The Blog

Ideas, inspiration, creativity & understanding

At The Data School we believe that sharing knowledge and expertise is key to driving innovation and growth in the data community. Posts cover all topics across the Tableau, Alteryx and PowerBI communities.

We make blogging a cornerstone of each consultant's time at The Data School with the aim to solidify their own learning while giving back to the community. Our goal is to empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to succeed in the ever-evolving world of data analysis. So, explore our blog today and join the conversation!

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Tue 05 Nov 2024 | Salome Grasland
Creating Buttons in Tableau to Control Dynamic Zone Visibility
Enhance your Tableau dashboards with interactive buttons to toggle between views using Dynamic Zone Visibility and custom shapes. Dynamic Zone Visibility introduced in Tableau 2022.3, allows you to show or hide dashboard elements based on user interactions
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Fri 18 Oct 2024 | Salome Grasland
Handling Quarter-Over-Quarter Calculations in Tableau
Check out the dashboard here. The Problem: Selecting Q1 and Getting an Undefined Difference Quarter-over-quarter comparisons are crucial for understanding business trends, but they can sometimes present challenges, especially when dealing with the first quarter (Q1) of a timeline
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Thu 26 Sep 2024 | Brenda Chavez
Tableau Thursday Tutorial: Dynamic Top N Filter
This tutorial uses Tableau's sample dataset, Superstore. For instructions on how to access this dataset, please see this guide. In Tableau, creating a dynamic "Top N" filter allows users to control how many top items (e.g., customers, products, categories) they want to display on a dashboard
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Tue 11 Jun 2024 | Mel Niere
Data School Blog Roundup - May 2024
Compiled by Rusha Limba, Intern Tableau 1. Butterfly Charts in Tableau by Dominik Wieser. 2. Can I Change Colors by Selection in Tableau? by Sayd Abdul Tawab Hussainy. 3. Two types of Dashboards by Aileen Pfleiderer. 4
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Mon 06 May 2024 | Salome Grasland
Creating a Global Reset Button in Tableau
Tableau simplifies the implementation of filters and parameters, making it easy to create dynamic dashboards. However, resetting these views to their original state can be surprisingly complex. While tableau does have a built in reset on filters, they must be individually clicked filter by filter
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Thu 02 May 2024 | Calvin Gao
How to Highlight a Bar when Selecting
Sometimes there is a desire to select a bar and highlight the bar selected. In this case, every time a sub category is selected, the corresponding bar turns to a color that distinguishes it from the other bars. To make this, we will use parameter actions
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
How to make Drill Down Bar Charts in Tableau (One Level)
To make a one level drill down bar chart in tableau, we can use parameters or actions. Parameters:  Let’s say, the goal is to make a drill down bar chart using superstore from category to subcategory. Every time a category is clicked, the table opens up the corresponding sub category
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Tue 02 Apr 2024 | Cecily Santiago
How do I dynamically switch elements on a Tableau dashboard? Dynamic Zone Visibility (DZV) How-To
Have you ever wanted to give your dashboard the ability to switch between several charts or change out text boxes? If so, you should learn about Dynamic Zone Visibility (commonly referred to as DZV)
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Calculations and Parameters
As you dive into Tableau and begin discovering the options to create more metrics, you will come across options such as calculations, parameters and even sets. These options build the foundations for many of the interactivity that comes with Parameter Actions and Set Actions
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Mon 08 Jan 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Tableau Tutorial - Parameter Actions
Interactivity is part of what makes Tableau so great. The end user can select values for things like parameters, filters, and sets. If you've already learned about these, there are still things you can learn to make your dashboard even more interactive
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Wed 03 Jan 2024 | Cecily Santiago
Tableau Hack: Remove Unwanted Highlighting
In Tableau, marks get highlighted when you click them, causing all other marks to fade into the background
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Salome Grasland
Using Parameters to Sort
Sometimes your data visualization will demand sorting by a custom value. Using the Superstore Data in Tableau we will review how you can create a custom sort on your chart. 1. Create a Bar Chart Create a bar chart showing Sum of Sales, Quantity, and Profits for each of the Sub-Categories
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Cecily Santiago
Quick Concept: Parameters in Tableau
Parameters in Tableau allow the end user to dynamically control a viz or dashboard. Here's a quick overview of how to set them up and some use cases: 1. Create a parameter. This is where you control the options your end user will have. 2. Create a calculated field using the parameter
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Samantha Fitzsimmons
How to Build a Multi-Level Selection into a Drilldown Bar Chart with Set Action Highlight (Part I)
For an executive overview dashboard in Tableau with Superstore data, I wanted to build a drilldown bar chart of key metrics by a chosen dimension. After watching Andy Kriebel's video, I built a drilldown bar chart of categories to sub-categories
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Samantha Fitzsimmons
How to Build Parameter Actions Into BANs
Companies use BANs to communicate key metrics (shown below in yellow). Though they are often static elements in a dashboard, they can be used as interactive elements to filter other parts of a dashboard
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Mon 27 Nov 2023 | Sid Saythongphet
Zoning In: Tableau's Dynamic Zone Visibility
Tableau's Dynamic Zone Visibility (DZV) feature is a powerful tool that enables users to create interactive dashboards, enhancing data exploration and comprehension
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Wed 29 Nov 2023 | Randee Johnson
Too Many Charts on Your Dashboard?
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Tue 31 Oct 2023 | Lisa Hitch
Accelerating your Dashboard: 10 Tips to Reduce Lag Time
Imagine this scenario: You built an amazing dashboard with lots of interactivity, filters, and parameters. It looks stunning and you present it to the CEO of the company you are consulting for. Everyone is excited to see what your dashboard can do
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Tue 07 Nov 2023 | Annie Casey
Sort Stacked Bar Chart with Parameter
Stacked bar charts can be very useful and even more useful when they are built to be dynamic. Below you will find the steps and Youtube tutorials used to change the sort of a stacked bar chart based on the parameter selection
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Mon 16 Oct 2023 | Stanley Chen
DSNY6 Week 2 in Review: Pre-attentive Attributes and Parameters
The first of 15 posts in a series where I review each week of my data school training journey.
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Tue 17 Oct 2023 | Samantha Fitzsimmons
Common Interface Tools for Apps in Alteryx
What is an Analytic App? An analytical application is a workflow with interactive elements (e.g., parameters) that requires user input. There are 3 things that differentiate an app from a traditional workflow: * It has a file extension of
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Sat 30 Sep 2023 | Vivian Ng
Put on the Dot
To wrap up the first section (other than making the buttons) of my HIPAA breaches dashboard remake, we’re going to talk about how you can select a point on a line with a parameter action, like so: This line chart actually has a lone point dual axised with it
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Fri 29 Sep 2023 | Sakif Chowdhury
Creating an On/Off switch in Tableau
During the fourth day of dashboard week, I created a dashboard that showed what songs a person might like based on their preferences. The user had the ability to choose which preferences they wanted to include in the calculation for the song recommendations
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Wed 27 Sep 2023 | Kinley Ly
Creating a Dynamic TOP N using a Dimension Parameter
Creating a Dynamic TOP N using a Dimension Parameter is a relatively simple process since the Field Parameter feature we are using is quite similar to how parameters work in Tableau. However, the calculations on the other hand, is a whole different ballpark
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Tue 26 Sep 2023 | Vivian Ng
This IS a Drill(-down), Part 2 – Parameter Action
Continuing where we left off from having created a parameter that allowed us to drill down to breach type, let’s go into the parameter action today! #4: Selecting a Breach Type 1
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Tue 26 Sep 2023 | Sakif Chowdhury
Creating a Button to Reset Parameters in Tableau
While building interactive dashboards, we sometimes want to be able to use several filters and then allow the user to reset the dashboard to its original quickly. To do this we can use a 'button' that resets all of the parameters we use for filters
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Tue 26 Sep 2023 | Vivian Ng
This IS a Drill(-down), Part 1 – Parameter
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Mon 25 Sep 2023 | Sakif Chowdhury
Switching Measures in Tableau
Being able to create customizable charts can always be useful. Especially when trying to show many different pieces of information at once. In this blog I will quickly go over how I created the measure switches for the dashboard I created in day one of dashboard week
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Thu 21 Sep 2023 | Jun Hou Kok
How to drilldown bar charts in Tableau using Parameter Actions
Similarly to my previous post on drilldowns, this blog is also going to be a guide for showing you how you can dynamically drilldown bar charts in Tableau. The difference is, this time, instead of using Sets, we'll be looking at how we can use Parameters to execute the same action
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Sun 10 Sep 2023 | Charles Yi
Basics of Parameter
After covering a few things in Alteryx, we are back to Tableau! This post will be all about parameters
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