Category: Tableau

  • Letting Users Choose Their Visual

    A powerful way of creating flexible, user-friendly dashboards is by letting your users decide how they want to view the data. Instead of forcing them to view at a certain chart type, you can give them the option to chose between different visualizations- bar charts, line charts, etc, or variations on a chart, based on their need, or preference.

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  • The Tableau VizQL Data Service: What It Is, What It Can Do, and When to Use It

    When people think of Tableau, they usually picture dashboards, visualizations, and drag-and-drop analytics. In this traditional setup, users explore data by interacting with dashboards: charts, filters, tooltips, etc. But what if you don’t need the visuals at all—just the data behind them, with all the same calculations, filters, and logic already applied?

    VDS: Data instead of Dashboard

    That’s where the VizQL Data Service (VDS) comes in.
    Rather than returning charts and visuals, it taps into Tableau’s VizQL engine to give you just the data behind any published view.. Instead of clicking through a dashboard, you can get the same data directly—like a spreadsheet or text file—by sending a simple request from another app or script.

    In this post, we’ll explore what the VizQL Data Service is, what you can do with it, and how it fits into the broader Tableau ecosystem. A hands-on example is coming soon in a follow-up article!

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  • Abbreviate long text in Tableau

    When working with text data in Tableau, you’ll often need to clean or reshape strings to better fit your analysis or visual presentation.

    Abbreviating text is a common challenge when designing dashboards, reports, or any interface where space is limited. Whether you’re working with long product names, category labels, or freeform text fields, overly long strings can clutter layout and make visualizations harder to read.

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  • Two Pie Chart Alternatives

    Pie charts — they seem to be everywhere. They show up in presentations, reports, and in every stockphoto about business meetings.

    They’re colorful, round, and look super friendly… but despite being one of the most popular chart types, they’re also one of the most frustrating to actually read.

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  • The Case for Clearer Parameter Labels in Tableau

    Parameters are a powerful feature in Tableau — they enable dynamic controls, what-if scenarios, and interactive dashboards. But when it comes to usability, they often fall short, especially in how values are displayed to end users.

    By default, parameter values are raw numbers, which can be hard to interpret by users. Whether you’re showing date ranges, filter types, or word lengths, poorly labeled parameters can make a dashboard feel clunky and inaccessible. In this post, I’ll show you a simple way to make a slider-parameter clearer, more intuitive, and more user-friendly.

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  • Show/Hide – but better

    The default Show/Hide button in Tableau offers a quick way to toggle dashboard elements, but it comes with limitations—especially when dealing with larger components like full-screen visualizations or help panels that can obscure the toggle itself.

    In this guide, I show a smarter approach using Dynamic Zone Visibility and Parameter Actions. By setting up separate “show” and “hide” buttons, you gain full control over what appears and when, all without compromising the user experience. This reasults in a cleaner layout and/or more intuitive interactions, this method provides a flexible, user-friendly alternative to Tableau’s built-in toggle.

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  • Responsive Labels – Smarter, Cleaner Dashboards

    Data Visualization is about visualizing data the right way.

    Interactive business dashboards tend to have a special challenge: the must display data with accurate labels, regardless of how the data changes from day to day. Many infographics visualizations are using static data – and therefor the labels can be put on the most convenient location. But what happens when the data changes – either due to new data, or filtering? Labels will overlap, disappear, and/or get mixed up.

    The funnel chart is one type of visualization that’s especially prone to this, even with just a few data marks. While working on one, I came up with a solution to keep all the labels nice and clear, no matter what the data throws at it. Bonus: it’s flexible enough for easy customization!

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  • Area Funnel chart in Tableau: Visualizing the Drop-Off

    In the world of digital analytics and customer journeys, not every user makes it to the finish line. Some browse a product, others add it to their cart, but only a fraction complete a purchase. Understanding where users drop off—and how many—can offer crucial insights for optimizing your process. That’s where funnel visualizations come in.

    Funnel charts are a powerful way to illustrate step-by-step attrition across a defined process. Whether you’re tracking sales, onboarding, or lead conversions, a funnel view can make complex user behavior immediately digestible. Each stage visually narrows to reflect fewer participants, highlighting friction points and conversion opportunities.

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  • Change marks on Hover

    Sometime you want to make a dramatic statement – and sometimes you just need a little nudge to help users understand a dashboard.

    Tableau makes it really easy to create a minimalist dashboard – and tooltips are a great way to unlock the data behind a mark. Emphasizing the datapoint of the tooltip will make the visualization just a little better. And this is even more important on charts with multiple lines.

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  • Animated icons in Tableau

    An old but very efficient way to point the attention to a row in a table is to add a small text-based icon in front of it. A subtle dot in front of a bar can help you tell the story of data.
    But you might want to use less-subtle ways to highlight data?

    Animation is such a way – and can even add some more fun to a dashboard. In Tableau, this is really easy to accomplish using Image Roles.

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