Ten Tips & Techniques (Round 10 - Tips from TC26)
Alright, I am back with 10 more Tableau Tips and Techniques. Be sure to check out the entire series on our website. Note that this blog post includes numerous gifs, please use your browser zoom to get a closer look at them.
We shared all of these tips during our TC26 presentation and have not previously shared them on our website. If you want to check out that presentation, you can watch it on Salesforce +.
1. No Calc Needed for NULL Replacement (from TC26)
Assume you have this situation where you have some value by month and you are showing the percent change in that value from the previous month in parentheses.
You can see that the first month (May 2025) has no previous month to compare to, so there is no value shown in the parentheses. Similarly, in February there is no value because the previous month's value is 0 and thou shalt not divide by zero (well, it just yields a null). In both cases, it's a really weird experience for an end user to see just ().
We could fix this by creating a calculation that essentially says to replace the nulls with "NA". The calculation might look something like this:
Then you take this calculation and place it next to the percent change calculation (within the parentheses). Honestly, I hate this option because we have to create these types of calculations in every situation where this may occur. It's kind of a pain.
But we can solve this in a much easier and more efficient way. Instead of the calculation, just right-click on the percent difference table calculation and click on Format:
A side panel will appear. At the bottom, you'll see "Special Values (eg. NULL)". In that first box labled "Text:", simply add "NA". Watch the gif below to see how it impacts the visuals. NA will be displayed where there are NULL values - and no calcs needed.
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 43:14 into the video.
The next 4 tips were bonus tips we shared during our interview with Tableau at TC26. All of these tips can be accessed here on Salesforce +. In each tip below, I'll reference the exact time at which this tip starts.
2. Expose Captions to End Users as a BAN
I often use captions to leave myself notes, but have never exposed a caption to end-users. This tip will show you how to use a caption as a BAN and it has a number of benefits over the standard ways we might create a BAN. We want to thank Jeff Herrle for showing us this.
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 5:50 into the video.
3. Use Captions to Show Filters in Use
Here is another caption tip where you can use captions to display values shown in filters. Thanks to Christy Kranich and Liz Whelan-Jackson.
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 7:35 into the video.
4. Set Actions: Toggle Between Add & Remove
I've always wanted the ability with Set Actions to click once to add to the set and click a second time to remove from the set. It doesn't really work this way, so I typically set up to menu set actions, one to add and one to remove. But...you can, in fact, do this without menu actions. One of our Advanced Bootcamp students showed us how - thanks, Arik Ohnstad!
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 9:15 into the video.
5. Replace a Data Source Without Breaking Everything
Ken saw this tip from Maxime Baux at DataFam Europe and it's just incredible. This allows you to replace a data source without breaking everything...which is so common.
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 12:00 into the video.
6. Find in Data Pane
Imagine you have a field on your view and you need to edit it. You could go search for that field by typing in the search window, you could double-click the pill and copy the field name then paste in the search window (but you'll get the brackets with it and you'll have to remove it) or you can just right-click on the pill and choose "Find in Data Pane". Tableau will select it in the pane on the left.
I just discovered this a few months back and I bet I've used it tens of thousands of times since (not exaggerating). Don't overlook this one - this is a HUGE TIME SAVER and it is my new favorite technique!
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 41:56 into the video.
7. Apply Filters to All Sheets on the Dashboard
When I showed this at TC26, I had a ton of people tell me they knew about it already. I was surprised because I had never seen it until a couple months back when Dinushki De Livera showed me.
So we have a dashboard.
And on the sheet to the bottom/right, we have a filter applied to that sheet only - Match #:
We need to apply this filter to all the sheets on my dashboard, so while on this sheet, we can right-click, choose Apply to Worksheets then choose Selected Worksheets. When we do that, we have lots of sheets and I honestly don't know which ones are on my dashboard.
One trick is to go color-code all my sheets on my dashboard then follow the color-coding when applying filters. But there is a way easier method!
Just go back to the dashboard, select the sheet that has the Match # filter applied, hit the arrow and choose Filters and Match # to show that filter on the dashboard. In the image below, I show the filter floating and in yellow so you can see it more easily.
Now click on the filter, click the arrow, choose Apply to Worksheets, and click on Selected Worksheets. The same "apply to worksheets" window will appear, but there is one major difference. This one has a "Select all on dashboard" button. If you click it, it will select all the sheets on the dashboard automatically! Then hit OK and you're done!
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 55:08 into the video.
8. Avoid the Month Drop-Off with a Dotted Line
At TC26, I talked about a scenario where you have a line chart that is moving along just fine, then drops to oblivion. The reason for it is because the last mark is showing a partial month. This is a poor experience of end users and can cause stakeholders to "freak out", because sales (or whatever metric) just fell off a cliff - that exact thing has happened to me.
So I discussed a method of separating that partial month from the rest of the line chart. The result looks like the following.
I wrote about this technique a long time ago. You can read how to do it in this blog post.
However, you can take this one step further using a relatively new feature, dotted lines. The results look like this:
I did not show how to do this at TC, so I'll do that here. We will start with the following:
We will hold CTRL to make a duplicate of the Sales pill to be used as a dual axis. For that new pill, remove all the "Break for Max Month" stuff from detail (if you read the aforementioned blog post, this is the stuff that will break the view into a line and a single dot). And remove anything from the Label card.
Next, change the line to red and dotted, then make it a bit smaller. It should look like this:
The last step is to make it a dual axis, synchronize axes, then flip the order of the two pills to make sure the dotted line is behind the black line. The result should look something like this:
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 26:56 into the video.
9. Line Chart Zoom
This technique is very similar to this technique. We start with a line chart that looks something like the following. It shows the values by month for two years (most current in black and the prior in gray).
The values are all very high and very similar, so much that it is difficult to see the differences in the values for each line. Even though the differences are small, they may be very important to understand. So what can we do? Well, on the Y axis, we could uncheck the "Include zero" box to show the chart as follows:
This definitely shows the differences, but has its own problems. This chart would most certainly be confusing if you just went to a dashboard and saw it. It looks like half the values are at zero...when in fact, they are still higher than 95%.
A solution that I love is to show the original chart as a default, but allow the end-user to "zoom into" the chart. To do that, start by creating a parameter with two values, either No Zoom (the default view with 0 included on the Y axis) or Zoom (the second view where 0 is not included). I like to be a bit more descriptive and use values of "No Zoom (Y Axis Starts at 0)" and "Zoom (Y Axis Does Not Starts at 0)".
From here, we will create a simple calculation that will be used as a reference line in our chart:
Zoom Calculation Reference Line
IF [Line Chart Zoom Options] = 'No Zoom' THEN 0
ELSE NULL
END
Add this new field to the Detail card. Then add a reference line of that field on the Y axis.
The final step is to edit the Y axis and uncheck "Include zero". Now as you change the parameter, that reference line will either be 0 (when you choose No Zoom) or NULL (when you choose Zoom). It should look like this, giving your end-user the ability to zoom in and out. (Note: I always default to No Zoom - including 0 on the Y axis).
Check out this tip on Salesforce + 25:05 into the video.
10. Range Parameter with Lots of Values
The use case is to create a parameter with values starting at 10 running to 1000 with steps of 10. You don't want a range parameter with a slider, you want a drop-down with 100 different values. So how would you do this? Type in every single value...all 100 of them? I ain't doin that! There is a much easier way.
I'm not going to tell you how to do this, because I learned this from the incredible Jeff Shaffer. Check it out here on Twitter or check out this tip on Salesforce + 50:43 into the video.
Okay, that's it for this round of tips! Thanks for reading.
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