Tag: Measure Values

Can you recommend profitable return customer product bundles?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

This week Candra Mcrae provided a market basket analysis challenge which had a bit of all sorts going on as well as the core ‘what else was bought with product x’ puzzle – parameter actions, sheet swapping, custom toggle buttons.

Hopefully I’ll cover all the key elements :

  • Identifying the 2nd customer order
  • Identifying the orders containing the selected sub-category
  • Identifying the ‘other’ sub-categories ordered
  • Building the bar chart
  • Building the tree map
  • Creating the toggle button
  • Controlling what viz to display
  • Creating the dashboard and interactivity

Identifying the 2nd customer order

The requirements state the analysis is based on returning customers, and specifically their 2nd order. So we need a way to identify this set of data.

In the superstore data set, a customer only ever places one order on a day, so we will make use of this feature, but this technique won’t always work in other situations – I personally have been known to place multiple orders with Amazon on the same day, especially when Christmas shopping!

If we look at the dates customers have ordered, we’re looking to identify the orders associated to the customer & dates highlighted below

We can identify whether the date is the first order date using a FIXED LoD calculation

Is Customer’s First Order?

{FIXED [Customer ID]: MIN([Order Date])} = [Order Date]

The FIXED LoD statement within the {..} is finding the minimum Order Date for each Customer ID. This is then being checked against each Order Date, and returning true when it matches.

So this is giving us the first record, but we want the second….

I solved this, by first adding Is Customer’s First Order? = False as a data source filter (right click on the Superstore data source -> edit data source filters)

This essentially removes all the rows associated to the first order for each customer from the data set, and consequently, the Is Customer’s First Order? is now reported as True against what was originally the 2nd order…
If you compare the image above to the one further up the page where I marked the 2nd orders, you should see the values match what now seems to be listed as the first!

This works due to Tableau’s order of operations; the data source filter is filtering the data ‘early on’, so the rows of data we’re now working against, has no knowledge of those rows. Subsequently the customer’s first order is now actually reporting the customer’s 2nd order as the minimum (aka first) order date.

We can now add Is Customer’s First Order? to the Filter shelf and set to True, to just work with this set of orders.

NOTE – If the data source has not yet been extracted, which will be required if you want to publish to Tableau Public, then you will need to do one of the following :

  1. At the point of extraction, the data source filter will automatically be applied as an extract filter. If you keep it, then after extracting, remove the data source filter if its still there, otherwise you’ll find you’re reporting against the 3rd customer order OR
  2. At the point of extraction, remove the extract filter that is automatically applied. After extraction, re-add the data source filter if it’s been removed.

An alternative to using any data source/extract filters is to use the following LoD (which I only got my head round after building out the above, so I didn’t put it in my solution., but works just as well).

Is Customer’s 2nd Order?

{FIXED [Customer ID]:MIN(IIF([Is Customer’s First Order]=False,[Order Date],NULL))} = [Order Date]

The IIF statement is getting the Order Date for all the records which aren’t the Customer’s 1st order. The FIXED LOD, is then returning the minimum/smallest of these dates, which will be the date of the 2nd order. This is then compared to each Order Date to identify the appropriate record.

If you strip off any data source/extract filters, you can see how this works, and Is Customer’s 2nd Order? can be added to the Filter shelf instead, set to True, to get the required rows.

Identifying the orders containing the selected sub-category

To start with we need a parameter to store the selected Sub-Category. Right click on Sub-Category and select Create -> Parameter to create a string parameter which lists the sub-categories. I named mine pSelected_SubCat and it’s defaulted to Accessories.

What we’re now trying to find is the rows relating to Order IDs that contain the stated Sub-Category, in this instance Accessories

So we first need to identify the rows which match

Customer Ordered Selected SubCat

IIF([pSelected_SubCat]=[Sub-Category],1,0)

Add this to the view, and you can see the rows associated to Accessories are marked with 1

But we don’t just want these rows; we also need the rest of the rows on the same order, so in the case of order CA-2018-131534 above, we also need the row associated to the Paper Sub-Category.

For this, I used Sets as per the technique described in the link Candra provided within the hint.

We want the set of Order IDs where the sum of the Customer Ordered Selected SubCat field is >=1. Right click on Order ID and Create -> Set. On the Condition tab, set the relevant properties.

Adding the Orders with Selected SubCat set into the view, and we can see it’s picked up the rows we care about, and we can now filter by this set

An alternative to using Sets, is to use another FIXED LoD calculation

{FIXED [Order ID]: SUM([Customer Ordered Selected SubCat])}>=1

For each Order ID, sum up the Customer Ordered Selected SubCat field, and if it’s >=1 then it will return True, and you can then filter by this instead.

Identifying the ‘other’ sub-categories ordered

We want to count the orders which contain each Sub-Category, which is simply

Count Orders

COUNTD([Order ID])

With a basic view that is filtered as required, that lists Sub-Category by Count Orders (and sorted by Count Orders descending), we get

And you’ll see that Accessories is listed at the top. Change the parameter, and that value will also be listed. But we don’t want to see this – we need to filter it out. For this, we can create

Other Items Ordered

If [pSelected_SubCat]=[Sub-Category] THEN ‘N/A’ ELSE [Sub-Category] END

Pop this into the view, and you can see the ‘N/A’ is listed against the selected Sub-Category.

This means we can add a further Filter using the Other Items Ordered field and set it to Exclude N/A.

Building the bar chart

So now we’ve got the 3 filters we need to identify the rows of data we need to consider, we can easily build a bar chart.

To colour the bars, we need to work out the profitability

Profit Ratio

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

Is Profitable?

[Profit Ratio]>0

Add Is Profitable? onto the Colour shelf and adjust accordingly

You just then need to format to remove gridlines/axes etc, and add the relevant fields (correctly formatted) to the Tooltip to create the required text.

Building the treemap

The simplest way to do this, is to duplicate the sheet you’ve built for the bar chart, then use the Show Me option (top right) and select TreeMap. This will put most of the pills in the right places. The only thing that needs to be shifted is to add Is Profitable? back onto the Colour shelf, and to explicitly set the Sort order against the Sub-Category field. Count Orders also needs adding to the Label shelf, so it can be displayed.

Creating the toggle control

To create the toggle control which will control the switching of the vizzes do the following :

  • In the Columns shelf, type in MIN(0)
  • Then next to it, type in MIN(1)
  • Drag the MIN(1) pill from the Columns shelf and drop onto the MIN(0) axis, when you see the ‘2 green columns’ appear
  • Remove Measure Names from the Rows shelf
  • Change the mark type to Line
  • Create a parameter called Toggle which is an integer containing the values 0 & 1, defaulted to 0. Show this parameter on the view.
  • Create a new calculated field, Selected Toggle which just references the Toggle parameter
  • Add Selected Toggle to the Columns shelf and change to aggregate to MIN rather than SUM
  • Make it dual axes, and synchronise the axes
  • Remove Measure Names from the Colour shelf on the All marks card.
  • On the Selected Toggle card, change the mark type to Circle, and increase the Size. If you change the Toggle parameter the circle should shift to 1.
  • To colour the line based on the position, create a new calculated field

Colour

IF [Toggle]=0 THEN ‘grey’ ELSE ‘green’ END

  • Add Colour to the Colour shelf of the All marks card. With the Toggle parameter set to 0, set the colour to grey. Change the parameter to 1, and set the colour to green.
  • To set the tooltip create a new calculated field

Toggle Label

IF [Toggle]=0 THEN ‘Bar’ ELSE ‘Treemap’ END

  • Add Toggle Label to the Tooltip shelf of the Selected Toggle marks card. Adjust the tooltip text to just show this value.
  • Remove the text from the Tooltip of the Measure Names marks card.
  • Hide the axes headers and remove the row & column dividers

Controlling what viz to display

With the Toggle parameter set to 0, add the Selected Toggle field to the Filter shelf of the bar chart. and set it to be 0 (or at most 0 depending what filter control displays)

Then set the Toggle parameter to 1, and add the Selected Toggle field to the Filter shelf of the Treemap chart. Set this to be 1 (or at least 1 depending on the filter control displayed)

You should now find that if you switch to the bar chart sheet, nothing is displayed. Change the Toggle parameter back to 0, and the bar chart will now show, but there will be nothing on the treemap chart.

Creating the dashboard and interactivity

Create a dashboard sheet.

Add a vertical layout container

Add the bar chart into the vertical layout container. Set the chart to fit entire view and don’t display the title.

Add the treemap chart beneath the bar chart in the same vertical container. Whilst nothing is actually displaying, still set the chart to fit entire view and again don’t display the title.

The Toggle parameter should have automatically displayed on the right hand side, so test changing the parameter to see how the chart switches.

Add the Toggle Control sheet into the right hand container too.

Add a dashboard action to change the Toggle parameter when the Toggle Control is interacted with. It should take effect on Select of the Toggle chart, affect the Toggle parameter and pass the Measure Values field into the parameter.

Clicking on each end of the Toggle chart should now make the viz change from bar to treemap.

You just now need to tidy up the dashboard – add a title, remove any unrequired objects, set the container background of the right hand panel to grey (you will need to set the background on the toggle sheet to the same shade of grey too).

And hopefully that’s it. My published version is here.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you use Dashboard Extensions?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

For this week’s #WOW2021 challenge, Lorna tasked us with using dashboard extensions, some of which can also be used on Tableau Public (see here). I haven’t had an opportunity to use extensions before, so this was going to be a brand new learning experience for me.

Modelling the Data

In a break from the ‘norm’ Lorna provided us with a new set of data to use, which had to be retrieved from the sources Lorna provided in the challenge

  • Emoji Sentiment – a csv file containing a summary of how often a particular emoji was used within tweets in 2015 and whether the tweets were classified as being positive, neutral, or negative in sentiment.
  • Emoji Database – a link to a site where after registering, you can download a csv file which defines and classifies each emoji

The first part of the challenge requires these data sources to be modelled using relationships in Tableau Desktop. Lorna hinted that a join calculation would be required on the codepoint fields.

I found this a bit odd, as both data sources contained an Emoji field which was automatically set to be the relationship field, and seemed to work.

For the purpose of this blog though, I’m going to attempt to rebuild my solution as I type, and use the suggested fields. The Unicode codepoint field in the Emoji Sentiment data needs to map to the codepoint field in the Emoji Database, but they’re not an exact match. We can prefix ‘0x’ to the codepoint field and ensure the case of the letters match. We can use a relationship calculation for this.

Grouping the Groups

This chart shows the top 20 emojis based on Occurrences and should filter to the appropriate group when a ‘category’ is clicked on the dashboard extension image on the left hand side.

The Emjoi Database data has a Group field, but this doesn’t exactly match the groupings on the image – some groups are ‘grouped’ together. I used Tableau’s in built grouping functionality to group the entries as required (right click field -> create -> group).

Category

I grouped People & Body and Smileys & Emotion together and named them Smileys and People

Filtering by Top 20

The list of Emojis needs to show the Top 20 based on Occurrences, but also filtered by Category. Build out a basic table of

  • Emoji Sentiment : Emoji1, Unicode name on Rows
  • Occurrences on Text
  • Emoji1 on Filter, set to filter by Top 20 of Occurrences
  • Category as a Context Filter – select all values to filter by, then right click -> add to context. This means the data will be filtered based on the Category first before the Top 20 filter is applied. The pill will change to grey to show it is a context filter. Show the filter and you can test it’s working

Building out the Top 20 Chart

Now we have the basics of the filtering functionality, we can build out the rest of the chart.

We need to display percentages, so need fields

% Positive

SUM([Positive])/SUM([Occurrences])

formatted to 1 decimal place. Create similar fields for % Negative and % Neutral

First start by creating a duplicate of the Occurrences field and call it #. Then add this as a discrete pill to the Rows shelf. Remove Occurrences from the Text shelf. Then add Measure Values to Columns and filter by Measure Names so only % Positive, % Neutral and % Negative measures are displayed. Add Measure Names to Colour.

All this has been done on one axis, so now we can add another to display the Position – add this field to Columns. This will create a 2nd marks card. Remove the Measure Names fields from the card, and change the mark type to circle.

