Today we learnt a lot of charts and some of their best practices. Some of my colleagues will cover the tools we used, and skills gained, but I think one of the most important pieces of information was learning how to document in Tableau.
If, like me, you think in words more than logical sequences it helps having every field and set named in a sensible manner as well as utilizing those little organization tricks to make life easier.
A brief run through of a few tips;
1. Creating Folders
2. Creating Hierarchies
3. Marking comments on fields that appear when hovering
4. Commenting within a calculated field
Let’s tackle creating folders.
1. Once you have Tableau opened start by grouping by folders
2. Highlight some fields you would like to group together, right click, hover over folders and create a new one
3. Continue following these steps to aggregate fields you feel are useful or often used together
Creating Hierarchies
1. This can be done quite easily, just drag a field on top of another (in this case city onto country)
2. You can drag the fields within the hierarchy to change levels of aggregation, make note of that black line
3. You will also note the + and – symbols next to these fields, when you bring them onto your canvas, which can let you drill down or up the hierarchy
Making comments when hover on a field
1. Right click the relevant field, hover over default properties and click comment
2. Write a comment which will help you understand the field, or in this calculated field when you come back to it
3. You can now hover over the field to find out more info
Commenting in a calculated field
To begin a comment, use two forward slashes i.e. //
This will not be read as a calculation and lasts only for the line. Once you click enter you can start writing the calculation. The screenshot will also breakdown what some of the colours mean
I hope these tips will help you, and hopefully your friends when they try to understand your workbook.