Kyle set this challenge while I was on my holidays. And because I was away and short on time, I’m cheating a bit this week. I’m not going to provide a full solution guide, but am writing this blog to maintain consistency 🙂
The challenge was very specific to just the new dynamic spatial parameters feature, which is well documented. I used these two resources to familiarise myself with the feature and to build the challenge
This week, Kyle set the challenge to test our use of functionality released in 2024.3 – spatial parameters. I hadn’t used these before, so did have a watch of the video link posted in the challenge, which was really useful.
Accessing the data
Kyle provided two links to web pages for the data. You need to download the zipped Shapefile from each
Once downloaded, extract each zip file. There will be a SHP (shape) file in each set of unpackaged files. In Tableau desktop, you will need to create 2 connections to a spatial file, one to each shp file
Build the State Map
From the School_District_Characteristics data source, double click on Geometry to automatically create a map.
Add Lea Name to the Detail shelf and add Statename to the Filter shelf, and select Washington.
From the Map menu, select Background Maps > Dark to set the background.
Name the sheet State or similar.
Building the District Map
On a new sheet, double click on Geometry from the School_Neighbourhood_Poverty_Estimates data source to automatically create another map.
Add Name to Detail.
On the Map menu, select Background Layers, and then set the Style to dark and tick the Street,Highways etc option.
Name the sheet District or similar.
Create the spatial parameter and filter
Create a new parameter to store the geometric data
pLea
a spatial parameter, defaulted to Empty
In the School_Neighbourhood_Poverty_Estimates data source, create a calculated filed
Filter
INTERSECTS([pLea],[Geometry])
this will return true if the geometric data that represents the state(s) selected from the state map overlap with the geometric data that represents the schools.
Adding the interactivity
Create a dashboard, placing the State and the District sheets side by side in a horizontal layout container.
Create a dashboard parameter action
Set Lea
On select of the State sheet, set the pLea parameter passing in the value from the Geometry field. Set the value to Empty when the selection is cleared.
Click on the State map (which will populate the pLea parameter). Then navigate back to the District sheet and add the Filter calculation to the Filter shelf and select True, which will result in the District map being filtered
Return to the dashboard and click on the State map to see the District map change.
When no states are selected though, the District map is empty, which is the desired behaviour, but we want to fill the display with the State map (ie hide the space where the District map is).
To do this, create a calculated field (in either of the data sources)
State Selected
NOT ISNULL([pLea])
This will return True if there is something in the pLea parameter.
Back on the dashboard, select the District object on the dashboard, then from the Layout tab, check the Control visibility using value checkbox, and select the State Selected field
Remove the title from the District sheet on the dashboard, and now when all states are unselected the State sheet fills the view.
Finalise the dashboard by adding the title and any other information required. Set the background of the dashboard to dark grey and show the State parameter.
It was Kyle’s turn to set the challenge this week. Like him, I don’t have a need to use map / spatial data much, so whenever there’s a WOW challenge involving them it always makes me think a bit harder (and usually refer to some documentation).
Connecting to & modelling the data
I followed the links in the challenge requirements and downloaded the Shapefile option from each page
This downloaded zip files (one did take some time to download). I then extracted the zip files which generated several files.
In Desktop, I then chose to connect to the Spatial file option and when I navigated to the file location where I had unzipped the data, only the .shp file was available for selection.
I connected to the School District Characteristics data source first, then clicked the ‘carrot’ to access the context menu of the data source, and selected open to access the physical layer of the data canvas
I then clicked Add against the connections section to add another spatial file data source, selecting the School Neighbourhood Poverty file this time and changed the join type between the two data source fields to use the intersects option.
Building the bar chart
On a new sheet add Statename to the Filter shelf, and select Washington. Add Lea Name to the Rows. Create a new field
and add this to Columns and sort descending. Widen each row slightly, and increase the width of the Lea Name column a bit. Remove all gridlines, and remove the axis title, and hide the Lea Name column heading. Update the Tooltip as required and update the sheet title.
Building the map
Create a new sheet. Add the Geometry field from the School District Characteristicsset of data to the Detail shelf.
Go back to the bar chart sheet, and update the Satename filter so that it also applies to the sheet you’re building the map on. The map should now be filtered to Washington too. Add Lea Name to the Detail shelf and # Schools to the Tooltip and adjust accordingly.
From the Map > Background Layers menu option, uncheck the options on the Background Map Layers section, so just the Cities and Streets, Highways/Motorways.. options remain selected. Adjust the Colour of the map (via the colour shelf)
Then drag the Geometry field from the School Neighbourhood Poverty data source section onto the canvas and drop it when the Add a Marks Layer section appears
This will add a second marks card. Name this marks card Schools and the other one Districts.
On the Schools marks card, add Name to the Detail shelf and then update the tooltip as required. Remove the row & column dividers.