Add an additional field MIN(1) to Columns by ‘typing in’ (double click on the Columns area) . Then click on the pill and select dual axis which will combine this field with the Position measure. Synchronise axis. This unfortunately will probably set all the marks to be circle type

so we need to reset…

  • change the mark type of the Measure Values card to bar
  • remove Measure Names from the Position card
  • remove Measure Names from the MIIN(1) card
  • change mark type of MIN(1) card to bar, and reduce size to as small as possible

This should give you the core chart, which can now be formatted accordingly.

Rounded Bar Chart

I always forget how to build these for some reason, so a quick google gave me a refresher via Andy Kriebel’s tutorial on YouTube

  • Add Category to Rows
  • Occurrences to Columns
  • Type in MIN(0) on Columns
  • Drag the MIN(0) pill and drop it on the Occurrences axis. This will change the view so Measure Values is now on Columns and Measure Names is on Rows
  • Change the mark type to Line and drag the Measure Names pill from the Rows onto the Path shelf
  • Increase the size of the mark

Exclude the Null Category and manually sort the categories to match the order in which the entries are listed on the left hand image.

Set to show mark labels, only displaying them at the end of the line, and aligning middle right

Add Category to the Colour shelf and colour accordingly, then apply the relevant formatting again to remove gridlines, axis and hide the Category pill from displaying.

Adding & Configuring the Dashboard Extension

This challenge makes use of the Image Map Filter extension, which you need to download from this link and save the .trex file somewhere appropriate on you machine. I also chose to make use of the image Lorna used rather than create anything, so saved the image from the challenge page to my laptop.

Create a dashboard and add the 2 charts you’ve already built, then add the Extension object to the dashboard. When prompted select My Extensions and browse to the Image Map Filter .trex file you’ve saved.

You’ll then be prompted to configure the extension as below, selecting the image you’ve saved, which is set to scale to container; choosing the Category dimension which is what the chart is filtered by, and then selecting the Top 20 sheet

You then need to select the rectangle option, which allows you to ‘draw’ on the image

Create a rectangle around one of the options, and when prompted select the appropriate Category which the selection relates to.

Repeat this for all the options in the image.

Average Legend

To build this I simply duplicated the Top 20 chart, removed all the pills from the Rows shelf, removed the Emoji pill from the Filter shelf and then changed the aggregation of the Position pill from SUM to AVG. I had to re-tweak the tooltips too.

And after all that, I hope you have all the components you need to deliver this solution. My published viz is here.

Happy Vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you build a Fancy Text Table?

Donna Coles2 Comments

Ann Jackson provided this week’s challenge, to deliver a text table using only Measure Names & Measure Values. I thought with Ann’s introduction that “This challenge should be straightforward for users of all levels” that this would be relatively straightforward, but I have to confess there were moments that I struggled with this. I knew the fundamentals that I’d need to complete this; that all the columns except the first were going to need to be numbers (ie measures), that I’d have to use custom formatting to display the number in the required format (a shape, a date, a word), and that I’d need to use the ‘legends per measure’ functionality to colour each column independently of each other. But determining the best/worst date to display proved to be a bit tricksy! I got there in the end, but there was a fair bit of trial and error.

Custom Formatting

I’m going to step through the build of this, as I think that’s probably the easiest way to describe this challenge. But before I do, one of the core fundamentals to this is knowing about how numbers can be custom formatted. By that I mean when you right-click on a measure -> default properties -> number format -> custom

This box allows you to type in, but you need to know what format/syntax to use. If you set the formatting via one of the other options, then look at the Custom option, it’ll have an entry that will give you a starting point. The above is the format for a number set to 1 decimal place, and shows that negative numbers will be prefixed by a minus sign (-). If we wanted to always show a plus sign in front of a positive number, we can edit this custom formatting to +#,##0.0;-#,##0.0.

The first entry to the left of the semi colon (;) indicates what’s applied to positive numbers. The next entry, to the right of the semi colon, indicates what’s applied to a negative number.

With this knowledge, you can apply more ‘creative’ custom formatting to any numeric measure that contains positive and negative numbers. For example if you want to show a ☑ or a ☒ depending on a ‘yes/no’ or ‘true/false’ concept, then we can create a version of the field as a number along the lines of

Field as Number

If [Field] = ‘XXXX’ THEN 1 ELSE -1 END.

We can than custom format this field by entering ☑;☒ into the text box

The field can still be treated as a measure, since the underlying value is still a number (in this case +/- 1), it’s just displayed differently.

Building the measures

So now we’ve covered how this ‘sneaky formatting’ is working, we’ll get on with the overall build.

The data just needs data from 2019 & 2020, so I chose to set a data source filter to restrict to just these two years.

But, I wanted the rest of the challenge to derive the current year instead of hardcoding, so I created fields

Current Year

YEAR({MAX([Order Date])})

Last Year

[Current Year] – 1

From these, I could then use LoDs to create

CY SALES

IF YEAR([Order Date]) = [Current Year] THEN [Sales] END

This is formatted to $ with 0 dp

and then

LY SALES

IF YEAR([Order Date]) = [Last Year] THEN [Sales] END

again formatted to $ with 0 dp.

We then need an indicator which is ‘true’ if CY SALES is greater than LY SALES, but as discussed above, we need this to be a ‘measure’, which we can custom format.

CY vs LY

IF SUM([CY SALES])>SUM([LY SALES]) THEN 1 ELSE -1 END

Custom format this as ✅;❌ (just copy these symbols from this page… they’ll look black and white in the dialog) – check out this page, to lift the images/other symbols from.

The actual difference identified by △ (again just copy and paste this symbol into the field name) is simply

△

SUM([CY SALES]) – SUM([LY SALES])

formatted to $ with 0 dp. Once you’ve done this using the Currency(Custom) option, then go to the Custom option and add + to the front of the string :

+”$”#,##0;-“$”#,##0

Next up is the percentage difference

% DIFF
[△]/SUM([LY SALES])

again format this first to a Percentage at 1 dp, then edit the Custom format to +0.0%;-0.0%

Now we’re getting to the slightly more complex part of the challenge – to identify the best and worst day in the month. We’ll start with the best day. We’re using FIXED LoDs throughout this, and while it’s probably possible to do in a single calculation, we’ll use multiple calcs to build up the components.

Order Month

DATENAME(‘month’,[Order Date])

This is the one dimension that’s going to be used in the final output, and simply outputs the month name (January, February etc).

In the data set, there can be multiple sales (ie orders) in a single day. We want to identify the total sales in 2020 (ie the current year) for each order date.

Sales Per Day

{FIXED [Order Date] : SUM([CY SALES])}

Now we’ve got the total sales per day, we want to identify the value of the maximum daily sales in each month

Max CY Sales Per Month

{FIXED [Order Month]: MAX([Sales Per Day])}

Now we need to identify the date in the month that the max daily sales ocurred

BEST DAY

INT({FIXED [Order Month]: MAX(IF [Sales Per Day] = [Max CY Sales Per Month] THEN ([Order Date]) END)}) + 2

WOAH! WHAT??? Let’s try to break this down…

IF [Sales Per Day] = [Max CY Sales Per Month] THEN ([Order Date]) END

If the daily sales value is the maximum daily sales in the month, then return the associated Order Date. But we need to get a date per month, so we’ve wrapped this in a FIXED LoD, for each Order Month. LoDs require the value to be aggregated, so the IF statement gets wrapped in a MAX statement (note MIN would work just as well).

{FIXED [Order Month]: MAX(IF [Sales Per Day] = [Max CY Sales Per Month] THEN ([Order Date]) END)}

Finally, due to the nature of this challenge, that requires we only work with Measure Names & Measure Values, we will convert this date field to a number using the INT function.

The intention here, is that we can then use the Custom formatting option once again, to set the number as a date format – I chose dd mmm yyyy (ie 01 Jan 2020 format, as I feel its less confusing that working out whether the date is in UK or US format).

However, by a very weird circumstance, converting a date to an INT then formatting as a date, will give you a date 2 days out from the one you converted. I don’t understand why, and it left me scratching my head for some time. I had to sense check with a fellow #WOWer who had the same, and checking Ann’s solution, she also was handling the oddity, which is the reason for the +2 on the calculation.

We just create similar fields for identifying the worst day

Min CY Sales Per Month

{FIXED [Order Month]: MIN([Sales Per Day])}

WORST DAY

INT({FIXED [Order Month]: MAX(IF [Sales Per Day] = [Min CY Sales Per Month] THEN ([Order Date]) END)}) + 2

format this to dd mmm yyyy

The final measure we need is based on determining the rank of the CY SALES per month. Ie if we ordered the months based on CY SALES descending, the top 6 would be marked as ‘Top’ and the rest as ‘Bottom’.

RANK

IF RANK(SUM([CY SALES])) <= 6 THEN 1 ELSE -1 END

We can then custom format this to “Top”;”Bottom”

Formatting the Table

Create a text table by

  • Order Month on Rows
  • Measure Names on Columns
  • Measure Values on Text
  • Measure Names on Filter, filtered to just the relevant measures

Add Measure Values to the Colour shelf, and select the Use Separate Legends option to display multiple diverging colour legend controls.

It’s now a case of going through each measure and editing the colour palette, and other settings. Some of this was again a bit of trial and error for me – I chose options that worked.

For the black text fields (CY SALES, LY SALES, %DIFF), choose a diverging colour palette, then click on the coloured squares at each end and select black from the colour picker. Select Stepped Colour and reduce the steps to 2.

Apply the same concept to the BEST DAY and WORST DAY legends, but select the appropriate green or red colour instead.

For the remaining fields, select a diverging colour palette, select the appropriate red at one end, and green at the other, reduce the steps to 2

And subject to some other formatting tweaks (increase font sizes, centre text), this is enough to complete the challenge. My final published viz is here. Note, the published viz does have slight differences to what I’ve blogged… as with many things, you sometimes realise things can be simpler when you try again.

Happy vizzin’! Stay Safe!

Donna

Can you highlight profits with Measure Names?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

Luke Stanke provided his last challenge of #WOW2020 for the year with this viz to utilise Measure Names & Measure Values. This plots Cost against Sales per Sub-Category (the circles), which are then bounded by a lozenge. The Sales circle and the lozenge are coloured based on profitability, and the lozenges are labelled by Profit, although the position of the label is also based on profitability.

Obviously as the title of the challenge suggests, using Measure Names & Measure Values is key to this. As usual I’ll try to just pull out the main points I think you might find most tricky.

  • Building the core chart
  • Aligning the Sub-Categories against a horizontal line
  • Colouring the circles & lozenge
  • Positioning the labels
  • Formatting the labels
  • Creating a border around the white Cost circle

Building the core chart

You’ll need to create a calculated field to store the cost

Cost

SUM([Sales]) – SUM([Profit])

Once done, then add Sub-Category to Rows and sort by descending by Profit. Add Measure Values to Columns and filter just to Sales and Cost. Change the mark type to circle.

Add a 2nd instance of Measure Values to Columns and change the mark type to Line. Add Measure Names to Path.

Then make this chart dual axis and synchronise the axis. This will give the base chart.

Aligning the Sub-Categories against a horizontal line

Whenever you add a blue discrete pill to the rows or columns, you’ll get a ‘header’ pane, which means the label for the pill is by default positioned in the centre of a row, as demonstrated below if I add row dividers to the chart

The requirement is to show the row label aligned with a horizontal line. To achieve this, we need to add a MIN(0) field the Rows. Adding this green pill, creates an axis which has a 0 horizontal 0 line, which is positioned exactly in alignment with the row label

Removing the row dividers, and uncheck Show Header on the MIN(0) pill, and the right aligning the row label, we get the desired result.

Colouring the circles & lozenge

The circles are either coloured white for Cost or dark red or green for Sales depending on the profitability of the Sub-Category.

So we need a new calculated field

Is Profitable?

SUM([Profit])>0

This returns true or false.

On the circles Measure Names mark card, add Is Profitable to the Colour shelf. If it’s not already there, then add Measure Names to the Detail shelf, then select the detail icon and choose the colour icon to also add Measure Names to the Colour shelf

This has the effect of giving you 4 colour combinations

which can then be edited to set the 2 combinations relating to Cost to white, Sales & True to dark green and Sales & False to dark red (at this point, you probably want to be setting the background colour of the whole worksheet to light grey (right click on sheet, format, select the Shading icon)

For the lozenge, you just need to add the Is Profitable field the the Colour shelf of the line Measure Names card, and adjust the size of the to make it slightly bigger than the circles (you may need to move marks to back to get the lozenge to sit behind the circles).

Positioning the labels

So the tricky thing about the labels is where they are positioned – they are to the right for the profitable sub-categories, and to the left for the non-profitable sub-categories. When you add a label, you can’t provide that sort of conditional logic to control the positioning. However, we happen to have 2 sets of marks cards (as dual axis), and so can use different fields to apply the labelling.

Label Profit is +ve

IF [Is Profitable] THEN SUM(Profit) END

This will only return a value for profitable sub-categories, otherwise the field will store blank.

Label Profit is -ve

IF NOT([Is Profitable]) THEN SUM(Profit) END

Conversely, this will only return a value for the non-profitable sub-categories.

Add the Label Profit is +ve field to the Label shelf of the Circle marks card. Adjust the positioning to be middle right, and adjust the settings as below (tbh this was just a bit of trial and error to find this worked :-)). You may want to additionally add a few <spaces> to the start of the label text to add a bit of breathing room.

Then on the Line marks card, add the Label Profit is -ve field to the Label shelf, but this time choose to Label Line Ends, and select Label end of line. Note – you can try to apply the same settings as above, but I found for some reason it increased the size of the mark around the line end… weird…

Formatting the labels

Right click on the Label Profit is +ve/-ve fields created and custom format with

+”$”#,##0;-“$”#,##0

Creating a border around the white Cost circle

Finally, a sneaky requirement was to add a border around the white circle that represented Cost only. This implied that using the formatting options on the Colour shelf that allows a border to be added to the mark wasn’t going to work, as this will apply to all marks and not just to the Cost circle.

I handled this by creating a 2nd instance of the Cost field (right click Cost and select duplicate).

I then added this Cost (copy) field to the Measure Values section of the chart on the left hand side. This doesn’t appear to do much, since the mark is directly on top of an existing mark, but you will see the Colour legend associated to the Circle marks card change and add 2 new entries.

I changed the colours of the 2 new entries in the Colour legend to a dark grey, then added Measure Names to the Size shelf of the Circles marks card. I then adjusted the range and size of the circles so that the Cost measure is slightly smaller than the Cost (copy) measure. Ultimately all 3 circles are slightly different sizes, but the range is so narrow, it’s hard to tell.

And that’s it. A lovely looking viz with a fair bit going on under the bonnet, but nothing too complex! My published version 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

What happens if? Can you update sales forecast and targets using only parameters?

Donna Coles6 Comments

So after Ann’s gentle workout for week 6, newly crowed Tableau Zen Master Lorna, hit us with this challenge, and I confess, I struggled. The thought of then having to write this blog about it even brought a little tear to my eye 😦

But here I am, and I will do my best, but I can’t promise I understood everything that went on in this. I truly am amazed at times how some people manage to be so creative and bend Tableau to their will. It really is like #TableauBlackMagic at times!

So I read the challenge through multiple times, played around with Lorna’s published viz, stared at the screen blankly for some time…. I found the University Planning Dashboard viz by Ryan Lowers that Lorna had referenced in the challenge as her inspiration (she’d linked to it from her published viz). I played around with that a bit, although that took a while for me to get my head round too.

I also did a google search and came across Jonathan Drummey‘s blog post : Parameter Actions: Using a parameter as a data source. This provided a workbook and some step by step instructions, so I used this as my starting point. I downloaded the workbook, copied across the fields he suggested and tried to apply his instructions to Lorna’s challenge. But after a couple of hours, it felt as if I was making little progress. I couldn’t figure out whether I needed 2 or 4 parameters to store the ‘list’ data source variables (one each to store the list of selected categories for forecast, the list of selected categories for target, the list of selected forecast values, and the list of selected target values, or one each to store the list of selected categories and forecast values combined, and selected categories and target values combined). Suffice to say I tried all combos, using a dashboard to show me what was being populated on click into all the various fields/parameters I’d built. But it just wasn’t giving me exactly what I needed.

I downloaded the University Planning Dashboard and tried to understand what that was doing. And finally I shrugged my shoulders, and admitted defeat and cracked open Lorna’s solution. When I finally get to this point in a challenge, I try just to ‘have a peak’, and not simply follow verbatim what’s in the solution. I gleaned that I did need only 2 parameters, and that what I had been doing with my attempts with Jonathan’s example was pretty close. It made me feel a bit better with myself.

How things then transpired after that I can’t really recall – it was still a lot of trial and error but I finally got something that gave me the Sales Forecast data and associated select & reset functionality (by this time I’d probably spent 4 hours or so on this over a couple of evenings). Once I’d cracked that, the target was relatively straight forward, so by the time I’d finished on the 2nd day, I had a dashboard that allowed the selections/resets and simply presented the data in a table on screen. I chose to keep that version as part of my published solution, just for future reference (see here). I then finished off the next day, building the main viz.

What follows now, is just an account of the fields etc I used to build my solution. So let’s get going….

Building the Sales Forecast Selector

I’m going to start by focusing on building the left hand side of the viz, setting and resetting the Sales Forecast values for each Category.

We need 2 main parameters to start with:

Forecast Param

An integer parameter defaulted to 70,000. This is the parameter that stores the value of the forecast to set.

Forecast List

A string parameter defaulted to empty. This is the parameter which will ‘build up’ on selection of a category, to store a delimited list of category + forecast values – ie the data source parameter.

Oh, and I also used a 3rd parameter, Delimiter, which is just a string parameter storing a :

The delimiter needs to be a distinct character that mustn’t exist in the fields being used. The Category field nor the Forecast Param field will contain a ‘:’, so that’s fine. But any other unused character would work just as well. Having this field as a parameter isn’t ultimately necessary, but it makes it easy to change the delimiter to use, if the chosen value doesn’t end up being suitable. It was also a field used in Jonathan Drummey’s solution I’d based my initial attempts on.

Now we need to build the viz to work as the category selector.

I simply put Category on the Rows shelf, sorting the pill by SUM(Sales) descending and set the Mark Type to circle. Oh – and I set a Data Source Filter to set the Order Date just to the year 2019.

