Tag: Hide Show Containers

Can you build a dashboard using containers?

Donna Coles1 Comment

For this week’s challenge, Kyle got us to look at dashboard layout, specially using containers to arrange the charts and KPIs. He added in a sprinkling of interactivity to make the challenge more complete.

The charts aren’t overly complex, so I won’t go into too much detail on building them all out. I used the latest version of Superstore, v2023.1.

Building the KPIs

When I first did this, I built the KPIs on a single sheet, then realised that wouldn’t work to get the layout required, so I ended up with 3 sheets.

  • Rename Sales to SALES and format to $ with 0 dp.
  • Add Measure Names to Filter and select SALES only.
  • Add Measure Names and Measure Values to the Text shelf.
  • Align centrally and format the text (I used font size 12pt and 20pt).
  • Add Category to the Filter shelf, and select all. Set the filter to apply to worksheets > all using this data source
  • Add Order Date to Filter and select Range of Dates. The Order Date pill will be ‘green’. Click on the context menu of the pill and select the Month (May 2015) option, so the range of dates will change at monthly intervals rather than daily. Set the filter to apply to worksheets > all using this data source
  • Create a field called True containing the value TRUE and False containing the value FALSE and add both these fields to the Detail shelf. These will be needed later to stop the sheet from remaining highlighted on selection.
  • Stop the Tooltip from displaying.
  • Name the sheet Sales

Repeat the steps for the Profit Ratio measure – if this doesn’t exist, create the field

PROFIT RATIO

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

and format this to % with 1 dp.

For the Orders measure create

ORDERS

COUNTD([Order ID])

If need be, you can simply duplicate the Sales sheet and just change the Measure Names filter to the appropriate measure.

Creating the Line Chart

Create a parameter to store the name of the selected measure.

pSelectedKPI

string parameter defaulted to the word ‘ORDERS’

Create a field to store the measure to display based on the value of the parameter

Measure to Display

CASE [pSelectedKPI]
WHEN ‘ORDERS’ THEN [ORDERS]
WHEN ‘SALES’ THEN SUM([SALES])
WHEN ‘PROFIT RATIO’ THEN [PROFIT RATIO]
END

On a new sheet, add Order Date to Columns and set to be a green (continuous) month level and Measure to Display to Rows.

I wanted to make my tooltips and labels reflect the measure selected (this isn’t actually part of the challenge). I created

Label – Orders

IF [pSelectedKPI] = ‘ORDERS’ THEN [ORDERS] END

format this to a number with 0 dp.

Label – Profit Ratio

IF [pSelectedKPI] = ‘PROFIT RATIO’ THEN [PROFIT RATIO] END

format this to % with 1 dp

Label – Sales

IF [pSelectedKPI] = ‘SALES’ THEN SUM([SALES]) END

format this to $ with 0 dp.

Add all 3 fields to the Tooltip shelf.

Also create

Chart Label

PROPER([pSelectedKPI])

this is a new function introduced in v2023.1 and will convert ‘ORDERS’ to ‘Orders’ and ‘PROFIT RATIO’ to ‘Profit Ratio’ etc. Add this to Tooltip too.

Modify the Tooltip as below – the 3 Label fields should be directly side by side with no spacing. Only one field will have a value at any time.

Remove the titles from the axes, and remove all gridlines. Name the sheet Line.

Building the Bar Chart

Add Category to Rows and Measure to Display to Columns. Sort descending. Add the 3 Label fields to the Label shelf, and arrange side by side.

Add Chart Label to Tooltip and adjust the tooltip.

Hide the axes, remove all gridlines/axis rulers etc and hide the Category label. Adjust the formatting of the fonts as required. Name the sheet Bar.

Building the dashboard

Describing using layout containers can be quite tricky – objects move around as you place things in. I’m going to do my best to describe the set up/structure I have and hope that it gets you what you need.

My preference is to always start with a floating container sized as per the dashboard. I then add tiled objects into that. I also have a habit of trying to rename my containers in the navigation layout pane to help me find the right section.

So let’s start. Create a new dashboard and set it to to 1200 x 900px.

Click the Floating button at the bottom of the left hand pane, and add a Horizontal container. Set the x & y position to be 0,0 and the width to 1200px and height to 900px. Rename the container to Base.

