Best of Tableau Web: August 2021

I imagine you’re familiar with this line of questioning: ”How satisfied are you with XYZ?” and “How likely are you to recommend XYZ to others?” or “How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements?”

Here these questions are rhetorical, but you’ve likely all seen and responded to similar survey questions as you’ve traversed the web. Maybe you’ve even worked with the resulting datasets from those surveys. If so, you may have also ended up scratching your head because although it feels like survey data should be easy to use, it’s harder to work with than first meets the eye. 

With that unexpected difficulty in mind, it’s been a pleasure to see a flurry of survey-data posts this month to help you on the way. The Workout Wednesday team surveyed the user community, and created a particularly meta Workout Wednesday challenge based on the data. Rosario Gauna and Donna Coles both wrote tutorials on the heels of the challenge, detailing how they approached the main requirements: donut charts, bar charts, divergent bar charts, and heatmaps. I always enjoy posts from these two authors, and these were no different. Rosario and Donna provided detailed tutorials on the real-world data storytelling challenges we face as analysts. 

They’re not the only ones digging into the survey data. Zen Master Steve Wexler has been blogging about survey data longer than most people have been using Tableau. (The first post I could find on his blog about the topic is from 2013!). He’s still creating new content as the field evolves along with his own perspective. Steve’s latest post details new techniques for using Likert-scales to effectively visualize survey data—and why he no longer recommends the “classic” divergent stacked bar approach. 

Aside from survey data, I also wanted to highlight Adam Mico’s excellent post describing his process behind a visualization he built exploring his own mortality, from research and data collection to fine tuning the chart and dashboard. Process descriptions like this are extremely informative as we develop our own skills. I always learn something new when seeing “inside the mind” of expert practitioners like Adam.

Finally, there have been some great posts on the nitty gritty of analytics, such as how joining multiple datasets together can do so much more than simply combine different tables. Spencer Bauke explains how you can use joins to aid forecasting models framed in the common industry use case of forecasting product inventory. Ken Flerlage lists three more creative uses of joins. TL;DR: Try using joins for getting data from a prior row or partition, running totals, and cross joins. 

Calculations

• Visualise Our Survey Data

  Donna Coles, Donna + DataViz

• How to Calculate Dynamic Point-In-Time Metrics in Tableau

  James Zirbes, Tessellation

• Working with Dates in Tableau: To-Date vs. Rolling Periods

  Ben Calder, InterWorks

Tips and Tricks

• Min(0), Avg(0)? Where would I use this?

  Priyanka Dobhal

• Obscure PowerPoint Tips & Tricks for Dashboards

  Kevin Flerlage, The Flerlage Twins

• What’s the difference between Parameters and Filters ?

  Kavita Nand, The Data School Australia

• One Button Sheet Swap in Tableau

  Alexander Mou, Vizible Difference

• Tips and Tricks from my Twitter Viz

  Ant Pulley

Formatting, Design, Storytelling

• Visualize Survey Data

  Rosario Gauna, RosarioViz

• How to visualize Likert scale data in Tableau

  Steve Wexler, Data Revelations

Inspiration

• The Ultimate Motivation of a Lifeline .|: A Tableau Visualization Tutorial

  Adam Mico

• 3 Creative Uses for Relationships/Joins in Tableau

  Ken Flerlage, The Flerlage Twins 

• Iron Quest – Travel & Vacations

  Sarah Bartlett, Sarah Loves Data

• Can you find the needle in the haystack?

  Donna Coles, Donna + DataViz

• Assign Color to Non-Existing Values in Tableau

  Anthony Smoak, Smoak Signals

• A Tableau Accessibility Journey - Part IV - Keyboard Accessibility

  Chris DeMartini, DataBlick

• Get Certified!

  Annabelle Rincon, Rativiz

• Project Starter: Part 2 – 3 Tips to Learn the Data’s Story

  Kier Bituin, The Data School Australia

• Your Tableau Web-Edit Playbook

  Simon Beaumont, vizionary

• 8 Data Sets for Your Tableau / Data / Analytics Projects

  Donabel Santos, sqlbelle

Prep

• How to… create a Running Total

  Carl Allchin, Preppin’ Data

• 2021: Week 33 Excelling at adding one more row

  Carl Allchin, Preppin’ Data

Server

• Tableau Row Level Security

  Mark Wu, Scaling Tableau to Enterprise

• PROJECT (4/10) : Sub-project or nested project

  Mark Wu, Scaling Tableau to Enterprise

Set and Parameter Actions

• How to Flag Rows of Interest in Tableau

  Maddie Dierkes, Playfair Data

With that, enjoy Best of the Tableau Web with tips, tricks, inspiration and more produced by the Tableau community. For updates throughout the month, follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and check out the list of blogs I follow for Best of the Tableau Web. If you don’t see yours on the list, I invite you to add it here.