Best of the Tableau Web: New variations for lines, slopes, and parameter actions

Welcome to the Best of the Tableau Web! To keep you going for another month, here are more tips, tricks, and inspiration.

Iteration of ideas is crucial to any field, and visual analytics is another. One post I want to highlight this month is “Evolution and Variation with ‘line and slope’ charts in Tableau” by Dorian Banutoiu. It epitomizes everything I look for when reading our community content. First of all, Dorian is trying out new ideas, such as combining slopes and lines. Second, there is humility in the acceptance that no idea is perfect. Third, he shows his iterative process. And finally, there’s some excellent use of Tableau features at play in this post. His initial idea about combining slopes and lines seems to be an easy solution to show detail and summaries in one view. Innovative stuff, but not without issues. The post explains how he, and others, have thought through the issue, experimented with various iterations, and then used parameter actions to create an excellent new way of interacting with timelines. The end result is a smart visual technique, and a lesson to us all that to increase our skill, we need to bounce ideas around with others.

Another great post this month is Lorna Eden’s explanation of how to use Measure Names in parameter actions. The post describes a solution to the Live Workout Wednesday event at Tableau Conference Europe. First of all, the tip came from Workout Wednesday, a weekly challenge of brain teasers that is a great way to boost your Tableau technical skills. Second, it uses parameter actions to achieve slick interactive experiences. And finally, Lorna’s explanations are clear and easy to follow—providing a great example for Tableau users to learn parameter actions.

Thank you, everyone, for all your Tableau blogs: it’s always a pleasure to read them. I learn so much each month.

Hafeez Sanusi Tableau Quick Tip – Displaying specific mark labels on a map
Jeffrey Shaffer Mapping Paths in Tableau 2019.2
Robert Headington Tiny tableau tip: how to display negative numbers as positives
Sara Hamdoun Quick Tableau Tip – How do you add ‘+/-‘ OR ‘▲/▼’ to labels?
Eric Parker Creating a Custom Shape Palette for Tableau
Alexander Mou Annotating Dual Axis with Alternative Color Legend #TweakThursday 41
Dustin Wyers Advance with Assist: Removing Background Landmass on a Tableau Map
Michael Bracchi Quick Tip When Using the SPLIT() Function in Tableau

Josh So you want to get into DataViz consulting?
Lilach Manheim, Mike Cisneros Effective data visualizations share this magical hidden structure
Dorian Banutoiu Evolution and Variation with “line & slope” charts in Tableau
Ivett Kovács Retro Games
Alexander Waleczek When can a line be a bar?
Neil Richards When are two maps better than one?
Bridget Cogley A Linguistics-Centric Take on Data Literacy

Tom Prowse 4 Steps to Creating a Parameter
Dustin Wyers Advance with Assist: Multi-Number Formats for Single Calculations
Bona Wang How to round time in Tableau
Diego Parker How to build a linear trendline for calculations
Lindsay Betzendahl Fun with Date Calculations: Dynamic YTD and Prior Year Comparisons
Liz Jensen Tableau Class Notes: Filtering with a Date Slider
Rajeev Pandey How to Build a Unit Chart in Tableau

Toan Hoang Drawing Pareto Charts in Tableau
Anya A'Hearn Feeding the screen-time beast with shifting mobile metrics
Ken Flerlage 8 Alternatives to Default Tableau Legends
Adam McCann Spark Bar Chart Part II
Rosario Gauna Profitabilty & Sales Dot Plot
Alexander Mou Annotating Dual Axis with Alternative Color Legend #TweakThursday 41

Filippos Lymperopoulos Parameter Actions: Layered Analysis
Rosario Gauna Drill Down of Date with Parameter Actions
Lorna Eden #TableauTipTuesday Week 25 – Using Measure Names in Parameter Actions
Grant Eisenmenger Driving Set Actions with a Fake Filter in Tableau
Gwilym Lockwood How to highlight viz-in-tooltips in Tableau 2019.2

Carl Allchin How to... Aggregate in Prep Builder
Alexander Waleczek How to create Table Calculations in Tableau Prep
Alexander Mou A Divide-n-Conquer Approach to Word Counting via Tableau Prep

Toan Hoang Tableau and Python / An Introduction
Ashleigh Trinh Using R in Tableau
David Sanchez Martin How To – Tableau Javascript API for Dummies. Vol 3: Triggering automatic alerts.