From the Objects list on the Dashboard pane, click Tiled and add a Text object. Enter the text for the dashboard title. Add a blank object beneath the text object.

When working with containers, it’s always good to add blank objects as a ‘starting point’ These all then get removed.

Now add a vertical container between the Title and Blank object. Name this container Main Body. Add a blank object into that container.

Add a vertical container to the left of the blank object in the Main Body container. Name this container Left Nav. Add a Text object into the Left Nav container and enter the instructional text. Add a blank object above the instructional text.

Add another vertical container to the right of the Left Nav container within the Main Body container. Add the Bar and the Line chart into this container, one above the other. Call this container Charts.

At this point a Tiled container object will have been automatically added containing the parameter.

Leave this for now – we’ll address this shortly.

We can remove some of the blanks now too. Remove the blank within the Main Body container, that is to the right of the Charts container. You can select the object on the item hierarchy layout, right click and remove from Dashboard.

You can also remove the blank object at the bottom of the Base container, below the Main Body container. Your item hierarchy should look something like

Now add another Horizontal container to the charts container, above the bar chart. Add the 3 KPI sheets into this container, position side by side. Name the container KPIs. Select the KPIs container, and use the context menu to Distribute Contents Evenly.

If they haven’t already appeared, the select one of the charts/KPIs and from the context menu select Filters > Category and then Filters > Month of Order Date to get the filter controls visible on the dashboard. They should appear on the right hand side, within that Tiled container (underneath the viz).

From the item hierarchy section, expand the Tiled container until you find the controls listed (see how many containers that got automatically added!).

Select the Category filter (easiest to do this by clicking on the object in the item hierarchy), and then move that object and position it above the blank object in the Left Nav container. Then delete the blank object. Select the Month of Order Date filer object and do the same.

Now we’ve got everything we want , we can remove the Tiled container and all of the objects it contains from the dashboard. Just right click on the first Tiled container in the item hierarchy and Remove From Dashboard (say yes/ok to any prompt that appears). You should have something that looks a bit like this – not the item hierarchy layout.

Now you’ve got everything needed on the dashboard in the right containers, we need to tidy it all up.

  • Fix the width of the Left Nav container to around 205 px.
  • Change the Category filter to single value dropdown, defaulted to All
  • Fix the height of the KPIs container to around 175 px
  • Remove the titles from all the KPI objects, and ensure all set to fit entire view
  • Amend the titles of the bar and line charts to reference the Chart Label field.
  • Fix the height of the bar chart to around 340px and set to fit entire view.

  • Set the background colour of the whole dashboard to grey (Format menu -> Dashboard – Dashboard Shading)
  • Set the background colour of the bar and line chart to White and add a grey border (slightly darker than the background colour)
  • Add borders round the 3 KPI charts too.
  • Set padding around all the objects – I tend to use both inner and outer padding. The key is consistency to ensure the spaces between the objects are the same. I typically start with 10 px outer padding all round, and then adjust as required. Sometimes you may add padding to the container and not to the objects themselves, other times you may set the container padding to 0 and apply to the objects, or a combination of both.

Adding the Interactivity

To set the category bar chart to work as a filter, simply select the object and from the context menu select use as filter. Then go to the Actions list (Dashboard > Actions) and edit the ‘Filter 1 (generated)’ action and rename it to something more useful eg Filter bu Category.

For the bar & line chart to update ‘on click’ of a KPI, add a parameter action

Select KPI

On selection of the Orders, Profit Ratio or Sales sheet, set the pSelected KPI parameter, passing the value from the Measure Names field. Keep current value when selection is cleared.

Finally to prevent the KPIs from remaining highlighted in blue on selection, add 3 filter actions (1 per KPI) set up as follows

Deselect Sales KPI

On selection of the Sales sheet on the dashboard, target the Sales sheet directly, and set the fields as Source = True to Target = False.

Finally, to collapse the left hand nav section, select the Left Nav container and from the context menu, select add Show/hide button. A X button will appear which is floating by default. Move this to where you choose (you might need to add some additional left padding to the title to make space.

Load the dashboard in presentation mode to easily test the hide/show functionality.

And hopefully that should be it! Phew!

My published viz is here.

