On Wednesday, we had our first day using Tableau at The Data School. Going right back to basics allowed me to see some of the things that I had missed whilst teaching myself Tableau over the past year. I learnt a few things which would have saved me so much time making vizzes. So, I had the idea of running a Tableau Time Saving Tips series where I lay out some things that can save users stacks of time (and fast!).
Have you had a measure that will only ever be one aggregation type (SUM, AVERAGE, MEDIAN, COUNT etc)? Has it been anything other than SUM? An example of this would be a Height field – it’s pretty unlikely that you would ever want to sum this measure (why would you show the summed height of all the players in a baseball team?).
But Tableau’s default measure is SUM when dropped onto a view so you may have found yourself changing this to AVERAGE for every new view built:
So Tableau Time Saving Tip #1:
Before you start building your view right click on the Field, choose Default Properties>Aggregation>Aggregations of your choice…
Then every time you drag the Field onto a view it will default to your selected Aggregation.
And, in addition, save extra time by changing the default Number Format.
Stay tuned for more tips!