Can you compare a 3-day vs 14-day moving average and describe the latest trend?

Donna Coles1 Comment

This week for #WOW2020, Ann provided a table calculation feast of a challenge! This certainly is not for the faint-hearted! As well as cracking all the table calcs, the challenge features multiple views, measure swapping, parameters, BANs, filtering, sorting …. it’s got it all going on!

Ann hinted you’d probably want to start with the table, and even if there hadn’t been a table output in the display, this is what I would have done. If you’ve read enough of my blogs, you’ll know I often like to build up a ‘check data’ sheet, which just contains the data I need in tabular form as a quick reference. When working with table calculations this is an absolute must have!

So let’s build out that Check Data table to start with. I have a feeling this is going to be a lengthy blog 🙂

Initial Set up

First up, the requirements stated that the latest date would be 7 June, but I found records with a 8 June date. All the associated info for this date was null though, so I set a data source filter to exclude this. This means I wouldn’t get any issues if I needed to store the max date in a FIXED LoD calculation at any point.

I also found it easier to rename a couple of the measures provided to match the output, so rename PEOPLE_POSITIVE_NEW_CASES_COUNT to New Cases and PEOPLE_POSITIVE_CASES_COUNT to Reported Cases. I’ll refer to these renamed fields going forward.

Building all the Calculated Fields

To build out the table, we’re just going to focus on one State & County, as there’s a lot of data. So add Province State Name = Tennessee and County = Davidson to the Filter shelf.

Add Report Date (discrete exact date – blue pill) and New Cases & Reported to Rows. As you scroll down, you’ll see data starting to come in on 8 March.

We want to create our moving average calculations

3 Day Moving Avg

WINDOW_AVG(SUM([New Cases]), -2, 0)

14 Day Moving Avg

WINDOW_AVG(SUM([New Cases]), -13, 0)

Notice the number of rows to average over is 1 less than you might expect, as the current row is included, so the calculation is saying ‘current row’ and 2 | 13 previous rows.

Add these to the table, and adjust the table calculation so it is explicitly calculating by Report Date. This would have happened automatically, as the calculation would have been computing ‘down’ the table, but it’s best to fix the computation, so it doesn’t matter where the pill gets moved to in the view.

We now need to work out whether there is an increase or not between the 3-day and 14-day average.

Is Increase?

IF [3 Day Moving Avg] > [14 Day Moving Avg] THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

Is Decrease?

IF [3 Day Moving Avg] <= [14 Day Moving Avg] THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

I’m using 1s and 0s as it’s going to help with a later calculation.

NOTE – I’m assuming that if there is ‘no change’ it’ll be recorded as a decrease. This is how I interpreted the requirement, “ …whether it is an increase or a decrease (or no change)” and it wasn’t easy to find any matches anyway.

I also need some text to indicate the increase or decrease

Increase | Decrease

UPPER(IF [Is Increase?]=1 THEN ‘Increase’ ELSE ‘Decrease’ END)

The UPPER is used as that’s part of the tooltip formatting.

Let’s get these onto the view, always making sure the table calculations are set to Report Date.

We need to calculate the number of days that has been reported INCREASE in succession, and the number of days where successive DECREASE has been reported.

So first, let’s identify which rows match the previous row.

Match Prev Value?

LOOKUP([Is Increase?],-1) = [Is Increase?]

If the value of the Is Increase? field in the previous (-1) row is the same as the Is Increase? field in the current row, then this is true, else false.

Add to the view, and verify the table calculation for itself and all nested calculations being referenced, is set to Report Date.

We now have all the information we need to help us work out the number of days in the increase/decrease ‘trend’.

Days in Trend

IF (FIRST()=0) OR(NOT([Match Prev Value?])) THEN 1
ELSEIF [Increase | Decrease] = ‘INCREASE’ THEN ([Is Increase?]+PREVIOUS_VALUE([Is Increase?]))
ELSEIF [Increase | Decrease] = ‘DECREASE’ THEN ([Is Decrease? ]+PREVIOUS_VALUE([Is Decrease? ]))
END

If the row in the table is the very first entry (so there’s nothing previous to compare against), or the row in the table didn’t match it’s predecessor (ie there was a change), then we’re starting a new ‘trend run’, which obviously starts at 1.

Otherwise, if the current row we’re on indicates an increase, then we’ll add the value of the Is Increase? field (which is 1) to the previous value (which is also 1). PREVIOUS_VALUE works recursively though, so it essentially builds up a running sum, which gives our trend.

We ultimately do the same thing using the Is Decrease? column. This is why using 1 & 0s in the earlier calculation help.

Adding into the view, and setting the table calculation correctly, you should get something similar to this…

Finally, there’s one key field we need to add; something to help identify the latest row as we will need it for filtering in the table that’s displayed on the dashboard. Simply applying a standard ‘quick filter’ won’t work, as the table requires we show the 3-day & 14-day moving averages. A ‘quick filter’ to limit the data to the latest date (7th June), will show the wrong values, as the data related to the other days will be filtered out, so the table calc won’t have the information to correctly compute over.

We need to create another table calculation that we can use as a filter, and that due to Tableau’s ‘order of operations’ will apply later in the filtering process than a traditional quick filter.

Max Date

{FIXED : MAX([Report Date])}

The latest date in the whole data set.

Show Data for Latest Date

LOOKUP(MIN([Report Date]),0) = MIN([Max Date])

If the Report Date of the current row is the same as the maximum date in the whole data set, then return true.

We’ve now got all the core data components we need to create the various charts.

In the interest of time (my time in writing this out), I’m going to attempt not to describe the building of all the charts in too much detail, but just call out the useful bits you might need. If you’re attempting this challenge with the table calcs above, I’m assuming you know Tableau enough to not need everything defined to the lowest level.

The whole report is driven off a parameter which the user must enter a State – County combo.

You’ll need a calculated field to store the combo

State – County

[Province State Name] + ‘ – ‘ + [County]

and then create a parameter (State – County Parameter) off of this (right click, Create -> Parameter) which will create a string parameter with all the permutations.

When displaying on the dashboard, set this to be of type Type In

BAN

The BAN is a basic summary of the latest trend for the entered state county.

We need to filter the sheet to the value entered in the parameter

Is Selected State County?

[State – County Parameter] = [State – County]

Add this to the Filter shelf as true, along with the Show Data for Latest Date.

Add the relevant fields to the Text shelf to display the required text. The Report Date needs to be custom formatted to ddd, mmm d to get the Sun, Jun 7 display

Map

For the map, as well as filtering the latest date, we’re also going to need to filter just to the state only (not state & county) as above. So I created

Is Selected State?

LEFT([State – County Parameter], FIND([State – County Parameter],’-‘)-2) = [Province State Name]

This is unpicking the State – County combined string stored in the parameter, to just find the State part and compare to the Province State Name.

Build a filled map based on County and filter to the latest date and the selected state. I set the Map Layers to that below, which seems to match up

You’ll need to set both the Is Selected State County? and Increase|Decrease fields to the Colour shelf.

Bar & Line Chart

You’re going to need a few more calculated fields for this.

Moving Avg Selector

for the user to choose what the line should display. I’ve set it to an intger parameter that displays text

We then need a field to show on the display depending on what’s been selected in the parameter

Moving Avg to Display

If [Moving Avg Selector] = 3 THEN [3 Day Moving Avg] ELSE [14 Day Moving Avg] END

You’ll need a Dual Axis chart plotting New Cases and Moving Avg to Display against Report Date (continuous exact date)

The data only starts from 8th March, so I added Report Date to filter to start from 8th March. 8th March is also added as a constant reference line.

Table

Based on the State / County entered, the table is filtered to show the data for the latest date for all the counties in the state entered. Although not stated in the requirements, the first row is the county selected, with the rest ordered by Reported Cases.

You can get the selected county to the top, by adding Is Selected State County as a hidden field to the Rows, and moving ‘True’ to the top.

And that should be everything you need to build the dashboard, which is pretty much just stacking all the sheets one on top of each other in a single column.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you excel at bar charts?

Donna Coles1 Comment

When Luke’s #WOW2020 challenge landed this week, I did a little happy dance inside, as I was pretty sure I was going to be able to crack this fairly quickly with minimal head scratching effort. This isn’t because I create these types of charts often, but because this type of side-by-side bar formed the basis of a #WorkoutWednesday challenge way back in 2017, and is a technique I can still recall – I didn’t even have to check my published workbook for a reminder… there’s just some techniques that just ‘stick’.

There may well be other ways to solve this challenge, but the technique I know is based on ‘normalising’ and ‘jittering’ dates, and is one I recall I picked up from Zen Master Jonathan Drummey’s Bars & Lines Blog post and associated workbook which can be downloaded from the blog.

So let’s gets started & hopefully, all will become clear.

Building the chart

In the dataset we’re using we have 4 years worth of orders, and need to plot the value of sales per month, per year in a bar chart which ‘groups’ the yearly bars for the same month together.

We’re going to plot the dates on a continuous axis (green pill), which typically would give a bar chart that looks like this, where Year(Order Date) is also added to the Colour shelf (Note I’ve also adjusted the colours to match the requirements).

We have 1 bar per month per year, but the months are ‘grouped’ in their sequential years.

So the first thing we want to do, is ‘normalise’ the dates as if they all occurred in the same year – any year is fine, I’m going to baseline them all to 2019

Date Normalised

MAKEDATE(2019,MONTH([Order Date]),DAY([Order Date]))

As you can see if plotting Order Date alongside Date Normalised this is simply transposing 03 Jan 2016 to 03 Jan 2019, 03 Jan 2017 would also be transposed to 03 Jan 2019

Replacing Order Date with Date Normalised on our initial chart gives us

But we want the bars side by side.

When using the automatic date hierarchy to plot dates at the month level, what Tableau is doing ‘under the bonnet’, is ‘truncating’ each date to the 1st of the month; so 3rd Jan 2019 and 18th Jan 2019 etc, are both actually plotted at 1st Jan 2019, and so on.

And when a bar chart is used to plot on a date axis, the left hand side of the bar is plotted at the 1st of the month point.