Once you’ve grasped the concept of containers, they really are the best way of controlling the behaviour and layout of objects on your dashboard. When I’m building something formal, I personally never want to have a Tiled container on my dashboard – this is an object that gets automatically added, and you can see from above, how many nested containers it ended up adding through a single action I took. If you’re not careful, you can end up with such a nest of containers, that it can get really hard to unpick.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna

Let’s show quarterly sales with end-user flexibility

Donna ColesLeave a comment

It was Sean’s final #WOW2022 challenge of the year, and he set this task to provide alternative options for visualising time series across dimensions with high cardinality.

I had a play with Sean’s viz before I started tackling the challenge and noticed the following behaviour in addition to the requirements listed, which may or may not have been intentional.

When the cardinality of the dimension to display was more than 1 higher than the top n parameter, and the Show Others? option was set to Group By, the sales value to display was based on average sales rather than sum (as indicated in the requirements), and all the values not in the top n, were grouped under an ‘Other (Avg)’ label. But if the cardinality of the dimension was only 1 more than the top n parameter (so there was essentially only 1 value within ‘other’), then this value would display as itself (ie not labelled ‘other’) and the sales values would be summed rather than averaged (eg if the lines were to be split based on Ship Mode, and the top n was set to top 3 and Show Others? set to Group By, all four ship modes would display with the sum of sales rather than average).

This observation meant some of the calculations were slightly more complex than what I thought they would need to be initially, as I had to build in logic based on the number of values within a dimension.

So with that understood, let’s build the calcs…

Defining the calculations

Firstly we need some parameters

pDimensionToDisplay

String parameter defaulted to Subcategory, with the list of possible dimensions to split the chart by

pTop

integer parameter defaulted to 5

pShowOthers

I used an integer parameter with values 0 and 1 which I ‘aliased’ to the relevant values, defaulted to ‘Group Others’

I then needed to determine which dimension to be used based on the selected from the pDimensionToDisplay parameter.

DimensionSelected

CASE [pDimensionToDisplay]
WHEN ‘Subcategory’ THEN [Sub-Category]
WHEN ‘State’ THEN [State/Province]
WHEN ‘Ship Mode’ THEN [Ship Mode]
WHEN ‘Segment’ THEN [Segment]
ELSE ‘All’
END

From this, I could then use a Set to determine which of the values would be in the top n. Create a set of off DimensionSelected (right click -> Create -> Set)

Dimension Selected Set

select the Top tab, and create set based on the pTop parameter of Sales

To check this is working as expected, on a sheet, add DimensionSelected and Dimension Selected Set to Rows, add Sales to Text and sort by Sales descending. Show the pTop and pDimensionToDisplay parameters. Change the parameters and observe the results behave as expected.

Now we need to determine how many values are not in the set, ie, how many of the DimensionSelected values display as ‘Out’ in the above image.

Count Non-Set Items

{FIXED:COUNTD(IF NOT([Dimension Selected Set]) THEN [DimensionSelected] END)}

If the entry is not in the set, then return the entry, and the count the number of distinct entries we have. Using the FIXED level of detail calculation, wraps the value across every row.

Now this is understood, we need to work out whether we want to group the ‘non-set’ values under ‘other’

Dimension To Display

IF [pShowOthers]=0 AND NOT([Dimension Selected Set]) AND [Count Non-Set Items]>1 THEN ‘Other (Avg)’
ELSE [DimensionSelected]
END

If we’re opting to ‘group’ the values, and the entry isn’t in the set, and we’ve got more than 1 entry that isn’t in the set, then we can label as ‘Other (Avg)’, otherwise, we just want the dimension value.

We use similar logic to determine whether to display the SUM or AVG Sales.

Sales to Display

IF [pShowOthers]=0 AND SUM([Count Non-Set Items]) > 1 THEN AVG([Sales])
ELSE SUM([Sales]) END

Format this to $ with 0 dp.

We can then remove the DimensionSelected from our view, and test the behaviour, switching the pShowOthers parameter

Building the core viz

On a new sheet, add Order Date set to continuous quarters (green pill) to Columns and Sales To Display to Rows and Dimension To Display to Label. Show all the parameters.

Create a new field

Colour

[pShowOthers]=0 AND NOT([Dimension Selected Set]) AND [Count Non-Set Items]>1

add add to Colour shelf, and set colours accordingly.

