Intro to Tips and Tricks in Tableau

I don’t know how to do a lot of things in Tableau, yet! I have already had several head scratching moments trying to make my Viz’s more appealing. I’ll sheepishly ask my colleagues for help and they will very patiently show me exactly how to do it. When I discover a neat trick or function I’ll share it on this blog! Sound good?

Sorting Bar Charts

Helping Credits: Ravi Mistry- @Scribblr_42

I started with this chart comparing the number of assists to player number. By default Tableau sorted the chart by player number, as seen in Figure 1. I wanted to use this chart to identify the most threatening players on a team and so sorted by descending number of goals.

Figure 1. Default sorting of chart by Tableau.

As you can see in Figure 2 the chart becomes much clearer when sorted in descending number of assists.

Figure 2. Chart sorted by descending number of assists

So How Do you do this?

By clicking on the right arrow next to player in the columns shelf, Figure 3, you open up a drop down list. Select Sort.

Figure 3- Opening the sort selection menu

This will open up the following screen, Figure 4, showing the default sorting preferences of Tableau.

Figure 4. The default sort selection menu.

Next select descending and sort by field choosing assist, as shown in Figure 5. Click OK and you will have sorted by descending number of assists, glorious!

Figure 5. Selection require to sort by descending number of assist.

I hope this helps!

Twitter:@CoalWilson