So with all this in mind, what we’re going to is ‘jitter’ the dates for each year to be clustered before the 1st of the month (for 2016 & 2017) and on/after 1st of the month (for 2018 & 2019).

Date Jitter

CASE YEAR([Order Date])
WHEN 2016 THEN DATEADD(‘day’,-9, DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Date Normalised]))
WHEN 2017 THEN DATEADD(‘day’,-4, DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Date Normalised]))
WHEN 2018 THEN DATEADD(‘day’,1, DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Date Normalised]))
WHEN 2019 THEN DATEADD(‘day’,6, DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Date Normalised]))
END

If the year of the original Order Date is 2016, then truncate the normalised (2019) version of the date to the 1st of the month, but subtract 9 days. So if the Order Date is 03 Jan 2016, then transpose it to 03 Jan 2019, then truncate to 1st of month, 01 Jan 2019, then subtract 9 days to 23 Dec 2018

03 Jan 2016 -> 03 Jan 2019 -> 01 Jan 2019 -> 23 Dec 2018

Depending on the year depends on whether dates are subtracted or added, and they have a suitable spacing between. The table below shows the relationship between the Order Date, the Normalised Date and the Date Jitter

Replacing Date Normalised with Date Jitter like for like, gives us the same view though, since it’s automatically rolled up to ‘month’

Change the Date Jitter to Exact Date

and ta-dah! you have your side-by-side chart. Each bar is being plotted at the exact date. If we just filter to look at May for example, we can see this clearer

The bars are obviously thinner than we want, so adjust the Size to be Fixed with a value of 4

To get the Tooltip to display the correct month and year, you need to add Order Date to the Detail shelf and change it to the discrete Month level (blue pill), then format the pill to display as an abbreviated month.

To get the axis to display an abbreviated month name, format that too and set to custom formatting of mmm.

Finally, to get the bottom axis and axis ticks to be darker, adjust the Columns Axis Ruler and Axis Ticks to be a solid dark line, then edit the axis, and delete the axis title

Your bar chart should be complete

Building the Legend

F0r the legend, I simply created a very simple existence chart using the circle mark type as below

And that’s it (once added to a dashboard of course!). The date jittering is a useful technique to be aware of – I’m pretty sure I’ve used it in other challenges too, but not necessarily for a side by side bar chart.

My published viz is here.

Note, my Date Normalised & Date Jitter fields in my published viz aren’t exactly as detailed above, because I decided to jitter then normalise originally, which meant I had to make an additional adjustment in my normalisation calculation. It’s only when typing this blog out and essentially rebuilding as I go, that I realised it was so much simpler the other way round!

Happy vizzin’! Stay safe!

Donna

Profitability Spotlight – is your budget recovered?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

For week 22 of #WOW2020, Ivett Kovacs set her first challenge as a guest poster.

At first glance it looked like it would be tricky, and it was! There were many head-scratching moments as I made my way through this, and I couldn’t complete it all without having to look at Ivett’s solution – more on that later.

Understanding the data

First up, a word on the data provided, as the requirements weren’t as clear as I’d have liked.

Ivett provided a small custom data set to build this challenge on

It contains 2 rows for each Sub-Category. The value to be plotted for Review is evident on the challenge – it’s an average. But the aggregation for Revenue & Budget isn’t that obvious, as there is no direct indication on a label or in the tooltip. Should the values be summed or averaged, or a combination of both?

The Profit value in the tooltip is the only clue you have. The Profit value for Tables is -$60, the value for Chairs is $50. From examining the values in the data, the assumption is Profit = AVG(Revenue) – AVG(Budget), so the values to plot for Budget and Revenue need to be averaged.

The assumption is this data set is a combination of a two datasets; one containing the Revenue & Budget per Sub-Category

the other containing the customer reviews

So when it comes to the viz, we’re looking to plot based on the following data

Understanding what numbers I need to be aiming for when doing these challenges is crucial to me to ensure I’m heading down the right path 🙂

Duplicating the Data

The key thing to realise about this chart is that the right hand line is a fake axis; ie not an axis at all, just a vertical line located so that it looks like it is an axis.

What we actually need to do is build a triangle for each Sub-Category, where each point of the triangle is a different (x,y) coordinate. This means we need 3 rows of data per Sub-Category, 1 row to represent each point being plotted.

So for this we need to Union the data twice, so there are 3 instances of the data – drag another instance of the table into the data pane and drop when the Union option appears. Do this twice.

The union duplicates the rows of data, and each set is identifiable by an automatically generated Table Name field containing values WW, WW1,WW2

Defining the points of the triangle

As I said above, we need to build a triangle for each Sub-Category, where each point of the triangle is a different (x,y) coordinate.

At point 1, we’re going to plot our Review value. At point 2, we’re going to plot our Revenue value, and Budget will be at point 3.

From the diagram above, you can see our x coordinates are one of two numbers, either 0 or x1 (ie the x coordinate for the Revenue & Budget points is the same).

The y coordinates vary per measure, and need to be ‘normalised’ to a common scale, as otherwise, the Revenue & Budget figures would be plotted significantly higher than the Review values (you might find this blog by Zen master Jonathan Drummey useful at this point).

When normalising, you’re typically looking to convert your values to a scale from 0-1; this means the values aren’t plotted at their absolute values, but are still plotted in the same relative order to each other ie lowest value at the bottom, highest at the top.

When normalising a set of values from 0 to 1, your lowest value would typically be at the 0 position , with your highest value at the 1 position. To calculate where your value would sit on this scale, you need to know 3 numbers; the value to convert, the maximum value in the range of values to plot and the minimum value in in the range of values to plot. The normalised value is then :

(Current value – min value) / (max value – min value)

ie the difference between your value and the lowest as a proportion of the difference between the whole range.

However, in this instance, I chose to simplify the normalisation, and my method only works due to the values in the example data provided.

Side Note I consider Revenue & Budget to be values that are directly related to each other ie if Budget = Revenue I’d expect them to be plotted at the same point. I therefore chose to normalise these values across the combined range. This gave me different results from the solution, where Budget and Revenue were normalised independently of each other.

The maximum average review value is 5, the maximum value for budget and revenue combined is 100. As 100 is exactly 20 times bigger than 5, I simply chose to normalise the revenue/budget values to be on a scale of 0-5 instead, rather than normalising all values (Review, Budget & Revenue) to be on a 0-1 scale.

First up, we want to identify a position for each point

Path

IF [Table Name] = ‘WW’ THEN 1
ELSEIF [Table Name] = ‘WW1’ THEN 2
ELSE 3
END

Then we’ll create the x coordinate for each point

x

IF [Path] = 1 THEN 0
ELSE 20 END

I’ve just chosen an arbitrary value to plot the 2nd & 3rd points at – could easily have been 1.

Then we’ll create the y coordinate for each point, which is where the normalisation comes in

y

IF MIN([Path]) = 1 THEN AVG([Review])
ELSEIF MIN([Path]) = 2 THEN AVG([Revenue])/20
ELSEIF MIN([Path]) = 3 THEN AVG([Budget])/20
END

Dividing by 20, normalises the values to a scale of 0-5 as discussed above.

Let’s put these values all out in a table, so we can see what’s going on

Building the Polygon Viz

You can see we have 3 points per Sub-Category, so we can plot the x & y measures on a sheet as follows :

  • Add Min(x) to Rows
  • Add y to Columns
  • Add Sub-Category to Detail
  • Add Table Name (or Path) to Detail
  • Change Mark Type to Polygon
  • Change Colour to #666666 with 30% opacity

Tooltips

We need 2 new calculated fields for the Tooltip

Profit

AVG([Revenue]) – AVG([Budget])

formatted to $ with 0 dp

Margin

[Profit]/AVG([Budget])

formatted to % with 1 dp.

Note this will differ from the solution, where I think Ivett inadvertently used SUM(Budget) rather than AVG.

Add these to Tooltip field and adjust text accordinly.

Colouring the Line

To make the line, I created a second instance of y

y2

IF MIN([Path]) = 1 THEN AVG([Review])
ELSEIF MIN([Path]) = 2 THEN AVG([Revenue])/20
END

which just plots 2 points rather than 3.

Add this to Columns next to y, make dual axis and synchronise axis. Things might have disappeared – you need to remove Measure Names from both marks cards. Change the mark type of the y2 card to Line.

You won’t see much difference at this point (or you shouldn’t). We need a field to define the colour

Colour : Line

IF [Profit] < 0 THEN ‘Non-Profitable’ ELSE ‘Profitable’ END

Add this to the Colour shelf of the y2 marks card and adjust to suit.

Labelling the line

On the y2 marks card, add Review (set to AVG) to Label shelf, and move Sub-Category to Label shelf. Set Label to only label Start of Line. Adjust format/layout of Label to suit.

Set the format of Review to Number Standard – this is a format little used, but will display a whole number or a decimal. I discovered this through an Andy Kriebel WoW from a long time ago and is a real gem!

Finalising the viz

To tidy up and get the viz looking like the solution

  • Format to remove all gridlines
  • Hide the y2 axis
  • Hide the ‘4 nulls’ indicator if you have it
  • Edit the y axis
    • Fix the axis from 0.5 to 5.25
    • Add a title
    • Set axis ticks to none
  • On the y2 marks card, edit the Colour shelf and change the markers to show to All (this gives the circles on each end of the line)
  • Change the Min(x) pill to be FLOAT(Min(x)) using the ‘type in pill’ function
  • Edit the x axis to be Fixed from -0.3 to 19.9
    • cutting off the end of the axis makes the end circle disappear. This is very sneaky, and I had to see the solution for this!
  • Hide the x axis
  • Remove the row divider lines

So we’ve now got the core viz – hooray! But we’re not quite done – boo!

Expand /Collapse

Ivett set the viz to expand to show a column by Sub-Category on click.

This is another requirement I couldn’t get however hard I tried. I duplicated my viz and created a version with Sub-Category on Columns and tried to use Parameter Actions to set a parameter that would control which viz would display using a sheet swap techinque. However when I added the necessary field to the Detail shelf, all the polygons disappeared and I don’t understand why…. I therefore published my first instance of this challenge with a parameter the user controlled to decide which view to show. This is here.

So I had to look at Ivett’s solution to see how she had achieved this, and it involved sets.