Adding the interactivity
Add the 2 sheets onto a dashboard side by side and show the Statename filter. Add a dashboard filter action
Filter District
On Select of the bar chart, target the Map passing all fields. Show all values when selection is cleared.
Clicking on a bar should now filter the map and ‘zoom in’ just to that district with the relevant school marks visible.
Sean Miller began the start of #WOW2022 with this challenge where the focus was on layout, interactivity and maps.
Building the map
Building the bar
Building the area chart
The Unknown indicator
Adding interactivity
Building the map
I’m starting with this as in order to build the map, I found after a bit of trial and error I needed to build a data model which related the wildlife strike data source provided by Sean with the spatial file data source provided via the link to the community post. I downloaded all the files, but found the link to the us_ak_hi_territories_shift_conformal_faux_WM.hyper.zip was the file I needed once unzipped (the middle file to download from Sarah’s post on 19 July 2020 (see below)
Once I unzipped the downloaded file I copied the us_ak_hi_territories_shift_conformal_faux_WM.hyper file to my usual data sources repository on my laptop.
I then connected to Tableau and built a data model by first connecting to the wildlife strikes csv file, then adding a relationship to us_ak_hi_territories_shift_conformal_faux_WM on State Name = Name
To make things clearer, I created a fields to store the number of incidents
This is simply referencing the ‘count’ field that is automatically generated that is related to the wildlife strike data source.
I then built the map by
add Geometry and Name to Detail
add Wildlife Incidents to Colour
This should have created the below
Remove all the background imagery via the Map > Map Layers menu – uncheck all the options from the left hand pane.
Add Name to the Filter shelf and exclude American Samoa, Guam, Northen Marianas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. This will remove the cluster of shapes to the right (I’m not sure if this is the expected method or not..).
Change the colour palette to use the red-gold colour range.
Finally amend the Tooltip accordingly and also remove the row and column dividers.
Building the bar
The bar chart displays the top 10 incidents by species type, with the rest all grouped under ‘other’, and displayed at the bottom. We need to create a set for this. Right click on Species Type and Create > Set. Create a set based on the top 10 of the count of the wildlife incidents data source.
Species Type Set
We then need a field to display the info in the bar
Species Type to Display
IF [Species Type Set] THEN [Species Type] ELSE ‘Other’ END
ie if the Species Type is in the Species Type Set then display the Species Type, otherwise display Other.
Add Species Type Set and Species Type To Display to Rows and Wildlife Incidents to Columns and sort descending (just click the sort descending button in the toolbar)
Add Species Type Set to the Colour shelf and adjust accordingly. Remove the column and row dividers and the row gridlines. Adjust the Tooltip.
The final step we need is to make the title dynamic and display a state name if filtered.
Firstly we will need a parameter to capture the selected state
pSelectedState
A string parameter defaulted to <empty string>
We will use a parameter action to populate this parameter later. We need an additional field to use in the chart title
Title: Selected State
IF [pSelectedState] <> ” THEN ‘in ‘ + [pSelectedState] ELSE ” END
Add this field onto the Detail shelf, then adjust the chart title
Building the area chart
Add Incident Year to Columns and Wildlife Incidents to Rows and change to mark type = Area. Adjust colour accordingly, and remove the column gridlines. Adjust the Tooltip.
Again the chart title needs to be dynamic based on state name and the species type selected, so we’ll need another parameter
pSelectedSpecies
string parameter defaulted to <empty string>
Add Title: Selected State to Detail and adjust the title as below
The Unknown indicator
On a new sheet double click in the space below the marks card to create a ‘type in’ pill
Enter the text ‘Unknown Location’ (including the single quotes) and the add this pill onto the Text shelf.
Change the mark type to square and adjust the Size to the maximum.
Add Wildlife Incidents to the Tooltip shelf. Then add Name to the Filter shelf and filter to only show the Null values. Adjust the colour and the Tooltip.
Adding interactivity
Create a dashboard and use layout containers to position the charts in the relevant places. The colour legend and the ‘unknown’ indicator will need to be ‘floated’ into position.
We’re going to need 4 dashboard actions; one to set the selected State, one to set the selected Species Type, one to filter the bar and area chart based on the the selected state, and one to filter the map and area chart based on the selected species.
Select Species
this is a parameter action to set the pSelectedSpecies paramater on selection of the bar chart, using the value in the Species Type To Display. The parameter should be reset to <empty string> when unclicked.
Select State
similar to above, but runs on selection of the map chart, and passes the Name field into the pSelectedState parameter.
Filter by State
This is a filter action that runs on selection of a state in the map chart. It affects all other charts on the dashboard except the unknown sheet. It should only filter on the Name field and not All fields.
Filter by Species
Another filter action, that runs on selection of the bar chart. This one does impact all the other charts on the dashboard, but again only filters based on the Species Type to Display field rather than all fields.
Hopefully, with all this, you should have a working solution. My published viz is here.
Donna + DataViz 