Add Sub-Category, Ship Mode, State and Segment to the Filter shelf. Show them all, and then test the behaviour is as expected.

Extending the date axis

The date axis in the solution goes beyond 2022 Q4, and means the labels have a bit more ‘breathing space’. To extend the axis, click on Order Date pill in the Columns, and select Extend Date Range -> 6 months.

Then double click into the space next to the Sales To Display pill on the Rows and type MIN(0). This will create a second axis, and the date axis should now display to 2023 Q2

On the MIN(0) marks card, remove the Colour and Dimension To Display pills. Reduce the Size to as small as possible, and set the Colour opacity to 0%. Set the chart to dual axis, and synchronise the axis.

Finally tidy up the chart – hide the right hand axis, remove the title from the date axis, change the title on the left axis. Remove all row and column divider lines, but ensure the axis rulers are displayed. Title the viz referencing the pDimensionToDisplay parameter.

Building the dashboard

When putting the dashboard together, you need to ensure that the filters, parameters and main viz are all contained within a vertical container to ensure the viz ‘fills up’ the space when the controls section is collapsed.

The controls section itself is also a vertical container, which consists of 2 horizontal containers, one of which contains all the filters, and one which contains the parameters.

The layout tab shows how I managed this (I also like to rename the objects to keep better control).

The green Base vertical container is the first container. This essentially contains 3 ‘rows’ – the title, the User Controls vertical container and the viz itself.

The User Controls vertical container, then contains 2 rows itself – the Filters horizontal container (which has a pale grey background colour) and the Fine Tune horizontal container (which has a slightly darker grey background colour).

The User Controls vertical container is then set to ‘hide/show’ by selecting the whole container (click on the object in the item hierarchy on the left), and then selecting Add Show/Hide Button from the context menu. Adjust the button settings as required (I just altered the text displayed on hover) and then position accordingly.

It can take a bit of trial and error to get this right, and to get your containers working as expected. My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna

Can you build a Control Chart?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

Lorna Brown returned this week to set another table calculation based challenge involving a line chart which ‘on click’ of a point, exposed the ability to ‘drill down’ to view a tabular view of the data ‘behind’ the point. This is classic Tableau in my opinion – show the summarised data (in the line chart) and with ‘drill down on demand’. Lorna added some additional features on the dashboard; hiding/showing filter controls to change how the data is displayed in the chart, and a back navigational button on the ‘detail’ list.

The areas I’m going to focus on in this blog are

  • Setting up the parameters
  • Defining the date to plot on the chart
  • Restricting the data to the relevant years
  • Defining the reference bands
  • Colouring the marks
  • Working out the date range for the tooltip
  • Building the table
  • Drill down from chart to table
  • Un-highlight selected marks
  • Hide/Show filter controls
  • Add navigation button

Setting up the parameters

This challenge requires 3 parameters.

Select a Date

a string parameter containing the 2 options available (Date Submitted & Date Selected) for selection, which when displayed on the dashboard will be set to a single value list control (ie radio buttons)

Latest X Years

an integer parameter, defaulted to 3, which allows a range of values from 1 to 5.

NOTE – Ensure the step size is set to 1, as this is what allows the Show buttons option to be enabled when customising the Slider parameter control type.

STD

another integer parameter, defaulted to 1, that allows a range of values from 1 to 3

Defining the date to plot on the chart

The Select a Date parameter is used to switch the view between different dates in the data set. This means you can’t plot your chart based on date field that already exists in the data set. We have to create a new field that determines which date field to select based on the parameter

Date to Plot

DATE(DATETRUNC(‘week’, IIF([Select a Date]=’Date Submitted’,[Date sent to company], [Date received])))

The nested IIF statement, is basically saying, if the parameter is ‘Date Submitted’ then use the Date sent to company field, else use the Date received field. This is all wrapped within a DATETRUNC statement to reset all the dates to the 1st day of the week (since the requirement is to report at a weekly level).

Note – there was some confusion which field the parameter option should map to. I have chosen the above, but you may see solutions with the opposite. Don’t get hung up on this, as the principal of how this all works is most important.