I also needed the following

  • something to colour the circles based on whether the Category was selected or not
  • something to use to help ‘build up’ the List parameter ‘data source’
  • something to return the forecast value that had been selected against the specific Category

Category Exists in Forecast List

CONTAINS([Forecast List], [Category])

If the Category exists within the Forecast List string of text, this field will return true, and indicates the Category has been ‘selected’. This field is added to the Colour shelf, and the colour needs to be adjusted once parameter action has been applied to distinguish between true & false.

Add to Forecast List

if [Forecast Param]<>0 THEN
[Forecast List] +
[Category] + ‘_’ + STR([Forecast Param]) + [Delimiter]
ELSE ”
END

If the entered Forecast value isn’t 0, then append <Category>_<Forecast Value>: to the Forecast List parameter. Eg if the Sales Forecast value is $50,000 and Technology is selected, then Technology_50000: is added to the existing Forecast List parameter, which has started as blank.

If the Sales Forecast value is then changed to $10,000 say, and Office Supplies is selected, then the Forecast List parameter will become

Technology_50000:Office Supplies_10000:

This Append To Forecast List calculated field is used in conjunction with the Forecast List parameter within a Parameter Action on the dashboard to make all the ‘magic’ happen. The Append To Forecast List field must be in the view to be available to the parameter action, so it is added to the Detail shelf.

When a circle is selected the Append To Forecast List field is used to ‘set’ the Forecast List parameter, subsequently building up a string of Category_Value pairs.

Finally, on hover, the Category and the value of the selected sales forecast at the time must be visible on the Tooltip. To get the value at the point of selection, which isn’t necessarily the latest value visible in the Sales Forecast parameter displayed on screen, the following field is required:

Current FC Value

INT(if contains([Forecast List],[Category]) then
REGEXP_EXTRACT([Forecast List],[Category]+”_(-?\d+)”)
end)

This manages to pull out the number associated with the Category, so in the above example, would return 50000 for Technology and 10000 for Office Supplies.

This field has custom formatting applied : ▲”$”#,##0;▼”$”#,##0 and is added to the Tooltip shelf.

RegEx is a concept I have yet to really crack, so there is no way I’d have come up with the above on my own. I think it’s looking for the named Category followed by Underscore (_) followed by either 1 or no negative sign (-) followed by some numbers, and returns just the numeric part.

Finally, the circles shouldn’t be ‘highlighted’ when selected on the dashboard. To stop this from happening a calculated field of True containing the value True, and a field False containing the value False are required. These are both added to the Detail shelf, and a Filter Action is then required on the dashboard setting True = False. This is a technique that is now becoming a familiar one to use, having been used in earlier #WOW2020 challenges.

So my ‘selection’ sheet looks like

and when added to the dashboard, the parameter action looks like :

with the filter action looking like :

At this point, I’d suggest using a ‘test’ dashboard which contains the selection sheet, displays the Forecast List and Forecast Param, and has the dashboard actions described above, applied to get an idea of what’s going on when a circle is selected, and the values of the Forecast Param changed.

The final part to this set up, is the ‘reset’ button, which when clicked on, empties the Forecast List parameter.

Create a new sheet, change the Mark Type to Text, and on the Text shelf add the string ‘↺’. I simply typed this ‘into’ a pill, but you could create a calculated field to store the ‘image’, which isn’t actually an image, but a special string character, that I got off my favourite ‘go to’ unicode characters website.

You then need a calculated field

Forecast List Reset

”

that just contains an empty string. This is added to the Detail shelf.

Put this sheet on the ‘test’ dashboard, and create another parameter action

This takes the value out of the Forecast List Reset field and sets the Forecast List parameter, subsequently resetting the list to an empty string on click.

Verify this is all working as expected.

Building the Sales Target Selector

Subject to Sales Forecast selector working as expected, then apply exactly the same principles to create the Target selection sheet and associated parameters.

The only slight difference with the fields used in the Target selection is:

Add to Target List

if [Target Param]>0 THEN
[Target List] +
[Category] + ‘_’ + STR([Target Param]) + [Delimiter]
ELSE ”
END

This just applies the addition to the list if the entered target is a +ve number (ie > 0), rather than not 0 as in the forecast selection.

The Target also needs to be displayed on the Tooltip, and this time there is a default target value that should be displayed, even when no selection has been made. For this I created

Target

IF ZN(MAX([Current Target Value])) = 0 THEN
MIN(IF [Category]= ‘Furniture’ THEN 270000
ELSEIF [Category]= ‘Office Supplies’ THEN 260000
ELSEIF [Category]= ‘Technology’ THEN 250000
END)
ELSE MAX([Current Target Value]) END

which was formatted to a currency of 0 decimal places, prefixed by $. This was added to the Tooltip shelf.

At this point, you should now have both the ‘selection sheets’ working on the dashboard, so we can now focus on building the main viz.

Building the Bar Chart

Rather than building the bar chart, I first decided to build a tabular view that simply presented on screen all the bits of data I needed for the bar chart, this being

  • Sales value per Category (simply SUM(Sales))
  • Sales Forecast value per Category (ie Sales + selected Forecast value)
  • Selected Sales Target value per Category (this is the Target field described above)
  • % Difference between Sales & Target
  • % Difference between Sales Forecast & Target

So I created the following additional calculated fields:

Forecast

SUM([Sales]) + MAX([Current FC Value])

formatted to currency prefixed with $ set to 0 dp.

Forecast vs Target Diff

([Forecast]-[Target])/[Target]

custom formatted to ▲0%; ▼0%

Sales vs Target Diff

(SUM([Sales])-[Target])/[Target]

also custom formatted to ▲0%; ▼0%

Adding the table to the ‘test’ dashboard allows you to sense check everything is behaving as expected

Now its just a case of shifting the various pills around to get the desired view. Ensure at least one Sales Forecast Category has been selected, to make it easier to ‘see’ what you’re building.

Lorna stated the target should be displayed as a Gantt mark type, with the sales and the forecast displayed as bars. This means a dual axis chart is required, with sales & forecast on one axis and target on the other.

To get Sales and Forecast onto the same axis, we need to add Category to the Rows (sorted by Sales desc) and Measure Values to the Columns, filtering to only the two measures we need.

Set the Mark Type to bar, and add Measure Names to both the Colour and the Size shelf.

Adjust colours and sizes to suit.

You might have something like


where the measures are ‘stacked’, so the bar is the length of the Sales then the length of the Forecast. We don’t want this, so need to set Stack Marks to Off (Analysis menu -> Stack Marks -> Off).

Add all the necessary fields to the Label shelf and format accordingly (you may need to widen the rows to make the labels show against each row).

Note – in my solution I created some fields to make the opening & closing bracket around the Forecast v Target Diff value only show when a Forecast had been selected, however in writing this blog, I realise it was simpler just to change the formatting of the Forecast v Target Diff to add the brackets around the number. The custom formatting was changed to : (▲0%); (▼0%)

Adjust the Tooltip to suit too.

Now add Target to Columns alongside Measure Values. Set to Dual Axis and Synchronise the axis. Reset the Measure Values mark type back to bar if needed, and set the Target mark type to Gantt.

Remove Measure Names from the Colour and Size shelf of the Target marks card. Untick Show Mark Labels too. Adjust the colour of the mark to suit, and you should pretty much be there now…

Tidy up the final bits of formatting, removing/hiding the various axis, labels, gridlines etc etc.

When this is all put together on the dashboard, you might need to fiddle about a bit with layout containers to get the bar chart lined up with the Selector views.

And with that I’m done! My published version is here, along with the ‘check’ dashboard I used to sense check what was going on, as I’m sure if I ever looked at my solution again, I’d struggle to understand immediately 🙂

Once again, I just want to acknowledge those that manage to create this magic with Tableau. I applaud you!

Happy vizzin’!

Donna

Rounded Bar Charts : What % of Sales is from the East Region?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

For Week 37 2019 of #WorkoutWednesday, Luke Stanke challenged us to create a rounded bar chart, displaying the % of sales by sub-category in a selected region as a proportion of the whole.

In the challenge (here), Luke hinted that this could be achieved by unioning the data set together, but I recalled doing something similar before, and so didn’t think I’d need this.

Before tackling the bars though, I needed to set up the data required, which was pretty straightforward. I needed a parameter to store the region, and then a couple of calculated fields

Region Sales

If [Region] = [Region Param] THEN [Sales] END

which stored the value of the sales for the region selected and

Region % of Sales

SUM([Region Sales]) / SUM ([Sales])

which stored the % value required.

Having set that up, I then went to my stored ‘go to’ references as a refresher:

Andy Kriebel‘s Tableau Tip : How to create rounded bars and Ryan Sleeper‘s : How to Make Rounded Bars & Scales in Tableau

I started with Andy’s technique first, which uses MIN(0) plotted on the same axis as Region % of Sales, displayed as a line chart with Measure Names on the Path shelf to force the points to join up. Increasing the size of the line produces rounded bars.

However, I then spent some time puzzling over how to get the 2nd bar, which needed to be on a second (dual) axis, and ideally also needed to be created in a similar technique using MIN(0) to MIN(1) instead. I tried a few things, but couldn’t crack it this way, so used the technique Ryan adopts which overlays bars and circles on a dual axis.

For this, MIN(0), MIN(1) and Region % of Sales are all added to the same axis, so Measure Values is plotted against Sub-Category and Measure Names added to colour

However if you look closely, you’ll see the values go beyond 1, as the marks are all stacked. We don’t want this, so we need to turn stacking off…


.. and then move Region % of Sales to the top of the list in Measure Values, to bring it to the front, and adjust the colours to suit

This gives our bars. Now, for the rounded bit.

Duplicate Measure Values, by clicking on the Measure Values pill in the columns shelf, holding down Ctrl and dragging your mouse to the right. This will create a copy of the Measure Values pill which you can drop next to it

Make the chart dual axis, synchronise the axis and change the mark types to be a bar for one set of Measure Values and a circle for the other. Adjust the sizing so the marks appear as one ‘lozenge’ shape

Labelling the end of the bar with the % values, needed a little bit of creativity. Just adding Region % of Sales to the label of the ‘bar’ marks card showed the label a bit too close to the display, even when right-aligned, as the circle mark was taking up the space

Labelling the circles instead would have meant a bit of trickery to only label the last circle.

So the quickest & easiest thing to do, was to simply create a label field to make the spacing work :

LABEL : % Sales

” ” + STR(ROUND([Region % of Sales] * 100,0)) + “%”

Adding this to the Label shelf on the bar marks gave me the desired result.

I just then needed to tidy up the formatting (fix axis start, hide axis etc) and add to the dashboard.

My version of the challenge is here, but do check out others. There will be multiple ways of achieving the same thing!

Happy vizzin!

Donna

Can you create step area charts?

Donna ColesLeave a comment

Continuing on from last year, August is #WorkoutWednesday takeover month, with challenges posted by invited guests. First up, for Week 32 was this challenge from Klaus Schulte to create a step area chart WITHOUT the use of data densification (ie duplicating the data set).

WARNING! This blog describes my approach to solving the challenge which I can only describe as trying to find your way through a maze for the first time – you take a few wrong turns, double back on yourself several times, but eventually get to the the centre, feeling quite satisfied. However, you later find, that if only you’d turned right rather than left to start with, there would have been a much quicker direct route to get to the end. My approach to this challenge ended up being quite cumbersome due to the path I started down. Klaus’ solution is much simpler 🙂

There were minimal clues in the challenge requirements, apart from the fact that table calcs were going to be required and, as stated, you couldn’t duplicate the data set. So I started by viewing Klaus’ solution on Tableau Public to see what I could glean by mousing over the chart. From doing this I understood that

  1. The stepped area chart had to be managed using a single axis, since the dual axis would be needed for the ‘bonus’, highlighting the max & min drop.
  2. The stepped area chart was indeed an ‘area’ mark type (and not carefully disguised bars or similar), since when you hovered over a mark, an indicator appeared at both the top and bottom of the chart, and if you selected anywhere, the whole section was highlighted

Stepped Area Chart

So where to start…. I decided to watch the relevant section of the TC Europe talk Klaus referred to in the challenge intro, in which he showed a way of doing this by duplicating the data, to see if there were any clues there. By doing this, I understood that

  1. The difference between an area & line chart was that with an area chart, there is no Path shelf, so you can’t control how the marks will be joined up. An Area chart will just join the marks from left to right. This was already familiar, but the reminder was useful to jog the memory.
  2. Whilst Klaus’ solution was using a duplicated data set, he incorporated a method of offsetting the point to plot forward (+0.499) or backward (-0.499) depending on what data set was being referenced. This reminded me of something I’d done in a previous #WorkoutWednesday challenge a long time ago, where I needed to display a side by side bar chart

So I figured I needed to find a way to ‘expand’ the data to give me 2 rows per month by using some offset logic, which I did by creating new fields

Month Position To Plot

DATE(IF MONTH([Order Date]) = 12 THEN DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Order Date])
ELSE
IF DAY([Order Date]) <=15 THEN DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Order Date]) ELSE DATEADD(‘month’,1,DATETRUNC(‘month’,[Order Date]))-1 END
END)

This sets the date to be 1st Dec if the Order Date was December (as I didn’t want an extra point), otherwise, if the Order Date was before 15th of the month, the date would be the 1st day of the month, otherwise it would be the last day of the month.

Sales In Month

{FIXED [Category], DATETRUNC(‘month’, [Order Date]): SUM([Sales])}

I needed this LoD to store the total value of the monthly sales. Without it, due to my Month Position To Plot field above, the Sales would only show the partial sales in the month.

This made my data look like

Plotting this on a chart, setting the [Month Position to Plot] to be a continuous (green) pill set to the Day level, and choosing the Area mark type, and I got a stepped area chart 🙂 The days where the marks are plotted end up being so close together, that the vertical line looks straight to the eye.

Side notes

  1. I initially created a numeric field based on the month’s number offset by +/- 4.99 to plot, instead of the date field [Month Position To Plot], assuming I might be able to use custom formatting to show the date on the axis. When I eventually found this wasn’t possible, I confirmed the axis on Klaus’ solution was actually associated to the main view, and not part of another view carefully placed on the dashboard. I found this by clicking on the small + icon that appears when hovering by the date. This isn’t a feature you’re encouraged to use, as it makes the view go all bonkers 🙂
  2. I used the alias feature to display the Category field in uppercase, as there were only 3 values, so it wasn’t overly cumbersome to type them in.
  3. The date axis was fixed to a suitable start & end to allow a decent amount of spacing between each category. I also set the axis tick months to start on 01 Jan 18 and recur every 11 months, so only Jan & Dec would display.

So this didn’t seem too bad – I’d got a step area chart using a single axis – everything was all good. On to the next bit…

Tooltips

The tooltip needed to show the category, the month/year, the sales value and the value of the change from the previous month.

Because of the way I’d gone about structuring my data, to work out the change I actually needed to get the value of the next row, and find the difference between the two. This may sound counter-intuitive since we’re asked to find the change from the previous month, but it was necessary due to that path I had chosen to build my area chart 🙂

Sales Next Value

LOOKUP(SUM([Sales In Month]),1)

This table calculation needed to be applied for each category (ie in the Edit Table Calculation window, all dimensions except the Category needed to be selected in the Compute Using section). The difference was just then comparing the two fields

Sales Diff

[Sales Next Value] – SUM([Sales In Month])

But whilst this was getting me the numbers I needed, I was stumbling into another issue.

On Klaus’ viz, the point at the top and bottom of each vertical line, represented the same month, whereas the point at the start and end of each horizontal line was the same month for me 😦

So I had to 1) build another calculated field to shift the months so I could label the points correctly, and 2) since every row didn’t show the Sales Difference (the rows with $0 above), I need another table calc to get the info relating to the previous row. This gave me

Labels

So having sorted the tooltips, my focus now changed to the labels that were displayed which were

  • the points which had the biggest rise (the maximum change) or biggest fall (the minimum change) per category
  • the points at the start and end of each year (if they didn’t correspond to being the max/min change above).

You can use WINDOW_MAX() to find the maximum difference for each category, and then compare this to the actual difference to find the matching row. However, yet again, due to my set up, the matching row wasn’t on the right point, I had to shift it again using a LOOKUP() function to find the previous row.

I had to repeat the exercise using WINDOW_MIN to find the minimum difference, and then apply similar logic using FIRST() and LAST() to identify the start and end points. It was all very convoluted and involved multiple table calculations, but it produced the output I needed. (I’ve included my data table sheet in my published workbook, for reference).

Highlighting biggest rise and smallest drop

So now onto the 2nd part of the challenge. As I mentioned at the start, I knew a dual axis would be involved to achieve the lines.

My initial thought was to use the ‘waterfall’ type technique involving a gantt mark type, sized by the difference.

However, I spotted that the blue and red vertical lines were thicker than the grey vertical lines which were also visible, which meant gantt wouldn’t be an option, as I couldn’t use the Size shelf for two purposes.

I recalled the fact you can place multiple measures on the same axis and use the line to join them up vertically (I did this creating a candlestick chart for #WorkoutWednesday2019 week 13, solution here), so started trying this out. But in this case I couldn’t just use any existing fields, as I’d ‘duplicated rows’, so had use some logic to create further fields

Sales in Month Dual Axis

IF [Sales Diff]<>0 THEN SUM([Sales In Month]) END

Sales Next Value Dual Axis

IF [Sales Diff] <> 0 THEN [Sales Next Value] END

These were basically just giving me values for every other row (so de-duplicating the data I’d expanded). I could then plot these two measures on the same secondary axis, remove Measure Names from the Colour shelf, and by setting the mark type to line, I got what I needed. I applied logic to create a field to set the colour based on whether the change was the max or min or not, and also created a field to set the size again based on whether it was max/min or not.

I then applied the dual axis function, not forgetting to synchronise the axis, tidied up the formatting and added to a dashboard. My published version is here.

But you don’t want to do any of that 🙂

You want to have a read of Rody Zakovich‘s blog from October 2017 – Create a step chart in Tableau without data modelling, and just change the mark type to Area…all the vertical dates are the same, so no messing around to get the data for the labels/tooltips …. simples really… *sigh*

Happy vizzin!

Donna