Right click on Sub-Category and Create – > Set

Selected Sub-Cats

Don’t select any values at this point.

Create a field

Expand

IF [Selected Sub-Cats] THEN [Sub-Category]
ELSE ‘Click to Expand’
END

If there are values in the set, then the set values will be returned, otherwise the text ‘Click to Expand’ will display.

Add this to the Columns shelf, and ‘Hide field labels for columns‘ so the text ‘Expand’ doesn’t show.

A dashboard action will ultimately drive the behaviour, but we can test the display by editing the set and selecting all values.

The view should expand as expected, showing a column per Sub-Category

But the name of the Sub-Category is still displayed on the label, and in the example this isn’t the case. To fix this I created another calculated field

Label: SubCat

IF [Selected Sub-Cats] THEN ” ELSE [Sub-Category] END

which I added to the Label shelf, and adjusted the display to suit.

‘Reset’ the view to show the collapsed version by re-editing the set and removing all values.

How to Read this chart legend

I simply duplicated the main viz, and filtered by Sub-Category = Chairs.

I removed the label, and then used the Annotate Point functionality to add the relevant labels against the points.

Profitable Legend

The Profitable / Non-Profitable legend makes use of our trusted friend MIN(0), with pills arranged as below.

Applying the Set Action

Create a dashboard to the size specified, and just use floating objects to position the text and various sheets.

To drive the expand / collapse function, create a Set Action on the main viz as below, that targets the Selected Sub-Cats set.

Revenue / Budget Label

This is just managed using Text objects on the dashboard, carefully positioned in the right locations. You might need to add additional objects to get the layout required.

The background of the whole dashboard is set to light grey and the sheets and objects need to be set to the same grey or white to get the same presentation.

So fingers crossed, you should have a complete solution now.

My final version (after I peeked at Ivett’s) is here.

Happy Vizzin’! Stay safe!

Donna

Can you design for an automatic phone layout?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

Designing for mobile isn’t something I inherently think about when building a viz, so, this week’s #WOW challenge from Lorna was a useful reminder on the inbuilt functionality Tableau has to make a display typically aimed at a laptop user, also render well on a mobile display with minimal effort.

Tableau allows you to choose a variety of device layouts and define specific instances of how the sheets should display on each, but this challenge was focused on the Automatic Phone Layout option, where the aim was to build a 1200×800 dashboard, which automatically rendered vertically when viewed on mobile. Lorna referenced this Tableau blog as a starting point, which is definitely worth a read.

YTD Summary by Sales

In the requirements, Lorna mentions ‘last 2 years YTD’, but given the dataset used contains years 2016-2019, and the challenge wasn’t really focused on this area, I just presented sales for the whole year as follows :

  • YEAR(Order Date) to Rows sorted by Order Date descending (so 2019 is listed first)
  • SUM(Sales) on Text with a Quick Table Calculation of Percent Difference. By default, this calculation will work ‘down’ the table, so we need to edit the table calc so it is relative to the Next record, rather than Previous.
  • Format this field using custom formatting of â–²0%;â–¼0% ( I use this site to copy & paste the shape images from)
  • Add another copy of SUM(Sales) to Text and then modify the text to format as required.
  • To only display Years 2018 & 2019 either
    • Filter the Order Date to exclude 2016, and additional filter the SUM(Sales) % difference table calculation to only show non-null values
  • or select year 2016 and 2017, right-click and choose Hide
  • Add YEAR(Order Date) to Colour and adjust to suit
  • Apply formatting to remove row/column/grid lines/ row banding. hide labels and rotate headings
  • Change the title of the sheet to YTD

Repeat all of this to create a version for Profit.

Sales Trend Line

This is pretty much Desktop 101 – one of the first charts you’re likely to build when training on Desktop 🙂 So here’s just the picture 🙂

Again repeat to create a version for Profit.

Top 10 Products by Sales Bar Chart

In the requirement Lorna stated (and displayed a title for) Top 10 Customers by Sales, but the chart displayed in her solution showed Products.

I chose therefore to show the same as Lorna (with a corrected title). The instruction in the requirements was also to use Sets. So to do this

Top 10 Products by Sales

Right click on Product Name, select Create -> Set and adjust as below

Then to build the chart

  • Add Sales to Rows
  • Product Name to Columns, sorted by Sales descending
  • Sales to Text
  • Order Date to Filter set to 2018 & 2019 only
  • Top 10 Products by Sales to Filter

At this point you might find you only have 9 rows displayed, and this is because the 10 largest product sales are considering all years, before then filtering by the years. We need to set the Order Date filter to be Added to Context (right-click on pill). This will force Tableau to filter the data by the relevant years. and then work out the Top 10. When added to context the pill will be grey rather than blue on the filter shelf.

Apply formatting as required

Top & Bottom 10 Products by Profit

Similar to above, I created a Top 10 Products by Profit set and also a Bottom 10 Products by Profit set ( just change the ‘Top’ drop down to select Bottom).

Top & Bottom Products by Profit

To the get a Top 10 & Bottom 10 set, you can create a combined set. I can’t recall if I’ve ever come across this before… I think it was probably part of some #WoW a long time ago… it certainly isn’t something I use regularly.

Right click on one of the Profit sets created and select Create Combined Set and choose your sets in the presented dialog. In this instance we want all members from both sets.

To build the chart

  • Add Profit to Rows
  • Product Name to Columns, sorted by Profit descending
  • Profit to Text
  • Order Date to Filter set to 2018 & 2019 only and added to context
  • Top & Bottom Products by Profit to Filter

We need a ‘header’ to label the Top & Bottom. I added Top 10 Products By Profit to Rows, and placed it in front of Product Name. This works since the sets are mutually exclusive – no product can be in both the top 10 and the bottom 10. This will display header values of In or Out, which I then aliased to display Top 10 or Bottom 10 (right clicked on ‘In’ and Edit Alias). Then just format to suit.

Building the Dashboard

We’ve got all the component parts , so now we want to add to the dashboard in such a way that the sheets will display vertically when viewed on mobile, even though the requirements stipulate a 1200 x 800 ‘desktop’ type layout.

The requirements also state to use the Automatic Phone Layout option only, which means you shouldn’t have a need to ‘fiddle’ with how the components are displayed when in mobile view.

Basically you’re building on the Default view

but when you click the Phone option, the padlock remains ‘locked’ ie the ‘automatic’ view, and all the objects display in the right order on top of each other.

The key to this, is knowing the fact that the automatic phone layout follows an A-Z approach – across the page from left to right, then down and across from left to right again.

I arranged my objects in rows as

  • Row 1 = Title
  • Row 2 = Heading
  • Row 3 = Sales YTD, Sales Trend, Top 10 Products
  • Row 4 = Heading
  • Row 5 = Profit YTD, Profit Trend, Top & Bottom 10 Products

All charts were set to Fit Entire View, and I didn’t spend any time creating specific layout containers – I just dropped the objects in the places I wanted.

This subsequently presented as below when I clicked the Phone option on the Dashboard tab

The part I found most tricky was getting the Top & Bottom 10 Products chart to display the detail I could see when viewing Lorna’s solution. I simply ended up needing to adjust the font sizes to be size 6 on the labels and the displayed product names, and moving the column sizer so I had enough of the bar to display.

My published version is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay safe!

Donna

How much do these states contribute to the total?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

By Week 20 of #WOW2020, Tableau v2020.2 was released, so guest challenger, Sean Miller, returned with a challenge to demonstrate one of the new bits of functionality that had been released – the ability to remove values from a set via dashboard actions.

Selected states on the map are highlighted and added to the list displayed on the right; clicking a state on the list then removed it from being highlighted on the map.

This felt like it should be straightforward, which was quite a relief after the last couple of weeks, and I’m hoping this blog doesn’t take too long to write 🙂

Spoiler alert! It was straight forward – hurrah! I do really value these ‘simpler’ challenges, when the main purpose is to introduce new features and functionality. In a business environment, it’s not always possible to work with the latest release, so having these challenges as a useful working example of a new feature to reference in future, is of great benefit.

So, if you hadn’t already realised, you’re going to need v2020.2 to complete this challenge, which you can get here , or you may need to use Tableau Public instead.

Creating the State set

Double-click State, double-click Sales and change mark type to Filled Map, and you’ve got your basic starting point 🙂

We want to be able to have different colours for the states depending on whether they’re in or out of a set of selected states.

Create a Selected States set by right clicking on State and selecting Create -> Set. Choose a random set of states.

Note – in v2020.2, the Selected States set is now just listed in the top left hand ‘dimensions’ pane (which also is now no longer labelled dimensions) with a ‘set’ icon to indicate its ‘data type’, rather than being listed in a separate ‘Sets’ section towards the bottom.

Drag this set onto the Colour shelf of the map. The states selected in the set will be coloured differently from the other states. Adjust the In/Out colour legend to suit.

Remove the map features

The displayed map in the solution is very ‘clean’; all labels,non US countries etc are hidden. This is set by selecting Map -> Map Layers from the top menu, and unchecking all the pre-selected Map Layer options.

Map Tooltip

The tooltip displays more measures than just the Sales, so we need some calculated fields

# Orders

COUNTD([Order ID])

# Customers

COUNTD([Customer ID])

Add these to the Tooltip shelf and adjust the display accordingly.

Creating the State List

There are several ways to build a basic list, but to get the formatting nicer, I created it using a bar chart as follows

  • Type in ‘Min(1)’ to Columns
  • Add State to Rows
  • Add Selected States to Filter shelf
  • Add State to Text shelf
  • Adjust Text to read ‘x <State>’ and format to white text, and align left middle

Adjust the colour of the bar to suit, then

  • Uncheck Show Header from the State pill in the Rows
  • Adjust the axis to be fixed from 0 to 1
  • Hide the axis.
  • Change the Tooltip text to ‘CLICK TO REMOVE’
  • Change the title to include the instruction

Invoke the Set Actions

Add both sheets to a dashboard.

Add a Change Set Values Dashboard Action to the Map sheet as below

As you click a state or select a group of states, it/they will be added to the list.

Add another Change Set Values dashboard action, this time based off the state list as follows

As you click on a state in the list now, it will disappear from the list and the state will no longer be highlighted on the map.

You will notice though, that as you click states on the map, your selections remain ‘selected’ until you click again. To fix this we need to use a little ‘true = false’ trick to ‘automatically deselect’ the states.

Automatically deselect states

Create new calculated fields called

True

True

False

False

and add both of these to the Detail shelf on the Map sheet.

Then back on the dashboard create a Filter action as follows

Building the Bar Charts

The above has completed the main part of the challenge and demonstrates the new feature, the option to Remove values from set in the Set Action dialog.

However Sean added some extra charts to the display.

Sales Chart

Add Sales to Columns and Selected Sales to Colour. Change Sales to be a Quick Table Calculation and set it to Percent of Total.

The tooltip and the chart title have additional information so we need

Total Sales

{FIXED:SUM([Sales])}

Sales of Selected States

{FIXED: SUM(IF [Selected States] THEN [Sales] END)}

% Sales of Selected States

[Sales of Selected States] / [Total Sales]

Format all these accordingly.

Add all these to the Detail/Tooltip shelf as required and amend Tooltip and Chart Title as necessary.

Orders Chart

This is pretty much the same as above….

Add # Orders to Columns and Selected Sales to Colour. Change # Orders to be a Quick Table Calculation and set it to Percent of Total.

The tooltip and the chart title have additional information so we need

Total Orders

{FIXED:COUNTD([Order ID])}

Orders of Selected States

{FIXED: COUNTD(IF [Selected States] THEN [Order ID] END)}

% Orders of Selected States

[Orders of Selected States] / [Total Orders]

Customers Chart

This doesn’t work quite the same (I only found out after the event), as a customer can order against more than 1 state it would seem. So while you’ll still need the following

Total Customers

{FIXED:COUNTD([Customer ID])}

Customers in Selected States

{FIXED: COUNTD(IF [Selected States] THEN [Customer ID] END)}

% Customers of Selected States

[Customers of Selected States] / [Total Customers]

we need to build it as a dual axis, with % Customers of Selected States on Columns alongside Min(1)

This should be all the building blocks needed. My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you build a dynamic date drilling chart?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

Week 19 of #WOW2020 saw Ann provide this challenge, which she declared would be easier than Luke’s from the previous week.

The aim was to start with a chart by week, but on selection drill in to show a by day view, with the slight twist that all days between the first and last selected dates should display, even if the specific week in between wasn’t explicitly selected.

I knew this was going to involve set actions (although there was a clue on the ‘latest challenges‘ page – I tend to pick up the challenges through Twitter, so often bypass this page, but it’s worth a look for extra clues :-))

So on the face of it, the challenge seemed as if it should be ok, but it’s usually only when I start building that things can start to unravel.

One area that Ann hadn’t been explicit about in the requirements, was the behaviour in certain scenarios. I had to revise some of my initial attempts/calculations in order to match Ann’s workbook. This week I’m not going to go into all the wrong turns, but this is the behaviour I observed in Ann’s workbook, and so ultimately tried to replicate.

  1. When at the week level, if multiple points are selected, the days then displayed should start from the first day of the first week selected (which will be a Sunday as we’re working with how the US standardises a week start), and finish on the last day of the last week selected (which will be a Saturday).
  2. When at the week level, if a single point is selected then the 7 days in that week only should be displayed.
  3. When at the day level, if multiple points are selected, the days then displayed start from the first day of the week the first day is in and end on the last day of the week the last selected day is in (so you may get more days than actually selected). eg if the 1st day selected is a Tuesday and the last day selected is a Friday, the ‘drill in’, will start on the previous Sunday, and end on the following Saturday. This isn’t necessarily what you may expect to happen.
  4. Based on the above, when at the day level, a single day is selected, the ‘drill in’ will show the 7 days in the same week. Once you’re down to displaying the 7 days in the same week, clicking on any single day or selecting a couple of days, won’t appear to do anything as the same results are displayed.

Being aware of the above, will explain why some the calculations I end up with look the way they do.

Ok, let’s get on with the build…..

Ann stated that she’d hardcoded to the ‘last 52 weeks’, but essentially it looked like she was displaying data for all of 2019. This wasn’t really something the challenge was testing, so I simply started by adding a data source filter for the year 2019 (right click on data source -> Edit data source filters). I also had to set the date properties of my data source to set a week to start on a Sunday as I’m UK based, so my week’s are defaulted to start on Mondays (again right click on data source -> Date Properties). As a result of my year filter, I didn’t seem to have the same starting/ending dates as Ann, but as already stated, this wasn’t the main aim of the challenge, so I didn’t stress about it.

I decided quite early on that I was going to also use a Parameter Action to decide the level I was at (ie had I drilled in or not). I wasn’t entirely sure when I started how many ‘levels’ I might need, so chose to use an integer parameter for this. I ended up only needing 2 levels, so a boolean could have worked equally as well, or, as I type, I think I could have used this parameter to store the ‘date level’ (day or week) I want to display my dates at, which would have made some of my calculations easier to read. I’m not going to do this though.

Drill Down

Integer parameter set to 0 by default.

Now I want to define a date field that I’m going to use on the axis, that will vary depending on the ‘level’ we’re at.

Date to Plot

IF [Drill Down]>0 THEN DATETRUNC(‘day’, [Order Date]) ELSE
DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date])
END

Note – I used >0 as I wasn’t sure if I’d have levels 0, 1 & 2… as it turns out I just used 0 & 1 in the end.

Add Date to Plot to Columns as a Continuous, Exact Date and Sales to Rows and we’ve got our starting point

Change the Drill Down parameter to 1 and the chart will change to display at the day level

Drilling Down on selection

On selection, we want to add the selected dates into a set, so first up, we need to define that set.

Right click on Date to Plot and Create -> Set

Selected Dates

Select some random dates so we can test with. These will get set properly later based on the Set Action we define on the dashboard.

Based on the dates in the set, we need to determine a min and a max date we can then use to restrict the dates being plotted on the chart.

Min Date

{FIXED:MIN(IF [Selected Dates] OR [Drill Down]=0 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’,[Date to Plot]) END) }

This either gets the 1st day of the week based on the earliest date in the set, or the 1st day of the week of the whole data set (when we’re at the ‘starting’ level with Drill Down =0).

We also need

Max Date

IF [Drill Down]=0 THEN
{FIXED:MAX(DATEADD(‘day’,-1,[Date to Plot]))}
ELSE
DATEADD(‘week’,1,{FIXED:MAX(IF [Selected Dates] THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’,[Date to Plot]) END)})-1
END

If we’re at the starting level (Drill Down = 0) then we want the last day within the latest week in the data set (this field is used in the title display, so necessary to get this to display right), otherwise we need to get the last day of the week associated to the maximum date in the set.

Now we need to be able to restrict the dates displayed in the chart based on these

Dates to Include

[Order Date]>= [Min Date] AND [Order Date]<= [Max Date]

Add this to the Filter shelf and set to True.

Your display shouldn’t change, as we’re still at ‘level 0’, even though our set has random dates selected. If you now manually change Drill Down to 1, you should see a change

Setting up the dashboard actions

Ok, now we’ve got the basic idea, let’s get it all working properly with dashboard actions before we sort out all the other bits n bobs.

First up, let’s manually reset everything by setting the Drill Down parameter to 0 and emptying all the values selected in the set.

Add the sheet onto the dashboard, and create the set action, which is set to target the Selected Dates set and to Keep set values if you click on a blank area of the chart after selection.

However, this on it’s own won’t change the display. We need to set the Drill Down parameter to 1 too.

For this we need another field

Set Drill Down Level

1

Add this to the Detail shelf of the chart.

Then back on the dashboard, add a Parameter Action that targets the Drill Down parameter using the value stored in the Set Drill Down Level field

Now if you select the dates in the dashboard, you should get the desired behaviour, and if you select again, you should filter the days selected further (as per the behaviour described at the top of the page).

Resetting the display

The Reset button is actually another sheet.

I created a ‘fake’ bar chart by adding MIN(1) to Rows, and double clicking in the space below the Detail and Tooltip shelves on the Marks card, and typing the text ‘CLEAR SELECTION’. This creates a ‘pill’ without having it defined explicitly as a calculated field, and I added this to the Text shelf, and centred/formatted appropriately. I then set the axis to be fixed from 0 to 1 and hid it.

I set the colour to #a26dc2 and set the text to ‘match mark colour.

We only want this sheet to display, if we’ve ‘drilled down’, so I need

Show Reset

[Drill Down]=1

which is added to the Filter shelf and set to True.

I also need a parameter action off this sheet, to reset the Drill Down to 0 on selection. For this I need another field

Reset

0

which is added to the Detail shelf.

Depending on what you’ve already been playing around with, there’s a chance this sheet may already be empty. Get the dashboard into a state where you’ve drilled down to the day level, then add this sheet, and add another Parameter Action.

Reset is set to run off the ‘button’ sheet only, to target the Drill Down parameter by using the value in the Reset field.

You should now be able to test all this out and get the desired behaviour.

Adding Animations

To get the chart to transition between selections, we need to use the Animations functionality.

On the Format menu, select Animations and adjust the settings as you choose.

Play around and you should have the main features of this challenge now working

Dynamic Title

The title needs to change based on whether you’re at the weekly or daily level. It also needs to show total and average sales. So for all this I need

LABEL: Level

IF [Drill Down]>0 THEN ‘Day’ ELSE ‘Week’ END

LABEL: Subtitle Level

IF [Drill Down]>0 THEN ‘Daily’ ELSE ‘Weekly’ END

LABEL: Instruction

IF [Drill Down] = 0 THEN ‘SELECT WEEKS TO DRILL DOWN TO DAILY VIEW’
ELSE ‘CLEAR SELECTION USING BUTTON’
END

Total Sales

WINDOW_SUM(SUM([Sales]))

Avg Sales

WINDOW_AVG(SUM([Sales]))

All these fields are added to the Detail shelf of the main chart along with Min Date and Max Date, and then the title is edited and formatted accordingly to reference these.

Tooltips

In a similar manner, the tooltips also need adjusting, they just need to refer to the LABEL: Level field

Colour of the Line

Although not explicitly mentioned, the line colour seemed to change from a lighter shade at the weekly level to more intense at the daily level. To achieve this I created

COLOUR

[Drill Down]

and added to the Colour shelf. This gives a colour legend displaying either 1 or 0 depending at what state you are in the interaction. Set colour values accordingly.

Average Line

Add this to the chart simply by selecting Average Line from the Analytics pane and dragging then dropping onto the Table shelf that appears. Format appropriately.

And apart from other basic formatting to remove gridlines/ axis titles etc, that should be it.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Which products are most profitable?

Donna Coles2 Comments

I’m starting to write this blog with a bit of uncertainty today as I’m not ultimately sure where I’m going to end up….

I wasn’t even sure I was going to pen an entry this week…. I found Luke’s challenge tough, and the path I took full of multiple wrong turns, that meant trying to write out a comprehensible ‘how I did it’ quite tricky, as reviewing now I’m questioning ‘what did I do that for…’.

Whilst with perseverance and a bit of inspiration from Rob Saunders, I did manage to post a working solution, I knew I wasn’t overly happy with it, particularly because my expand and collapse functions didn’t behave as I saw others do… I had to click twice to collapse.

Before starting to write, I decided to check out Luke’s workbook which he’d finally published to see if I could understand where I was going wrong.

I’d used both a set action and parameter action in my attempt; Luke had just a parameter action. In trying to understand why I ended up with a set action and see if I could do without it, my solution gradually started unravelling, as various calculated fields needed changing.

So, I think the best way to approach this blog is to rebuild my solution from scratch, using only my existing workbook as a reference, and I will attempt to write and screen shot as I build. This could take some time, and I have no idea how successful I’ll be…. I may well get to a point where I’ve taken a wrong turn again, and everything I’ve written needs to be scrapped… at which point I may just have to say ‘sorry, I tried!’……

Ok, let’s get cracking.

Top N Sub-Categories

At the ‘first’ level of the table, we need to display the top n sub-categories ordered by Profit. Those not in the top n should be displayed under an ‘All Others’ grouping, and always displayed at the bottom. The top n can vary based on the user input.

We need a parameter to define the value of the top n.

SUB-CATEGORIES TO SHOW

This is an integer parameter ranging from 1-10, defaulted to 3. I’ve titled it exactly as displayed on the output, so it’s one less change to make later (hence the capitals).

The easiest way to group the sub-categories into those in the top n, is to use a set. Right click Sub-Category and Create -> Set.

Top N SubCats by Profit

Use the Top tab to define the rules for which Sub-Category to include, referencing the SUB-CATEGORIES TO SHOW parameter and the Profit field as shown below.

SubCat Group

IF [Top N SubCats by Profit] THEN [Sub-Category] ELSE ‘All Others’ END

If the Sub-Category is in the set then the name will display, otherwise it will be grouped under the ‘All Others’.

Add SubCat Group to Rows and change the sort on the pill to sort by Field = Profit desc

This will result in All Others being listed at the top, but to resolve that, drag the Top N SubCats by Profit set onto the Rows an place in front of the SubCat Group.

Let’s get some of the measures we need out onto the canvas.

Margin

SUM([Profit])/SUM([Sales])

format to percentage with 0dp.

Add Margin, Profit & Sales onto the sheet.

Top N Products

The next level in the table displays the Top N products per SubCat Group based on their margin. For those not in the Top N, the products should be grouped under ‘All Others’, and listed at the bottom. The Top N is once again defined by a user input via a parameter.

PRODUCTS TO SHOW

Once again an integer parameter ranging from 1-10 but defaulted at 5 this time.

Unfortunately, this time we can’t use a set to define our Top N grouping. This is because the set will only consider the Top N across all Products and will not consider the fact the Products are nested per Sub-Category grouping. So we need to come up with an alternative. I did do a bit of research to find ideas, and found this article by Emma Whyte at The Information Lab to get me started : Showing a Nested Top N with Other in Tableau.

The Top N needs to be based on the order of the Margin, or the rank.

Margin Rank

RANK_UNIQUE([Margin])

Change this to be a Discrete field.

This will give us a unique ‘number’ per row displayed based on the value of Margin. If records have the same Margin value, using RANK_UNIQUE will mean they get a different rank number (as opposed to how other ranking functions work). The table calculation of INDEX() could work just as well. NOTE – there is potential though that when the Margin values are the same for different products, what makes the Top N and what doesn’t may differ, so you might find you get a slightly different list from some of the solutions you see.

Add Margin Rank and Product Name onto the sheet, and edit the table calculation on Margin Rank, to compute by Product Name only

We now want to group the Product Name based on the Top N products.

Product Name Group

IF [Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW])
THEN ATTR([Product Name])
ELSE ‘All Others’ END

We also only want to show (PRODUCTS TO SHOW + 1) rows per SubCat Group ie if PRODUCTS TO SHOW = 5, we want to display 6 rows per SubCat Group, where the 6th row displays ‘All Others’. The 6th row also needs to show the Profit, Sales and Margin values associated to all the Products in the ‘All Others’ Product Name Group.

So we need to calculate some new fields that will store a revised value for Proft, Sales and Margin, depending what row we’re working with.

Sales For Others

WINDOW_SUM(IF [Margin Rank] > [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN SUM([Sales]) END)

If the Product Name isn’t in the Top N, then get it’s Sales value, and then sum all of those rows that meet the same condition.

If you put this onto the sheet, and set the table calculation for each of the nested calculations (Sales for Others & Margin Rank) to be by Product Name only, you’ll see that the value displayed in every row for each SubCat Group is the sum of the values associated to the rows in the ‘All Others’ group.

So now we need a field that’s either going to display the Sales for the 1 product or the sales for the group of products, depending on what row we’re on.

Grouped Sales

IF [Margin Rank]<= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) THEN SUM([Sales]) ELSE [Sales For Others] END

Again the table calculation settings need to be set to compute by Product Name only. This is the field we ultimately want to display, so it needs to be formatted accordingly. The Sales and Sales For Others fields can be removed.

Along similar lines, we need

Profit For Others

WINDOW_SUM(IF [Margin Rank] > [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN SUM([Profit]) END)

Grouped Profit

IF [Margin Rank]<= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) THEN SUM([Profit]) ELSE [Profit For Others] END

Margin For Others

IF [Margin Rank] > [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN [Profit For Others]/[Sales For Others] END

Grouped Margin

IF [Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) THEN [Margin] ELSE [Margin For Others] END

When added to the sheet, once again make sure all the table calculation properties for all the nested calculations are set to compute by Product Name only.

As mentioned above, we only want to show PRODUCTS TO SHOW + 1 rows, so let’s create a field we can filter by :

Show?

[Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) + 1

Add this to the Filter shelf and set to True. Once again the table calculation needs to be set to compute by Product Name only.

Add Totals

We want a grand total and subtotals only at the level of SubCat Group. Add the totals by Analysis -> Totals -> Show Column Grand Totals to get the overall total. Then on the SubCat Group pill, click and add SubTotals

We’ve now got the main components of the table. We now need to get the interactivity working to allow the expand / contract on arrow selection.

Expand / Contract All Others Product Group

First up, we’ll just tidy up our table display

  • Hide the In/Out Top N SubCats By Profit field
  • Hide the Margin Rank field
  • Hide the Product Name field.
  • Remove the Margin field
  • Alias the Grouped Margin, Grouped Profit, Grouped Sales fields
    • Right click and Edit Alias. Name the field ‘ Margin ‘ (note the trailing and leading spaces. You can’t alias just as Margin as a field already exists with that name, but the spaces make it think it’s a new name.

We need an additional field that will store our ‘arrow’ icon. We’re going to revisit this field. For starters

Product Group Header

IF [Margin Rank] <= [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN ”
ELSE ‘â–º’
END

I use this site to get my icon characters from. Add this field to the sheet after the SubCate Group pill, once again setting the table calculation to compute by Product Name.

In the dashboard, the aim is to click on an arrow associated to a single SubCat Group, which will expand the Product Group Name field to display the actual Product Name (rather than ‘All Others’) with their associated Margin, Sales & Profit values, and also show a â–¼ icon.

This will be achieved using Parameter Actions, for which we need a parameter :

Selected Sub Category Group

String parameter defaulted to ”

Display this parameter on the sheet, as we can start to test the interactivity ‘manually’ without the need for the dashboard. What the dashboard action will do is on ‘click’, it will be set to populate the value of this parameter with the associated SubCat Group value. We can then do some checks based off of this and set various fields accordingly. It means we need to revisit some of the fields.

First up let’s set the arrow….

Edit Product Group Header to be

IF [Selected SubCat Group] = MIN([SubCat Group]) THEN
IF [Margin Rank] > [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN ‘â–¼’ ELSE ” END
ELSEIF [Margin Rank] <= [PRODUCTS TO SHOW] THEN ”
ELSE ‘â–º’
END

Test this by entering the value of ‘Copiers’ into the Selected SubCat Group parameter. The arrow against ‘All Others’ should change.

We also need to change the value of the Product Name Group to show the actual Product Name on selection, so

edit the Product Name Group

IF [Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW])
THEN ATTR([Product Name])
ELSE
IF [Selected SubCat Group] = MIN([SubCat Group])
THEN ATTR([Product Name])
ELSE ‘All Others’ END
END

Again test this out by changing the value in the parameter.

But we need to make more rows show too, so

edit Show?

([Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) + 1) OR (MIN([SubCat Group]) =[Selected SubCat Group])

The values of our measures are still the totals though, so we need to edit these fields to

Grouped Sales

IF ([Margin Rank]<= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) OR ([Selected SubCat Group] = MIN([SubCat Group])) ) THEN SUM([Sales]) ELSE [Sales For Others] END

Grouped Profit

IF ([Margin Rank]<= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) OR ([Selected SubCat Group] = MIN([SubCat Group])) ) THEN SUM([Profit]) ELSE [Profit For Others] END

Grouped Margin

IF ([Margin Rank] <= MIN([PRODUCTS TO SHOW]) OR ([Selected SubCat Group]=MIN([SubCat Group]))) THEN [Margin] ELSE [Margin For Others] END

However while this works if you play with setting and clearing the parameter on the sheet, it won’t quite fully work if added as a dashboard action, as while the action can set the parameter we can’t ‘clear it’.

We need to ‘tie’ the parameter action to another field

SubCat Group for Reset

IF [Selected SubCat Group] = MIN([SubCat Group]) THEN ”
ELSE MIN([SubCat Group])
END

Add this to the Detail shelf (if you want to see how it changes based on the parameter value, add it to the Rows and test changing the parameter).

It needs to be on the sheet so it can be referenced from the dashboard action.

Adding the Action

Add the sheet to a dashboard, then add Parameter Action as below where the Target Parameter is Selected SubCat Group and the field it references is SubCat Group for Reset

And after all that, you should have a working solution. Phew!

Pretty pleased I got there without taking a detour 🙂 The table just now needs various formatting applied, which I’m going to leave to you to do 🙂 Just tweet me if you’re having problems!

The parameter action may be confusing you a bit – it took a while to really get my head round it, so I’ve tried to explain this a bit more below…

How the parameter action works

On initial load of the sheet, the Selected SubCat Group parameter is blank. So for the SubCat Group = Copiers, the SubCat Group for Reset will also be Copiers as SubCat Group is not the same as Selected SubCat Group parameter. Other fields are also set based on the fact these two fields aren’t the same (like the arrow pointing to the right etc).

When the right arrow is clicked on the dashboard, the value of SubCat Group for Reset is used to populate the Selected SubCat Group parameter. So in this example, Selected SubCat Group will now contain the value Copiers. As the Selected SubCat Group parameter is now the same as the SubCat Group, various fields change their behaviour (like the arrow now points down, and more rows are displayed). But also, the value of the SubCat Group for Reset is also changed; as the SubCat Group is the same as the Selected Sub Cat Group parameter, SubCat Group for Reset now contains a blank string.

So at the point the down arrow is now clicked again on the dashboard, the value of the SubCat Group for Reset is again used to populate the Selected SubCat Group parameter. As SubCat Group for Reset is blank, then the parameter will now be populated with a blank value, and so all the login in the fields will be based on the fact that SubCat Group is not the same as the Selected SubCat Group parameter, and the table will display just as it did on first load.

Hope that helps to demystify what’s going on… it’s certainly helped me!

Thanks for sticking with me if you got this far 🙂

The version of the challenge I built while writing this (my 3rd published version) is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you calculate weekday run rate?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

This week’s #WoW2020 challenge was set by Meera Umasankar who once again was tackling the concept of ‘run rate’, but this time with an added twist – only consider the working days (ie the typical Mon-Fri weekdays), rather than every day in the month, the assumption being, this ‘business’ does not trade on weekends. Following on from last week’s challenge, Meera also chose to include a bit of blending to combine actual orders against the plan/target. For this Meera provided a custom dataset which just included a sheet of Actuals by Region for each day in April 2020 up to 23rd April, and Plan by Region for the whole month of April.

As per usual I started by putting together a table of data with the core numbers I was going to need per region : MTD value, Run Rate value, Plan value.

Building the key data fields

Whilst Meera had provided data just for April up to April 23rd, I decided to build this in a way as if the data could change.

Today

{FIXED: MAX([Date])}

This stores the maximum date from the Actuals data source – ie 23 April 2020.

Current Month Only

[Date]>=DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Today]) AND [Date] <= [Today]

When true, this will just consider the records in the Actuals data source that are dated between 1st April & 23 April. As it happens, due to the data provided, this will be everything, but in a typical business situation, you’re actuals would probably contain previous months data too.

MTD

IF [Current Month Only] THEN [Sales] END

Only stores the sales for the month we want to report on.

To get the plan we need to blend to the Plan data source. As the data in the Actual data source is per day, and the Plan is per month, we need to blend the data at the month level. Whilst this can be set in other ways, I like to be explicit when using blending, so in my Actuals data source I created

BLEND – Date

DATE(DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Date]))

This stores the 1st day of the month (1st April 2020) against every row of data.

In the Plan data I created a similar field, which is just essentially a duplicate field of the existing Date field, but by having the same name, it allows the blend joins to be automatically picked up.

Blend – Date

[Date]

Ok, let’s get these 2 measures on a table, to sense check we have the right figures so far :

  • Add Region to Rows (from the Actuals data)
  • Add MTD to Text
  • Add Plan to Text (from the Plan data)
  • Ensure the blend join links on both Region and BLEND – Date are clicked (due to the minimal data we have, the blend on Region only will work, but it’s good practice to include the date blend too if the Plan data contained different months).
  • Apply formatting as required to the MTD & Plan numbers

Calculating the Run Rate

Meera defines the Run Rate as being the value of Sales expected to be received in the whole month (the end of month position/forecast), based on the rate of sales so far in the month. So we’re looking to work out average sales made per day, then extrapolate that across the number of days in the month.

However, the twist in this challenge, is to only give consideration to the number of weekdays (ie working days).

As with many things, I chose to use my best friend ‘Google’ to see if it would throw up anything that may help this requirement, and it did, very quickly. There is an existing Tableau KB article that describes exactly how to work out the number of weekdays between 2 dates. You can find it here.

To work out the Run Rate I need

  • to work out the average Sales per weekday so far
  • multiply that by number of weekdays in the month

So I need to work out the number of working days between 1st April and 23rd April, and also the number of working days between 1st April & 30th April. I need a fair few calculated fields for all this, which I’ll build up rather than combine altogether.

Start of Current Month

DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Today])

simply truncates to 1st of month.

End of Current Month

DATEADD(‘day’, -1, DATEADD(‘month’, 1, [Start of Current Month]))

Adds 1 month onto start of month, then takes off 1 day to get the last day in the month

Following the steps in the article, I need to adjust these dates if they happen to fall on a weekend.

Start of Current Month (shift to weekday)

IF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [Start of Current Month]) = 1
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, 1, [Start of Current Month])
ELSEIF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [Start of Current Month]) = 7
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, 2, [Start of Current Month])
ELSE [Start of Current Month]
END

If the Start of Current Month lands on a Saturday or a Sunday, the start is shifted forward to the following Monday.

End of Current Month (shift to weekday)

IF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [End of Current Month]) = 1
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, -2, [End of Current Month])
ELSEIF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [End of Current Month]) = 7
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, -1, [End of Current Month])
ELSE [End of Current Month]
END

If the End of Current Month lands on a Saturday or Sunday, the end is shifted back to the previous Friday.

#Weekdays in Month

MIN(
(DATEDIFF(‘day’, [Start of Current Month (shift to weekday)], [End of Current Month (shift to weekday)]) + 1) – (2 * DATEDIFF(‘week’, [Start of Current Month (shift to weekday)], [End of Current Month (shift to weekday)])))

This is working out the number of days between the adjusted start & end dates, then adding 1 to this number. It then works out the number of weeks between the adjusted start & end dates, multiples by 2 (since in every week there are 2 weekend days), and then this number is subtracted from the first.

We then need to repeat this to work out the working days from start to today.

Today (shift to weekday)

IF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [Today]) = 1
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, -2, [Today])
ELSEIF DATEPART(‘weekday’, [Today]) = 7
THEN DATEADD(‘day’, -1, [Today])
ELSE [Today]
END

This is our end date, so the date is once again shifted back to the previous Friday if it happens to be a Saturday or Sunday.

# Weekdays from start to Today

MIN(
(DATEDIFF(‘day’, [Start of Current Month (shift to weekday)], [Today (shift to weekday)])+ 1) – (2 * DATEDIFF(‘week’, [Start of Current Month (shift to weekday)], [Today (shift to weekday)])))

Now we have these values, we can work out

Run Rate

(SUM([MTD])/[# Weekdays from Start to Today]) * [# Weekdays in Month]

Format this and add to check table

Building the chart

The left hand side of the chart is all text, but to present it as required, we need a fake axis.

  • From the Actuals data source, add Region to Rows
  • In the Columns shelf type in MIN(0) to create the fake axis.
  • Change the Mark Type to Text
  • Add Region, MTD, Run Rate from the Actuals data source to Text shelf
  • Add Plan from the Plan data source to the Text shelf (don’t forget to check the blend links)
  • Make each row bigger if everything all seems a bit squashed.

We’ll come back to formatting these fields later. Let’s now get the bar displayed & target displayed. This is a dual axis combining a bar and a gantt chart. Add to the chart as follows

  • Add Run Rate to Columns
  • Change the Mark Type of this measure to Bar
  • Remove all fields apart from Run Rate from the Label shelf of this card
  • Change Alignment of the Label to be left aligned
  • Add Plan to Columns (check the blend links)
  • Change Mark Type to be Gantt and remove fields from Label shelf of this card
  • Set to Dual Axis and Synchronise Axis.
  • Remove Measure Names from Colour shelf of the Bar and Gantt marks cards
  • Change Colour of the Gantt Bar (Plan) to black and add a black border to make it a bit thicker
  • Turn off Tooltips on All marks cards.

Indicating if Plan isn’t going to be met

The bar chart should be red if the Run Rate is less than Plan. The Run Rate on the Text side should also be displayed in red too if it doesn’t meet and black otherwise. We’re going to need some additional fields for this.

Run Rate < Plan

[Run Rate] < SUM([Plan (2020_04_22_WW17_Sales Projection)].[Plan])

Add this to the Colour shelf on the Bar marks card, and adjust the True/False colours accordingly

We can’t conditionally format an individual field in a Text display, so we need to create 2 further instances of the Run Rate field, where only one will ever display.

Run Rate < Plan (red)

If [Run Rate < Plan] THEN [Run Rate] END

Run Rate > Plan (black)

If NOT([Run Rate < Plan]) THEN [Run Rate] END

Format these accordingly, then add to the Text shelf of the Text marks card. Remove the original Run Rate field. You should still only have 1 run rate value displayed per row.

Now we can tidy up the display of this text. Ensure the Run Rate < Plan (red) and Run Rate > Plan (black) fields are on the same line of text with no spaces between, then colour the fonts to match the requirements

Finally, remove axis/row headers, tidy up gridlines etc, and adjust the width of the bars to suit.