Restricting the data to the relevant years

The requirement is to show ‘x’ years worth of data, where 1 year’s worth of data is the data associated to the latest year in the data set (ie from 01 Jan to latest date, rather than 12 months worth of data). So to start with I calculated, rather than hardcoded, the maximum year in the data

Year of Latest Date

YEAR({MAX([Date to Plot])})

Then I could work out which dates I wanted via

Dates to Include

[Date to Plot]>= MAKEDATE([Year of Latest Date] – ([Latest X Years]-1),1,1)

In the MAKEDATE function, I’m building a date that is the 1st Jan of the relevant based on how many years we need to show.

So if Year of Latest Date is 2020 and Latest X Years =1 then Year of Latest Date – (Latest X Years -1) = 2020 – (1-1) = 2020 – 0 = 2020. So we’re looking for dates >= 01 Jan 2020.

So if Year of Latest Date is 2020 and Latest X Years =3 then Year of Latest Date – (Latest X Years -1) = 2020 – (3-1) = 2020 – 2 = 2018. So we’re looking for dates >= 01 Jan 2018.

This field is added to the Filter shelf and set to true.

So at this point, our basic chart can be built as

  • Year on Columns (where Year = YEAR([Date to Plot])), and allows the Year header to display at the top
  • Date to Plot on Columns, set to Week Number display via the pill dropdown option, and also set to be discrete (blue pill). This field is ultimately hidden on the display.
  • Number of Complaints on Rows (where Number of Complaints = COUNT([XXXX.csv], the auto generated field relating to the name of the datasource).

To get the line and the circles displayed, this needs to become a dual axis chart by duplicating the Number of Complaints measure on the Rows, synchronising the axis and setting one instance to be a line mark type, and the other a circle.

Defining the reference bands

The reference bands are based on the number of standard deviations away from the mean/ average value per year.

Avg Complaints Per Year

WINDOW_AVG([Number of Complaints])

Once we have the average, we need to define and upper and lower limit based on the standard deviations

Upper Limit

[Avg Complaints Per Year] + (WINDOW_STDEV([Number of Complaints]) * [STD])

Lower Limit

[Avg Complaints Per Year] + (WINDOW_STDEV([Number of Complaints]) * -1 * [STD])

Add both these fields to the Detail shelf of the chart viz (at the All marks card level) and set the table calculation of each field to Compute By Date to Plot

This ‘squashes’ everything up a bit, but we’ll deal with that later.

Add a Reference Band (right click on axis – > Add Reference Line) that ranges from the Lower Limit to Upper Limit.

If an Average Line also appears on the display, then remove it, by right clicking on the axis -> Remove Reference Line – > Average

Colouring the marks

I created a boolean field based on whether the Number of Complaints is within the Upper Limit and Lower Limit

Within STD Limits?

[Number of Complaints]<[Upper Limit] AND [Number of Complaints]>[Lower Limit]

Add this to the Colour shelf of the circle mark type, and set to Compute Using Date to Plot. The values will be True, False or Null. Right click on the Null option in the Colour Legend, and select Exclude. This will add the Within STD Limits? to the Filter shelf, and the chart will revert back to how it was. Adjust the colours accordingly.

The Tooltip doesn’t show true or false though, so I had another field to use on that

In or Out of Upper or Lower Limits?

If [Within STD Limits?] THEN ‘In’ ELSE ‘Out’ END

Working out the date range for the tooltip

The Tooltip shows the start and end of the dates within the week. I simply built 2 calculated fields to show this.

Date From

[Date to Plot]

This 2nd instance is required as Date to Plot is formatted to dd mmm yyyy format and also used in the Tooltip. Whereas Date From is displayed in a dd/mm/yyyy format.

Date To

DATE(DATEADD(‘day’, 6, [Date to Plot]))

Just add 6 days to the 1st day of the week.

Building the table

Create a new sheet and add all the relevant columns required to Rows in the required order. For the last column, Company response to consumer, add that to the Text shelf instead (to replace the usual ‘Abc’ text). The in the Columns shelf, double click and type in ‘Company response to consumer’ which creates a ‘fake’ column heading. Format all the text etc to make it all look the same.

Add the Dates to include = true filter.

Also add the WEEK(Date to Plot) field to the Rows shelf, as a blue discrete field (exactly the same format as on the line chart). But hide this field (uncheck Show Header). This is the key linking field from the chart to the detail.

Drill down from chart to table

Create one dashboard (Chart DB) that displays the chart viz. And another dashboard that displays the table detail (Table DB). On the Chart dashboard, add a Filter Dashboard Action (Dashboard menu -> Actions -> Add Action -> Filter), that starts from the Chart sheet, runs as a Menu option, and targets the Detail sheet on the Detail dashboard. Set the action to exclude all values when no selection has been made. Name the action Click to Show Details

On the line chart, if you now click a point on the chart, the tooltip will display, along with a link, which when clicked on, will then take you to the Detail dashboard and present you with the list of complaints. The number of rows displayed should match the number you clicked on

Un-highlight selected marks

What you might also notice, is when you click on a point on the chart, the other marks will all ‘fade’ out, leaving just the one you selected highlighted. It’s not always desirable for this to happen. To prevent this, create a new field called Dummy which just contains the text ‘Dummy’. Add this onto the Detail shelf of the All marks card on the chart viz.

Then on the chart dashboard, add another dashboard action, but this time choose a highlight action. Set the action to run on select and set the source & target sheets to be the same sheet on the same dashboard. But target highlighting to selected fields, and select the Dummy field only

Hide/Show filter controls

Check out this post by The Data School that explains very simply how to work with floating containers to show/hide buttons. When creating in Desktop, the ‘onclick’ interactivity won’t work, you’ll have to manually select to show and hide, but once published to Tableau Public, it’ll behave as desired.

You have options to customise what the button looks like when the container contents are hidden, and what it looks like when they’re shown, via the Button Appearance

Add Navigation Button

On the Detail dashboard, simply add a Navigation object to the dashboard

and edit the settings to navigate back to the chart dashboard, as well as customise the appearance

Hopefully I’ve covered all the key features of this challenge. My published viz is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay safe!

Donna

Can you build a mobile calendar picker?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

It was Natalia Miteva‘s turn to post the #WOW2020 challenge this week. It’s a parameter actions based challenge, inspired by a date range picker viz originally posted by Ludovic Tavernier.

Once again, I found this week tough! I understand the concept of parameter actions, and can use them for the ‘basics’, but the funky stuff people come up with to bend them to their will, is really beyond me.

I started the challenge with good intentions as always, ‘relating’ the Dates data to the Superstore data set matching the Date field to the Order Date field, built out the calendar view, but got stuck trying to figure out how to set the parameter action into an ‘End Date’ parameter, when I was already setting a ‘Start Date’ parameter. After staring at the screen for some time, I figured I’d try to work it all out from Ludovic’s viz instead.

There’s A LOT going on in this challenge, so I’ll do my best to explain.

  • Building the Calendar Picker
  • Building the Next / Previous control
  • Building the Year/Month control
  • Building the KPI & Trend Chart

Building the Calendar Picker

The calendar will only show 1 month, so let’s deal with that to start with.

A parameter will be used to store a date related to the month to show.

pMonthSelected

This is a date parameter that I chose to default to 01 June 2019.

Month Date

DATE(DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Date]))

This is truncating every Date in the dataset to the 1st of the relevant month

Month To Show

[pMonthSelected] = [Month Date]

Add this to the Filter shelf and set to True will limit the data to a single month, June 2019 by default.

To display the days of the month in the ‘grid’ layout, we need to know the day of the week each day falls on (so we know what column to position the day in), and we need to know what week in the year the day falls in, as this will dictate which row to position the day in.

Day of Week (Abbrev)

LEFT(DATENAME(‘weekday’, [Date]),3)

The basic calendar layout can then be built by

  • Month To Show = True on Filter
  • Day of Week (Abbrev) on Columns
  • WEEK(Date) on Rows
  • DAY(Date) on Text

The WEEK(Date) field is then hidden.

We’re going to need to represent each day by a ‘square’ block. I achieve this by adding MIN(1) to Columns, changing the mark type to Bar, fixing the axis from 0-1, then hiding the axis.

So now the basic calendar layout is achieved, we need to figure out how to select a start & end, and colour accordingly.

We’re going to use a single string parameter to store both the selected start & end dates, using a | to act as a delimiter allowing us to identify & so separate the 2 dates.

pSelectedDates

String parameter set to empty string by default

Show the parameter on the viz, and I will attempt to walk through the steps, showing how the values in the parameter influence other fields and what is displayed on the viz.

We need another field, that is going to be used in conjunction with the parameter. I’m going to build up what this field needs to store as we go through, so hoping it will all make sense.

Date Control

IF [pSelectedDates]=”” THEN STR([Date]) END

If the parameter is empty, then set Date Control to be the date.

Let’s add this to the Text so you can see what happens to this field.

So the first action we expect the user to take is to click on a single date displayed. This value stored in the Date Control field will be passed via the parameter action into the pSelectedDates field (I’ll show you how this works later). For now let’s assume the user has clicked on the 5th June, so type 2019-06-05 into the pSelectedDates field.

This is now the start date, and we need the Date Control field to change to reflect this

Date Control

IF [pSelectedDates]=”” THEN STR([Date])
ELSEIF [Date]<=DATE([pSelectedDates]) THEN STR([Date])
ELSE [pSelectedDates]+”|”+STR([Date]) END // else store start & end date

If the Date displayed is before that stored in the parameter, then Date Control will continue just to store the date, otherwise it will append | followed by the date onto the existing parameter value.

So when a date is clicked again, the value of the Date Control will once again be passed to the pSelectedDates parameter.

If the date clicked is earlier than the one already stored, eg let’s say 04 June was clicked, the Date Control value of 04 June is passed to the parameter, and is now the ‘start date’. Type 2019-06-04 into the pSelectedDates field.

But if a later date is selected, say 18th June, the Date Control value of 2019-06-04|2019-06-18 is passed into the pSelectedDates parameter, and we now need another step with our Date Control field :

Date Control

IF [pSelectedDates]=”” THEN STR([Date])
ELSEIF CONTAINS([pSelectedDates],”|”) THEN STR([Date])
ELSEIF [Date]<=DATE([pSelectedDates]) THEN STR([Date])
ELSE [pSelectedDates]+”|”+STR([Date]) END

The 2nd statement is now looking for the | character and if it finds it, we know a start & end dates has been selected, so we need to ‘reset’ this control field to how it was originally – just it’s own date.

Type in 2019-06-04|2019-06-18 into the pSelectedDates field to see this.

Ok, so now we can see how the pSelectedDates field is working with the Date Control field, we now need to define some additional fields to help us identify the start & end of the dates selected, so we can work out what to colour.

Date Selection Start

DATE(LEFT([pSelectedDates],FIND([pSelectedDates],”|”)-1))

This is looking for the position of the | field and taking everything from the first character in the pSelectedDates string up to the character before the |.

Note I originally used DATE(SPLIT([pSelectedDates], “|”,1)), but after extracting the data set, this calculation caused errors. I don’t know why, but the above workaround sufficed.

Date Selected End

DATE(MID([pSelectedDates], FIND([pSelectedDates],”|”)+1,10))

Find the position of the | and take all the characters starting at the position after the | and ending at the character 10 characters later (the date format is 10 characters so this can be easily hardcoded)

COLOUR: Date

IF [Date]= [Date Selection Start] OR [Date] = [Date Selection End] THEN ‘Hot Pink’
ELSEIF [Date] > [Date Selection Start] AND [Date] < [Date Selection End] THEN ‘Pink’
ELSE ‘White’
END

Add this onto the Colour shelf, and adjust accordingly

We can remove the Date Control from Text now, but it needs to remain in the view, so it can be referenced when we build the parameter action. Add it onto Detail shelf instead.

Finally add this viz onto a dashboard, then add the parameter action, setting the Target Parameter to pSelectedDates and the Field to pass as Date Control.

As you play around selecting values on the dashboard, you’ll notice the dates appear ‘greyed out’, as the ‘on click’ action is essentially highlighting what you’ve selected. To stop this from happening create a calculated field called True that just stores the value of True and and a calculated field called False that stores the value False. Add both of these to the Detail shelf of the calendar viz.

Then on the dashboard, add a Filter action that goes from the dashboard to the sheet itself, passing the values Source: True = Target: False

Building the Next / Previous Control

We need to store the value of the next month related to the Date unless we’re already in the last month of the data set, in which case we’ll just keep the same month (ie if the month is 01 Nov 2019, next month will be 01 Dec 2019, but if the month is 01 Dec 2019 which is the last month in the data set, the next month will also be 01 Dec 2019. This stops the next control from moving forward when we reach the end.

Next Month

IF [Month Date] = {MAX([Month Date])} THEN [Month Date] ELSE
DATE(DATEADD(‘month’, 1, [Month Date]))
END

Change the mark type to Shape and select an appropriate arrow. If need be reduce the transparency of the shape colour (I chose 50% which changed a black arrow to look like a grey arrow).

On a new sheet, Add Month To Show = True to the Filter shelf, and Next Month to the Detail shelf.

If you recall, right at the start, we created a pMonthSelected parameter, and this will be used to change the month displayed.

Add the viz to the dashboard, and add a parameter action that on select, targets the pMonthSelected parameter, passing in the Next Month field

For the Previous Month control, we need apply similar steps, but using the field below instead.

Prev Month

IF [Month Date] = {MIN([Month Date])} THEN [Month Date] ELSE
DATE(DATEADD(‘month’, -1, [Month Date]))
End

Building the Year/Month control

When building the Year selector, we need to filter the data to just the month name already selected/in view, which is based on the pMonthSelected parameter. Ie if the month selected is 01 June 2019, we want the data related to June 2016, June 2017, June 2018, June 2019

Filter Month

DATENAME(‘month’,[pMonthSelected])=DATENAME(‘month’,[Date])

Add this to the Filter shelf, set to true, then build out the view as below, fixing the axes between 0-1 again, and then hiding. You can see the values of the Month(Date)) displayed, and it’s this field that will be passed via a parameter action. It can be moved to Detail.

COLOUR:Selected Year

YEAR([pMonthSelected])=YEAR([Date])

Add this to the Colour shelf and adjust accordingly.

When added to the dashboard, the associated parameter action required is :

When building the month selector, we need a similar filter to ensure the months shown are all associated to a single year

Filter Year

YEAR([pMonthSelected]) = YEAR([Date])

Add this to the Filter shelf set to True.

The layout of the Months, requires some additional fields to determine which row and column the month should be positioned in.

Month Cols

IF (DATEPART(‘month’,[Date]) %4) =0 THEN 4
ELSE (DATEPART(‘month’,[Date]) %4)
END

DATEPART returns the integer value of the month, ie a number between 1-12, so this calculation is using the modulo (%) function to position based on the remainder when dividing the month number by 4.

Month Row

IF DATEPART(‘month’,[Date]) <=4 THEN 1
ELSEIF DATEPART(‘month’,[Date]) <= 8 THEN 2
ELSE 3 END

Adding these to the view as follows gives us a grid

Note the blue Month(Date) on the Text shelf is showing just the month name ie ‘January’, and has been formatted to it’s abbreviation. The green Month(Date) on the Detail shelf is storing the full month year ie January 2019.

COLOUR:Selected Month

[pMonthSelected]=[Month Date]

Add to the colour shelf and adjust accordingly.

You can then hide the Month Col & Month Row fields from displaying.

When added to the dashboard, the associated parameter action required is

Note You will need to apply the same ‘true=false’ trick described earlier to both these views using filter actions to prevent them from highlighting on selection.

Hiding the year/month selector

On the dashboard add a vertical container, then place the Year Selector sheet and the Month Selector inside.

Remove the chart titles, set the background of the container to white, then set the container to be floating and select the container option to Add Show/Hide Button.

You’ll need to spend some time adjusting the size and the position of the floating container once you have the layout of all the other objects finalised.

Building the KPI & Trend Chart

I’m going to try to be brief with this section. The above is A LOT to take in and write!

Selected Period

This is simply using the Date Selection Start & Date Selection End fields to display in a text field

KPI BANs

We need to be able to filter the data being displayed based on the selection

Dates to Show

[Date]>= [Date Selection Start] AND [Date]<= [Date Selection End]

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

After that we’re just building a simple Text based viz utilising Measure Names & Measure Values as shown below

And finally the trend chart, again needs to be filtered by Dates To Show = True, and is a simple line chart plotting Date against the measures required as below

When added to the dashboard, these 2 sheets should be placed side by side in a horizontal container, both set to fit entire view. The right padding should be set to 0 for the KPI chart and the left padding set to 0 for the trend chart. This will have the effect of the horizontal lines for each chart joining together to make it look like a single chart.

Phew! I’m beat! My published viz is here. Keeping fingers crossed for a challenge that is easier to blog about next week 🙂

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna