Best of the Tableau Web: April 2021

A highlight of tips, tricks and inspiration produced by the Tableau community.

I started my career as a software engineer, creating applications for schools. If anyone used RM Number Magic (pictured below) as a kid, I was on that team. Let me know on Twitter if you used it! I was very proud of the calculation engine that I built, and on reflection, perhaps less proud of how easy we made it to create 3D charts. Writing efficient programming code was, and is, a fun, rewarding puzzle.

Progressing in my career, I found that I loved drag and drop tools more than programming. That’s why, when I first used Tableau in 2007, it was an epiphany. At that time, I was an Excel guru, able to make anything data-related happen with a VBA macro, and had plenty of time. With Tableau? I could do the same, and more, without needing to code anything. The flow, the flexibility, and the democratization of data changed my career.

You don’t need to be a programmer to effectively use Tableau, but having some fundamental knowledge of programming principles will help create more flexible, maintainable workbooks. I saw lots of posts this month that took me back to my coding days.

The power of a simple IF statement by Saba Gebreyohannes

You won’t get far in programming without knowing about conditional statements, and the first to learn is an IF statement. Saba Gebreyohannes’ post, The power of a simple IF statement, is a smart starting point for some of the power this simple command can give you in Tableau, including tips and tricks you might not have considered before. (The Flerlage Twins also did a great post on the IF statement a few months ago, if you want more!)

Alexander Mou wrote a post on “global variables,” using Level of Detail calculations to demonstrate the concept. I like this way of framing the concept in a Tableau manner.

Tableau Naming Conventions: Our Best Advice for Calcs, Sheets & More by Kendra Allenspach

Any programmer will know that building maintainable code is vital: it’s awful coming back to a piece of code after months away, and then realising you have no idea what any of it does. All you see is a jumble of meaningless variable names. Naming conventions are vital in software engineering; be mindful of this as your Tableau workbooks grow. Interworks Kendra Allenspach explains the challenge, and some solutions in her Tableau Naming Conventions: Our Best Advice for Calcs, Sheets & More post on the Interworks blog.

Have the use of programming techniques helped grow your Tableau skills? Let us know!

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 Mark Bradbourne and I follow for Best of the Tableau Web. If you don’t see yours on the list, we invite you to add it here.