashboard in the Super Sample Superstore workbook:

As you can see on the filters row, there are five parameter ...