Tableau Desktop Cookbook

Chapter 13. Stories

In Chapter 7, I introduced the concept of bringing together worksheets to make a dashboard, which can be used to examine relationships between the data points. Story points use dashboards or worksheets to create a story, or a series of visualizations, to convey a particular message, like a presentation.

With a story, you can guide a user through a journey of analysis without being with them; this enables the user to find the intended story of the data but gives them the ability to find their own story, too. A story can be like an interactive PowerPoint document, where data is front and center of the story, with the ability to interact with the story without it affecting the next point. In this chapter, we will be covering how to create different elements of story points in Tableau.

13.1 Creating a Story

Problem

You want to start creating a story to guide a user through a piece of analysis.

Solution

1. 

   To create a story, click the button at the bottom on the far right, which looks like a book with a plus sign:

2. 

   You can also create a new story by using the toolbar at the top to select Story > New Story:

3. This gives you a blank canvas, known as a story point:

2. From here, you can add a worksheet or dashboard into a single story point by dragging and dropping ...