From the course: Tableau 10 for Data Scientists

Filter actions - Tableau Tutorial

From the course: Tableau 10 for Data Scientists

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Filter actions

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- [Instructor] A dashboard can contain one or more sheets. By default, they don't interact with each other. For example, in this dashboard we have three sheets: a map, a bar chart, and a line. They're all using the same data source but there's no interaction between each of them. If I select one element on one sheet, it doesn't do anything with the others. What we would like is to be able to create interaction between the sheets to make a dynamic dashboard. This is done using actions. In this example, we're gonna cook filter actions. To add a filter action, there's two ways. The first is to do it from within the dashboard itself. We can highlight a sheet and click Use as Filter. Now, if we select a state, it filters the other sheets within the dashboard to only show the data for the selected item. We can select multiple states and the two sheets update accordingly. We can do the same with the other sheets and turn these into action filters as well. So now we can select the central states or the central states for the consumer or all of the consumer segments across all states. An alternate way is to create the action manually. This allows a great level of control when we don't necessarily want to filter everything. To do that, we go to Dashboard and Actions. Next we click on Add Action and Filter. Here we have some options. So we have to tell Tableau which is the source for our filter, which action to do, and which target sheet to apply it to. Now in our example we want to click on one of the states in the map and for it to affect just the line chart. So to do that we untick bar and line and in our target, just leave the line. We have to decide what kind of action to use. Hover, Select, or Menu. Hover can make an attractive visualization which changes when we hover over an item. However in practice, this doesn't work too well, particularly if your dashboard is going to be viewed on a mobile device. Best practice would be to always use the Select option. Now when we click OK and click on one of our states, it then filters to show the individual state at the bottom. Note that the bar chart now doesn't change. We can keep adding more actions by simply clicking and adding a further one. So let's try a Hover on the bar which is then gonna affect just the map. (mouse clicks) Now, when we hover over an item, the map is updated and displayed. However, if we were to find something interesting in one of our states, for example, in this one, we see that New York is particularly high and we'd like to then select that. As soon as we move away from the bar, the map changes. This is one of the downsides of using Hover. Let's change that filter to be a Select and see how it works. We can edit, change it to be a Select. (mouse clicks) Now when we click on the region and move away, the map stays still. We can then select the state and investigate further.

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