When you think of data visualization, think Tableau!!! It is the most popular data visualization platform these days with the ability to create all sorts of charts and then display them in the form of a data story. This data story has the power to influence your viewers and make them change their minds. This data story can shock them, awe them, and provide them all the information they need to make the correct decision. And a dashboard is extremely important in Tableau to create a data story. But what is a dashboard?
A dashboard is an information display that is made of many individual worksheets in Tableau. These worksheets contain single data visualization charts and so a dashboard can show many charts to tell a single data story. Therefore, a dashboard is very useful as it can compare multiple types of data and show lots of variety simultaneously.
You can create a dashboard using any combination of worksheets in your Tableau along with other components such as text, images, web pages, etc. And since the worksheets are connected to the dashboard, any changes you make in a worksheet are reflected in the dashboard and vice versa. You can also appoint any worksheet as a filter and then manipulate the data in all the other worksheets in the dashboard using that filter worksheet.
Do dashboards sound interesting to you?! Then let’s see the method to create a dashboard in Tableau now.
Steps to Create a Dashboard in Tableau
Let’s see the various steps required to create a Dashboard in Tableau. This dashboard incorporates the relationships between the Sales in each state of the USA and the profits obtained from each sale.
Step 1: First create a worksheet that shows the relationship between the sales in each state. This can be done using the new worksheet icon at the bottom of Tableau. Then add SUM(Sales) to the columns shelf and State to the rows shelf while sorting the states into descending order according to sales in that state. This creates a bar chart. Then drag and drop the measure SUM(Profit) to the Color shelf which shows the states with a profit in grey and the states with a loss in red. Name this worksheet as Sales with states.
Step 2: Create a second worksheet that shows the relation between the sales and the profit obtained from each sale. Do this by creating another worksheet using the new worksheet icon. Then add Sales to the Columns shelf and Profit to the Rows shelf to create a scatter plot. Then drag and drop the measure Profit to the Color shelf which shows the sales with a profit in green and the states with a loss in red. Name this worksheet as Sales with Profits.
Step 3: Now create a dashboard by clicking on the new dashboard icon at the bottom of Tableau. Now add the two worksheets namely Sales with states and Sales with Profits to the dashboard. Then set the Sales with states worksheet as the filter by clicking on the filter icon which is the middle icon on the top border line of Sales with states worksheet.
Step 4: When you make the Sales with states as the filter worksheet, that means you can also manipulate the Sales with Profits worksheet. For example, when you click on California in Sales with states, you can see the scatter plot with the sales and profits in only California on the Sales with Profits worksheet. This is also true with all the other states like New York, Texas, etc. It is easy to observe that since California is profitable, its scatterplot shows more profits than losses. On the other hand, since Texas is in a loss, its scatterplot shows more losses than profits.
