Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software

CHAPTER 7

Tips, Tricks, and Timesavers

Mastering the basics of building visualizations and dashboards isn't difficult or time-consuming. Most people achieve very good results without having to spend a lot of time learning the nuances of data visualization or mastering more advanced techniques.

In this chapter you will learn timesaving tips for building new views, altering the default formats of fields and axis headers, creating new fields, and customizing the content and appearance of Tooltips. A trick for using legends to change the order data is presented in views will also be explained. After learning how to customize shapes, colors, and fonts—useful advanced chart types will be presented that demonstrate how to create more advanced chart types that aren't directly supported using the Show Me menu. The chapter will close by introducing some simple methods for creating subtle behavior in dashboards that will set the table for a more extensive treatment of dashboard-building in Chapter 8.

SAVING TIME AND IMPROVING FORMATTING

There are normally several ways to accomplish desired results in Tableau. Becoming faster at achieving the outcome takes a little practice. Knowing shortcuts that save seconds when you are creating an individual view can add up to hundreds of hours per year. If your team has many people using Tableau, the time-savings can be significant.

DOUBLE-CLICK FIELDS TO BUILD FASTER

Double-click any field to quickly create a view or add it to an existing view. If you ...