Do you wish you could have the option to send out emails from your tableau dashboard? For example if you were working in head office for your company, monitoring sales from a group of different stores and you wanted to be able to quickly and easily send an email to a store with their sales for that month? Instead of having to individually type out a new email for each store, you can use a URL action to help draft an email which is ready to send in a couple of clicks. Below is a step by step guide on how to do this:
Step 1 -
Build a chart containing the information you would like to send out. For this example I'm using sample superstore. I've created a calculated field to create an email address for each store by concatenating '@company.com' onto the end of each city name - but in a real world application you should have the true email addresses available. I've built a simple chart of sales per store just for this demonstration and I've dragged the 'company email' pill onto the detail marks card.
Step 2 -
Create your URL action. In this case as I'm only using one sheet I will be using a worksheet action, however if you are doing this from a dashboard rather than a single worksheet then click the 'Dashboard' dropdown from the menu bar and select 'Actions'. In this case I'm doing the same but selecting 'Worksheet' and then 'Actions'. Once you have selected this, another dialogue box will pop up and give you the option to 'Add Action' - select this option.
Once you have clicked 'Add Action', then select 'Go to URL' as the option.
Step 3 -
Configuring the email action. First of all name the action something clear. In this example I've just called mine 'Send Email'. This will be what shows when it comes up with the option to click on the action later - so it's good to name it something descriptive.
After this you can select your 'source sheets' (or which sheets you would like the action to work from). In this case as I am doing this from the 'Sales' worksheet this is the only option, but if you have a dashboard you would be able to select which sheets from within that dashboard you want to work with this action. I also left the URL Target as 'New Tab if No Web Page Object Exists' which will open a pop up when you click the email action. If you wish you can include a web page object within your dashboard however for the email it tends to work better in a separate browser in which you can be signed into your email address already. I have also selected to run action on 'Menu' so that the user will have to click 'Send email' rather than just having it pop up when hovering over or clicking on a bar.
Step 4 -
Drafting your standard email. Within the URL field is where you can do this.
Start with mailto:<Company Email> (In your case <Company Email> can be replaced with the column which contains the email addresses you are sending to). Whilst you are typing out your message you can use the 'Insert' tab to include variables from your sheet. If there is a variable you would like to include which is not showing up here, you will need to add it to the 'detail' on your marks card and it should then appear in this menu.
Once you have entered the email address, in order to write the subject and body of the email, type ?subject=(write the subject here) and then type &body=(write the body here). If you want to include line breaks within the body then type '%0A' to start a new line between your text. Here I have formatted a simple message for you to be able to see how this works:
The text I entered into the URL box: mailto:?subject=Sales in &body=Dear ,%0aYour total sales were <SUM(Sales)>.
Now when I click on a bar in this chart, it will give me the option to send an email to that city's store - in this example I have clicked on Jacksonville:
Once I click the 'Send Email' Hyperlink, the following email box pops up (note, I have configured so that on my computer the default browser for mailto: links is outlook (new), where I am already signed in to my email account). You can then just click send as the email is already written and pre-populated with the city specific names and figures.
I hope this step by step guide can provide a handy solution for you to be able to send out emails from your dashboard easily - and save time in the process!