Title Sheet

As the title needs to include the date, and to ensure it would be dynamic, I created a simple text sheet to display the title, and set the worksheet background to a light grey.

I then added both sheets to a dashboard, with both set to ‘Fit Entire View’, and titles hidden.

To get the Phone Layout display, I then selected the Phone option, clicked the padlock to Edit layout, and set to Fit all, and made adjustments to suit. The issue you might have though is that while things all look a bit squashed on your laptop display, it actually will render ok when published. This can unfortunately be a bit of trial & error.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’ and stay safe!

Donna

Can you show the adjusted target and missing pipeline?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

For #WOW2020 Week 16, Lorna set a slightly different challenge that involved data blending. Blending is a technique in Tableau used to combine data from different data sources. You can read more about it here.

Lorna’s scenario is quite a common one – you have a data source which stores some ‘actual’ data (that in a typical scenario is likely to change as you move through the year), along with a more static data source, storing plan/budget/target data for each month. This is typically created at the start of the year and rarely changes. Comparing actuals to target is a very common business requirement.

Once again, I’m going to tackle this challenge but working out all the numbers I need for each month in a tabular format, before I go onto build the viz.

Building out the data

For this challenge we have 2 data sources, the pipeline data containing multiple years and the target data just containing data for 2020. So the first this we need to do is add a filter for Closed Date from the Pipeline Data source to be the Year 2020.

The data has been specially crafted as if it’s at a particular point in time in April, in my case at the point of building it was 15 April 2020. If this was being built for a real life scenario, we’d want to be reporting based off the Today() function. To simulate this, I created a calculated field to hardcode my ‘today’ date, but if I was doing this ‘for real’, I’d have set it to TODAY().

Today

#2020-04-15#

I need to be able to report the Pipeline Data that is at Stage=Closed Won separately from data that is still in the pipeline (hasn’t been closed as won or lost). I’ll use some calculated fields for this

Closed Won

ZN(IF Stage = ‘Closed Won’ THEN [Sales] END)

Note – the ZN will display as 0 if there is no Sales.

Pipeline

IF [Stage]= ‘Negotiating’ OR [Stage] = ‘Proposing’ THEN [Sales] END

Let’s start to build the table out:

  • Month of Closed Date on Rows
  • Closed Won and Pipeline on Cols (as Measure Values)
  • Year of Closed Date = 2020 on Filter Shelf

Let’s now add in the target from the Target Data source. This will be a blend. When we blend we need to define how to ‘join’ the data sources together. I prefer to make it obvious what fields I am blending on, so although I can use existing fields and define a rule, I prefer created explicit calculated fields so it’s clear.

The Target Data contains a record for each month, dated as per the 1st of each month. In the Target Data, create a new field

BLEND – Month

[Date]

The in the Pipeline Data, create a field named exactly the same

BLEND – Month

DATE(DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Closed Date]))

but in this case we’re truncating the Closed Date to the 1st of each month, and ensuring it too is a Date rather than Datetime data type, so the fields can match.

Now add Target from the Target Data onto the table. If you get a warning message, click ok, then click the ‘link’ symbol that is currently greyed out against the Blend – Month field in the Target Data.

The ‘link’ symbol will go red and indicate that the data is being ‘joined’ on this field. The Target values in the table will now match the values if you check the data source excel file directly, and the Target pill in the Measure Values will show a ‘database’ symbol with an ‘orange tick’ which indicates it’s from a secondary data source. The data sources listed in the Data pane (top left) will also be coloured blue (primary) and orange (secondary), which indicates data blending is being used.

We now need to start working out how much off the YTD target we are so far, so we then work out how much pipeline is potentially missing from each future month.

So first up, how much has been closed won so far this year (only considering complete months). Ie how much has been won in Jan, Feb & March?

YTD Closed

WINDOW_SUM(SUM(IF [Closed Date] < DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Today]) THEN [Closed Won] END))

If the Closed Date is before the 1st of the current month (ie April in this example), get the Closed Won value already computed, but SUM all the values we have for all the months.

Add this onto the table, and you can see the total of the Closed Won values for Jan, Feb & Mar is listed against every month.

The table calc has automatically computed ‘table down’, but I’m, going to explicitly set it, as I know I’m going to move the fields around later, and I don’t want that value to change based on where it gets moved to,

Right click on the YTD Closed pill -> Edit Table Calculation and check Month of Closed Date

We need to work out how much we should have closed in the first 3 months of the year too. So in the Target Data, create a similar calculated field

YTD Target

WINDOW_SUM(SUM(IF [Date] < DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Today]) THEN Target END))

(Note – a Today calculated field also hardcoded to 15th April 2020 needs to be added to this data source too).

Add this field into the table too, and again, set the table calculation to be explicitly set against Month of Closed Date.

In order to work out how much missing pipeline to add to each month, we need to figure out how far we’re currently ‘off’, and then distribute this value across the remaining months.

I’m doing all this in steps, so I can sense check the calcs as I go. We can work out how much we’re off by creating a new field in the Pipeline Data

Missed Sales Value

[Monthly Target (2020_04_15_WW16_Sales Pipeline)].[YTD Target] – [YTD Closed]

Basically this is YTD Target – YTD Closed, but when you refer to a field from the secondary data source, the field will be prefixed by the data source name.

Add this to the table, and again verify the table calc is set explicitly.

As this is a field based on other table calcs, you will see them listed as Nested Calculations, and you need to verify each one listed is set appropriately.

To work out how many months in the year are remaining that we need to distribute the above value over, we need

Remaining Months

12 – (DATEPART(‘month’, [Today]) -1)

As Today is in April, which is month 4, then the remaining months is 12 – (4-1) = 9.

An now we can work out how much needs to be added per month

Distributed Missed Sales Value

[Missed Sales Value] / [Remaining Months]

Pop this onto the table, and verify the table calc again.

Now we have this, we can work out what the Target needs to be adjusted to for each of the remaining months to make up the shortfall, which is basically adding the monthly shortfall above to the existing Target for the month (but only for the current and future months).

Adjusted Target

IF MIN([Closed Date]) >= DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Today]) THEN SUM([Monthly Target (2020_04_15_WW16_Sales Pipeline)].[Target]) + [Distributed Missed Sales Value] END

Note – we wrap Closed Date in a MIN function as we’re working with aggregated fields, so the Date needs to be aggregated too. MAX would work just the same.

Finally we need to work out what the shortfall is in the existing Pipeline to meet the Adjusted Target (if there is any).

For the months beyond the current month, this is simply the difference between the Pipeline value and the Adjusted Target (but only if the Pipeline is less than the Adjusted Target). For the current month though, it’s the difference between the Pipeline + Closed Won values and the Adjusted Target.

Missing Pipeline

IF ZN(SUM([Pipeline])) = 0 THEN NULL

ELSEIF DATETRUNC(‘month’, MIN([Closed Date])) = DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Today]) THEN
//it’s current month, so need to consider what’s closed & what’s remaining
IF (SUM([Closed Won]) + SUM([Pipeline])) < [Adjusted Target]
THEN ZN([Adjusted Target] – (SUM([Closed Won]) + SUM([Pipeline])))
END

ELSEIF SUM([Pipeline]) < [Adjusted Target] THEN ZN([Adjusted Target] – SUM([Pipeline]))

ELSE 0
END

Add this onto the table

And we’ve now got all the pieces we need to start to build the viz. Name this sheet Check Data or similar. We want this as our reference sheet to make sure our figures remain correct.

Building the Bar Chart

Firstly, duplicate the table viz, and remove the fields we don’t need in the final display (YTD Closed, YTD Target, Missed Sales Value, Distributed Missed Sales Value).

Now move the pills as follows :

  • Closed Date from Rows to Columns
  • Measure Values from Text to Rows
  • Measure Names from Rows to Colour shelf
  • Change Mark Type to Bar

Now move Adjusted Target and Target to the Detail shelf.

Adjust the colours of the remaining measures to suit, and reorder, so that the bars a stacked with Closed Won on the bottom and Missing Pipeline on the top.

Before we deal with the target lines, we’re going to sort the Tooltip out. It’s quite tricky… it might be there’s a better way, but I had to create a few custom calculated fields to get the display required.

Creating the Tooltip

For the first 3 months, the tooltip just needs to display the Closed Won value, but from April onwards, we need to display values for Closed Won, Pipeline & Missing Pipeline, even if the values are 0. Also the first 3 months just show the Target, but the remaining months need the Adjusted Target too. These values are displayed with | symbols in between along with labels, which should only show if relevant.

Firstly, we need to make sure all the measure values displayed, are accessible regardless as to which bar we hover over. So all of the 3 measures (Closed Won, Pipeline & Missing Pipeline) need to be added to the Tooltip. This is done by holding down Ctrl as you drag each pill from the Measure Values area onto the Tooltip shelf. This has the effect of duplicating the pill, and retaining any table calc settings that have been applied.

We only want the text ‘| Adjusted Target :’ to display if there is an Adjusted Target value :

Tooltip : Adjusted Target

IF [Adjusted Target] > 0 THEN ‘ | Adjusted Target : ‘
END

Add this to the Tooltip shelf.

We only want the text ‘| Pipeline :’ to display if there is a Pipeline value

Tooltip : Pipeline

IF [Pipeline] > 0 THEN ‘ | Pipeline : ‘
END

Add this to the Tooltip shelf.

And we only want the text ‘| Missing Pipeline:’ to display if we’re in the current or future months.

Tooltip : Missing Pipeline

IF DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Closed Date]) >= DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Today]) THEN ‘ | Missing Pipeline : ‘ END

Add this to the Tooltip shelf.

Now modify the Tooltip so the various pills are referenced and formatted as required

Finally adjust the Month axis, to set the months to be displayed as abbreviated values.

Adding the Target lines

At first glance, you might think the two target lines are both reference lines. However, if you hover over the tooltip of the Target (the solid line), you’ll see you have the same tooltip as the bars. Whilst there is some ability to control the tooltip of a reference line now, you can’t reference all the pills this tooltip requires.

So the Target is actually a dual axis mark. The Adjust Target however, is a reference line.

To get the Target to display, hold ctrl & drag the Target pill from the Detail shelf to the Rows shelf (to duplicate the pill), next to Measure Values.

On the Target marks card,

  • Remove Measure Names from the Colour shelf
  • Change the Mark Type to Gantt
  • Change the Colour to black, and add a black border too (to make the mark thicker)
  • Make the chart Dual Axis and Synchronise Axis
  • Uncheck Show Header on the Target axis

If you hover over the Gantt mark/Target line, you should have the same tooltip as when you hover over the bar.

The Adjusted Target is a reference line. To add this, right click on the left hand axis and Add Reference Line. Adjust settings as follows :

  • Scope – per cell
  • Value – Adjusted Target
  • Label – None
  • Tooltip – Custom, set to ‘Adjusted Target (Dashed) :’ then add Value from the selector
  • Change the Line to be black and dashed

Both target lines should now be displayed. It’s just now a case of applying some formatting to remove gridlines, row & column lines, adjust font sizes and remove axis title and column titles.

Building the legend

The dashboard displays a custom colour legend. As always there are multiple ways to do this. I chose to ‘fake it’ using aliases and some values associated to a completely different and unused dimension in the data.

Duplicate the Opportunity Name dimension. I just left it as Opportunity Name (copy). On a new sheet, add Oppotunity Name (copy) to the Filter shelf, and select 5 values only.

Then right click on Opportunity Name (copy) and select Aliases. For each of the values you selected in the filter, set an alias based on the legend names to display

Then build the legend as follows

  • Add Opportunity Name (copy) to Columns
  • Type in MIN(1) to the Columns shelf to create a fake axis
  • Add Opportunity Name (copy) to the Text shelf
  • Add Opportunity Name (copy) to the Colour shelf
  • Fix the axis of Min(1) to start at 0 and end at 1
  • Reorder the displayed values to suit.
  • Format to remove all rows/column lines and hide the headers.
  • Format the Label to be centred and size font
  • Clear the tooltip.

Note – I chose to copy the Opportunity Name pill just to make sure I didn’t inadvertently break anything, and to easily revert if things didn’t go to plan :-).

Now the 2 sheets can be placed on the dashboard along with a suitable title.

One final tip – to prevent the user from inadvertently clicking on the legend viz when on the dashboard, add a floating blank image and position over the top of the legend.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’ & stay safe!

Donna

Can you create a chart with a dynamic week start?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

This week Ann set the challenge and suggested she had ‘distilled it down a bit’ so it wouldn’t take as long to solve….hmmmm… not sure if that really worked out for me…. I certainly managed to crack through it to begin with, but the requirement to ‘show the data when there were missing values’ seemed to end up being trickier than I thought it would be, and the trying to display a date on the tooltip for those days…. well, that was just so freakin’ hard! Given this was ‘distilled down’, I thought I must have been missing something pretty obvious to be struggling so much. I played round with so many different table calcs to try to get this to work, but ended up admitting defeat and peaked at Ann’s solution.

The missing dates bit… that ended up being a bit odd. I rebuilt my chart multiple times, starting with a table of data as a ‘check’ and then carefully converting that into the required Viz. Eventually it just seemed to work, which left me very puzzled, as I was pretty certain what I ended up with, I’d had previously… I can only assume there is something about the order of the steps I took that may have caused the problem.

As I write this blog out, I’ll be rebuilding as I go, to generate the various screen shots, so fingers crossed, if you follow step by step, you’ll get a working solution 🙂

Right let’s get onto it…

Building out the data we need

As I’ve done before, I’m going to build up the fields I need into a tabular format, so I can ratify I’ve got everything correct before I build up the viz.

First off, we need a couple of parameters to drive the inputs for the chart :

Week Ending On

A date parameter set to 24th Oct 2019, that allows all values

Include X Prior Weeks

an integer parameter set to 10 by default

From the requirements, we need to display data for the 7 days of the week up to the Week Ending On date, along with data for each of the 7 days in the previous number of weeks as stated in the Include X Prior Weeks parameter.

So first up we need to work out when the ‘latest’ week starts

Start of Selected Week

DATEADD(‘day’,-6,[1a.Week Ending On])

Then I want to group all the Order Dates into their respective weeks, where each week needs to start on the same day of the week as the Start of Selected Week field. eg if Start of Selected Week is Friday 18th Oct, then I want all the dates of the previous x weeks to be grouped to the Friday of the week they’re in. So all the dates from Friday 11th Oct to Thurs 17th Oct are grouped as Fri 11th Oct, dates from Friday 4th Oct to Thurs 10th Oct are grouped as Fri 4th Oct, and so on.

Now the ideal way I think I should be able to do this is use a DATETRUNC function passing in the name of the day of the week, the week should start, which is based on day associated to the Start of Selected Week field. So I wanted to write something like this:

DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date],DATENAME(‘weekday’,[Start of Selected Week]))

but Tableau doesn’t like the fact the 3rd parameter is a calculation rather than simply the text ‘Friday’.

So instead I had to build up the logic as follows

Order Date Week

CASE DATEPART(‘weekday’, [Start of Selected Week])
WHEN 1 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘sunday’)
WHEN 2 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘monday’)
WHEN 3 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘tuesday’)
WHEN 4 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘wednesday’)
WHEN 5 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘thursday’)
WHEN 6 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘friday’)
WHEN 7 THEN DATETRUNC(‘week’, [Order Date], ‘saturday’)
END

This Order Date Week is essentially the field that represents each line on the final viz.

I also need a field that I can used to represent the x-axis on the final viz, which is labelled based on the days of the week, but (as per the challenge), is starting at a different day.

To do this, I chose to ‘baseline’ all the dates in each week, to be aligned to the ‘current’ week. What I mean by this is that I want to create a field whereby if the Order Date is a Friday, the field will store the date of the Friday of the ‘latest’ week, in this case Friday 18th Oct. Any Order Date on a Saturday will be ‘aligned’ to Saturday 19th Oct and so on.

Order Date Baseline

DATE(DATEADD(‘day’, 7 * DATEDIFF(‘week’,[Order Date Week],[Start of Selected Week]), [Order Date]))

This finds the number of weeks between the week the order date is in and the start of the ‘latest’ week, which is then multiplied by 7 to convert to a days difference, which is then added onto the Order Date itself.

So from below, you can see both Fri 13th Sept & Fri 20th Sept map to 18th Oct; Tue 17th Sept and Tue 24th Sept both map to 22nd Oct etc.

I now need another field to restrict the dates being displayed to those within the timeframe dictated by the Include X Prior Weeks parameter.

Dates to Include

[Order Date]>=DATEADD(‘week’,-1 * [Include X Prior Weeks], [Start of Selected Week])
AND [Order Date] <= [Week Ending On]

So let’s start building the check table of data as follows:

  • Order Date Week on Rows as discrete, exact date
  • Order Date Baseline on Columns as discrete, exact date
  • Dates To Include on Filter shelf, set to True
  • Sales on Text

You can see we have some gaps where there are no Sales, we need these to display 0, which we do using

Inc Null Sales

IFNULL(LOOKUP(SUM([Sales]),0),0)

This is a simple table calc that is ‘looking up’ its own value, and if it’s null, sets itself to 0 otherwise uses it’s own value.

So let’s put this on the Text shelf instead

We’re also going to need a field to define the ‘latest week’, as this is coloured differently on the viz

Is Latest Week

[Order Date Week]=[Start of Selected Week]

Bring this into the table

We’ve now got the core things we need to build the majority of the chart.

Building the chart

Firstly, duplicate the table above, then move the pills round as follows:

  • Move Is Latest Week to Colour shelf, and adjust colours accordingly
  • Move Order Date Week to Detail shelf
  • Move Inc Null Sales to Columns shelf
  • Swap the Colour Legend so True is first (makes the latest line to the front)
  • Format the Order Date Baseline field to custom formatting of dddd which will just the display the day of the week rather than the full date (sneaky huh?)

Then tidy up the formatting to remove gridlines, get the axis in the right format, change the font of the axis labels etc.

And that’s the main viz… now we need to sort the tooltips.

Tooltips

On the tooltip we need to display

  • The order date
  • The sales value or ‘no sales’ if there are no sales
  • The start and end day of the week

Let’s start backwards.

Day of Week Start

DATENAME(‘weekday’,[Start of Selected Week])

Day of Week End

DATENAME(‘weekday’, [Week Ending On])

Put these on the Detail shelf (as we’re going to need them for the title too).

Add the Sales onto Tooltip and format it to $ with 0dp. This will display the Sales value when there is one, and ‘nothing’ if there are no sales (as opposed to the 0 that the Inc Null Sales field will show.

To get the ‘no sales’ text we need

Tooltip: No Sales

IF IFNULL(LOOKUP(SUM([Sales]),0),0)=0 THEN ‘no sales’ END

Note – this is what I did and is in my published solution, but I could have just checked whether Inc Null Sales = 0 – doh!

Add this onto the Tooltip and position directly adjacent to the SUM([Sales]) field, so either one will be displayed (they can never both display).

Right, now we need to get the date.

The problem we have is that like the no sales, if there’s no orders on a date there’s no date to display either, but unlike the ‘no sales’ value, we haven’t got a single default value like 0 to use. Instead we need to work out what the missing date should be.

I tried various things for this, but finally had to look at Ann’s solution to get this, which is :

Tooltip: Order Date

IFNULL(ATTR([Order Date]),
IFNULL(DATEADD(‘day’,1,LOOKUP(ATTR([Order Date]),-1)),DATEADD(‘day’,-1,LOOKUP(ATTR([Order Date]),1))))

Urgh! Horrid right!… so what is this saying…

  • If the current order date doesn’t exist, then
  • lookup the previous order date and add 1 day to it, but if that is also null then
  • lookup the next order date and take 1 day off it

So this is only working on the assumption that there are not 2 days in a row with no orders.

Add this to the Tooltip and format accordingly to get the layout required.

Finally amend the sheet title to match the title displayed. The title can reference the Day of Week Start and Day of Week End fields along with the Week Ending On and the Include X Prior Weeks parameters.

When you then add onto the dashboard, make the parameters floating and position them top right.

Hopefully, you’ve ended up with a working solution. I know I approached mine slightly differently from Ann’s, so it’s worth checking hers out too.

My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna