Day 2: Hidden Reference Line Totals

It was Aristotle who famously said: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  When you look at your data, you better hope that's not true :).  But in Tableau sometimes that can be tricky to validate.  So for today we're going to see how to take a sliced up bar chart and show the total of each of the bars.  This one is probably filed under "There has to be a way to do this, but I just don't know what it is".  I have good news for you!  Here we go...

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Today (and for many of our days together) we'll be connection to everyone's favorite - the Superstore Excel dataset that comes prepackaged with Tableau.  We'll do this because it ensures that we're all starting from pretty much the same place.  So go ahead and connect to the data and we'll get started.

We're going to do a basic example that illustrates this trick.  Take "Region" and place it on the rows shelf, and "Sales" on the Columns shelf.  Next add "Department" on the Colors shelf, and finally add "Sales" again to the text shelf.  You're viz should look something like this:

Now here's the fun part.  Without adding the three Department sales together, what's the sum of sales for each region? Sure you could take Department off the color shelf and see the total again, but now you've lost the breakdown we're currently looking at.  That's a non-starter, as I want to present more information, not less.

So here's the trick.  Right click on the X-Axis and select "Add reference line, band or box".  You should now be looking at a popup box that looks like this:

Here's the goal.  Rather than creating an actual reference "line" we're going to make a hidden line with visible text, and the text will show the total sum of Sales for each of the regions.  Cool huh?

To do this enter the settings you see above.  
Click "Per Cell" 
Value: "Sum(Sales)"
Aggregation: "Sum"
Label: "Value" 
Line: "None" (this is done so that the line doesn't show, only the text showing the value of the total sum)

When you're done you'll now see the totals at the end of each bar.  It's likely that you'll need to do a bit more formating to get the text looking the way you want it.  So right click one of the reference line numbers, and select "Format".  My preference is to have right justification in the middle of the bar, but do as you see fit.  You could make the text larger, or change the units (maybe set it to $ Millions).  

And the final product looks something like this:

And there you have it!  Simple but helpful, just as any good hack should be.

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I hope you found this one helpful.  If so, I'd love to hear about it.  We're just getting started, so come back soon!  

Many thanks - 
Nelson 

Day 1: How to make a Calendar in Tableau

So this one seems logical.  If you started tracking with the #Tableau30for30 project you've likely already seen this this snazzy dashboard/interactive calendar:

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The first time I saw this was at Tableau Customer Conference 2013 in Washington DC.  It's simple yet really cool.  So how do you make something like this?

In it's most simple form, it's just bringing together dates in a number of different formats.  To start, you need data that has some dates.  For my purposes I simply went to Excel, entered 4/1/2014, and pulled down 30 rows to 4/30/2014.  Saved the file and popped open Tableau.

After connecting to my Excel file, I right click and drag the date field (mine is called "Date") to the columns shelf.

I'm given a number of options:

We're going to go through this a couple times, but be thoughtful as you do it.  We want to show the month at the top, so this time I'll select "MONTH(Date)".

We'll do the same right click and drag to columns, this time selecting "WEEKDAY(Date)".  This will give us the names of the days of the week.  To shorten these like I did, right click on one of them and hit format.  Under the Header tab, select "Dates" and choose your favorite (I went with "Abbreviation").

Next, right click and drag the Date field, this time to the rows shelf.  When the pop up comes, go with "WEEK(Date)".  This is going to give you a different row for each week of the month.  Since I don't care to see the labels, I'm going to right click the pill on the rows self and uncheck "show header" and hide them.

Lastly I'll right click and drag "Date" to the text shelf, and select "DAY(Date)" when it pops up.  

You should now have something that looks like this:

Right click one of the numbers in the pane and select "Format", and change as you see fit.  I've added borders to the cells and panes, hidden the word "date" at the top, centered text and changed fonts.  At this point it looks like this:

And wa-la.  A calendar.  You can use this as a filter (click a date and see what happened only on that date).  Or add data directly to the calendar (red-green color scale for bad/good days based on a metric).  The possibilities are endless.  

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Like this one?  Leave a comment below. 

Many thanks!

Nelson

Tableau 30 for 30

I have a big announcement today.  Really BIG.  

Come this April I'm doing something I've never done before.  Some would call it an achievement.  Some would give their left arm not to have to do it.  But for anyone who's made it there before, I think it's fair to say it's a moment to step back and evaluate the world, being thankful for the past that has shaped you, and looking forward to great things to come.  

This April I turn 30.

It's April 9th to be exact, and I know that build up was a little much, but 30 is a big one.  I have certainly had moments in the last few years that made me think my life would be over at 30.  That I'd be old, lame and irrelevant.  And while those first two words maybe scarily acurate, I have zero intention of riding off in to the sunset.

As such and to celebrate turning 30, here's a second big announcement:
Each day for the entire month of April, I'll be writing a blog post on the secret sauce of Tableau.  Jedi tricks and hacks - 30 of them.  30 days, 30 tricks.

• Out of the box visualizations
• Creating a look and feel 
• Advanced mapping techniques
• Connecting to data sources you didn't even know existed
  ...and much, much more.

Some of these tricks are my very own, but many of them are just simply things I've picked up in the 2 1/2 years of using Tableau and being part of the Tableau community.  

You're going to want to stick around for this and come back each day.  I'd also love to hear about some of your favorite tricks and hacks, so feel free to drop me a line as well.

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Many thanks!

Nelson

Who Really Won the "Big Game"?

Happy February Everybody!

I have three cool, quick things to share with y'all today and I hope you guys enjoy.

The first thing is this super awesome fun viz I did on the Super Bowl "Big Game" commercials.  It's an idea I got in my head about a month ago and I love the way it turned out.  Knowing that each year the amount being paid for a 30 second ad is some crazy number, but when the scoreboard clock hits 00:00 at the end of the game, what did that total up to - no one seems to talk about that.  And it's a lot of money, as I'm sure you can see below.  Of course the fun part of the whole thing are these awesome commercials that are supposed to be the best of the best from the world of marketing, so you can actually watch every single one of them right here in the viz (even make them full screen if you want).

Check out the viz below! 

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So here's the second fun thing - how do I make something like this?  This is all about how do I get an idea from my head to become a viz on the screen, and for me, I've learned a big important middle step - The Sketch.

It takes about 10 minutes, and I always do it in pencil, but it really allows you to quickly take an idea and see it.  And when you can see, you can improve it (which is something I know you believe because you do data visualization).

So here's the sketch I did for this viz.  It's cool to see the design work out this well in reality.  If you're not currently doing a little bit of pre-viz design, you should consider giving it a shot.  I've found that it actually makes the project take less total time on average, because you already have a vision of where you're heading.

The last thing (but first in my heart :) is a personal note that Baby Davis #2 was born a week and a half ago.  Mama and Baby are doing great and we are incredibly blessed with how smoothly everything went.

I want to thank the Tableau Community who sent lovely congratulatory tweets from all across the world.  It was really cool and I was very touched.  And don't be surprised if you see a Baby Davis viz coming soon.

If you have a comment, I'd love to hear it.  Thanks for checking it out!

Nelson  

If Hans Rosling could dunk....

I know there are many who enjoy my excitement to see that Hans Rosling is going to be one of the keynote speakers for #TCC14.  I've told many people that his video in "The Joy of Stats" on "200 Countries 200 Years in 4 minutes" is possibly the greatest data visualization in the last 100 years.  Of course the data is great, but Hans has an amazing way of bringing it to life.  For me, he's an inspiration both as an analyst and a speaker and I can't wait to see him in person!

To celebrate I, and a few Slalom Consulting friends of mine, have created some Hans Rosling inspired dashboards.  Below you can see the work that Peter Gilks (yep, THAT Peter Gilks!) and I put together on performance of NBA Franchises over time.  The bubbles are the logos of the NBA teams and the X and Y Axis are changeable - which is so very 'GapMinder'!

Please check it out!

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Using Tableau for your next PowerPoint Deck

Let’s start off by stating the obvious – Tableau v8.1 is awesome.  There’s a number of things we should all be thanking the Tableau Development team for – 64-bit, awesome presentation mode, transparency, to name just a few.  So what do you say we take some of these new things and make your life easier?

If I’ve heard the following once, I’ve heard it a dozen times, always coming from someone who’s starting to take Tableau to the next level at their organization – it goes like this: “My boss is coming to me and saying that they really like the work I’m doing in Tableau.  Problem is now I’m having to spend a few hours every week making screenshots of my vizes and send them to my boss so they can be included in the weekly PowerPoint for upper management.  I wish they’d just use the dashboards I make in Tableau so I didn’t have to waste my time with these screenshots!  There has to be a better way!”

Boy, do I have some good news for you!  What if I told you it was possible to create something that exactly matches your company’s PowerPoint template in Tableau?  Management could have a fresh deck whenever the data’s updated, and you can spend your time doing something more meaningful than screenshots.  Everybody wins. 

Who’s ready?

So we have to start with a PowerPoint template.  You’ll use your company’s.  I’ll use the one I found here.  (Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the NBA and have no idea if this is an official PowerPoint.  All I know is that it was free.)

So let’s open it up in PowerPoint and do a couple things to get it ready for Tableau.  Take each type of slide you’d like to use as a template in Tableau, duplicate it, and clear out the standard text in the duplicated slide.  So now my deck goes from this to that:

 

 …and so on.

Now we need to save it so that each slide is a .png (image file - .jpeg would work too).  To do that, go up to ‘File’ and hit ‘Save as’.  Find the file type that says ‘PNG’:

And now… Congratulations!  You’re done with PowerPoint (maybe for forever – sike!)

Now, take the bubble wrap off of your brand new Tableau v8.1 (v8.0 works too - but you should really upgrade :)) and open it up.  Start a new workbook called “XCompanyTemplate” or something to that effect.  Don’t worry about connecting to data at the moment, but rather start by creating a blank dashboard.

Take that blank dashboard and start to customize it.  If you’re using 4:3 aspect ratio for your slides (which is both the PowerPoint default and the world’s standard) then change the size of your dashboard to be exactly 960(W)x720(H) – this is the standard size of a PowerPoint slide.

Now click ‘Floating’….

Next, double click on Image and select the .png file of the blank title slide you just created.

Once the image appears on your dashboard, select it and change the size and position of the image to 0, 0, 960, 720 here:

…And your dashboard should go from this to this:

Now we’ll add some default text (just like in PowerPoint).  Hop back over to PowerPoint and check out the default font, size and location of the title text – mine is Microsoft New Tai Lue, size 44, right in the middle of the red bar.  Here’s what it looks like in PPT:

Hop back to Tableau and add text (floating) using the same font, size and position (using the new transparent background if need be).  This is what my Tableau dashboard now looks like:

Not too shabby, eh?  Rename the dashboard as “TitleTemp”, and then right-click the tab and duplicate it – we’re not done yet :).

On the newly duplicated dashboard, click on the background image, right click and select ‘Pick Image’ – Select the next type of blank slide you’re going to create the template for.  Once you’ve done that you’ll have something that looks like this:

Hop back over to PPT and check out where the slide title, subtitle, and page numbers should be, along with their correct fonts and sizes (again, just select the text itself and note the details one by one).  Then head back to Tableau and make the proper changes.  Again, here’s the slide template in PPT….

…and here’s my recreation in Tableau:

To add page numbers to slides in Tableau, add one more text object (with matching font, size and location of the PPT version) to your dashboard.  Rather than writing any text, instead select ‘Insert’ and chose ‘Sheet Name’.  Now, once you start to create your visualizations and create new dashboards/sheets in this deck, just name each sheet by the page number it will be in the deck and that number will automatically be added in the same location on each slide:

Rename this dashboard “DTempText” for “Dashboard Template with only Text”.  Now right click and duplicate.  We’re almost there :).

Delete the text box with the bullets, and replace it with one large floating layout container (I prefer vertical ones, but the option is yours).  Have it cover most of the useable area of the slide.  (This part is personal preference) Right click it and select ‘Format Container’. Click border and select the third weight on the second shade of gray up from white. 

Again, once you start doing your visualizations, just drop them into a duplicate of this template dashboard and you’ll have consistent looking slides with layout containers.

Rename this dashboard ‘DTemp1’ for ‘Dashboard Template with one viz’.  Want two side by side layout containers?  Duplicate this dashboard, cut the current layout container by just over half and add an additional one that’s the same size. 

You get the idea.  Feel free to do as you see fit.

All of a sudden you’ll be able to start doing awesome, beautiful vizes that can then be presented in Tableau’s awesome new Presenter View.  There will be no more screenshots each week – when the data updates, your slides update automatically with a click of a button.  Save to PDF and send them off to you decision makers, or publish to Tableau Server so the deck can always show the most current data.  You save time and they get better insights into current data that will allow for better decision making.  Everybody wins!

Below are a few screenshots of what you’re future work could look like, and I’ve attached the workbook for you to download and take a better look.

And the workbook:

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I hope you enjoyed this.  I look forward to your comments below.  Many thanks!

Nelson