Level of Detail calculations (a.k.a LODs) are powerful functions in Tableau that most advanced users love to use but are very difficult to master. There are three types of LOD's in Tableau: Fixed, Include and Exclude. This blog post will look at the Fixed LOD and look at its syntax and use cases.
What is an LOD?
An LOD calculation allows you to compute values at the data source level and the visualization level and essentially, give you control on the level of granularity. Granularity refers to how far you want look in the dataset (e.g. the less granular is looking at a country like USA and more is looking at a state level).
What is a Fixed LOD?
Fixed LOD's are an independent calculation that fixes the level of detail for a calculation to be computed at. Why this is so useful is because it is a calculation that can give you a level of detail that isn't on the view. It's syntax is shown below:
There are many use cases for LODs but one that is simple and very often a use case is in percent of total calculations. If you wanted to breakdown the sales for each state within a region but also have the total to work out the percent of total sales of the region acquired by each state, an LOD is very easy to use. The calculation for the total is the same as shown in the example above or
(FIXED [Region]: SUM([Sales])This will allow you to calculate the sum of sales divided by the total to find the total percent of total. The view below showcases how that is possible:
If you want to check out the other parts of the series, click on the links below: