Best of the Tableau Web: Learnings from TC(ish) and Iron Viz

Phew! It’s November. Welcome back to Best of the Tableau Web, where I share some of the best community content I’ve seen in recent times. And since we’re right on the heels of our first ever virtual Tableau Conference(ish), there’s a lot to highlight! 

For this segment, three themes come to mind. 

First: Iron Viz is the ultimate data competition and it was a privilege to host this event with Keshia Rose again. Going virtual this year presented challenges, but also many new opportunities. As I write, we’re in the midst of releasing special episodes of our weekly livestream series, If Data Could Talk, with all three finalists. In each one, we’re pressing play on their 20-minute Iron Viz build and getting the inside scoop on all their data decision making. I’m really excited about these episodes because there’s a huge amount to learn from them for data viz enthusiasts of all skill levels. You can watch the episodes live for free on all our social media channels (no sign-up needed!) so make sure to follow Tableau on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

• Watch the episode with Alex Jones here.
• Watch for upcoming episodes with Simon and Christian, coming up on the 12 and 19th of November. Christian has also done a fantastic recap of his experience on his own blog if you want a sneak peak.

Second: Let’s talk Tableau Conference(ish)! It’s always a pleasure reading people’s recaps of Tableau Conference for specific learnings, key themes they take from the event, and above all else, inspiration around the Tableau community. I particularly enjoyed these thoughtful perspectives from Adam Mico, Sarah Bartlett, and Dustin Wyers. 

The third and final theme is yet another focus on what must be the most revolutionary feature we’ve added to desktop in years: Set and Parameter Actions. These features continue to open up new paths to interactivity that astound me. Keith Dykstra explains how to simplify them, Spencer Baucke provides an overview of Set Controls, Ethan Lang shares ways to use them with secondary data sources, Steve Wexler applies them to survey data, and Andrew Watson uses them to build some great Viz in Tooltips. This functionality seems to have endless possibilities: I say keep ‘em coming. 

As always, enjoy the list below! Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn as I try and share many of these throughout the month. Also, you can check out which blogs I am following here. If you don’t see yours on the list, you can add it here.

Tips and tricks

Andrew Lang Building a Relationship with Scaffolding

Andy Kriebel #TableauTipTuesday: Four Methods for Creating Dots on a Map

Jim Dehner FAQ Series - Fiscal Years

Rosario Gauna Write-back for Everyone: Parameter Query Language for Tableau (Part 1)

Anthony Smoak Understanding Tableau Context Filters

Jess Hancock Full Outer and Inner Joins with Multiple Inputs: The ‘Join Multiple’ vs ‘Manual’ Method

Inspiration

Spencer Baucke Data + Love Podcast

Brandi Beals Advance Your Career with Tableau (for FREE)

Formatting, Design, Storytelling

Rajeev Pandey 30 Best Design Resources for Your Next Tableau Dashboard

Beth Kairys Virtual Event Recap: The Good and Bad of Dashboard Templates

Matthew Whiteley Tableau 2020.3: Best New Features for Dashboarding

Jeffrey Shaffer Dashboards Done Right: Insurance Dashboard by Ellen Blackburn 

Matthias Think twice – is it important, is it attractive?

Luke Stanke KPI Design Ideas for Tableau

Tamas Varga Creating Charts within a Hexmap

Calculations

Eric Parker Nested IF Statements in Tableau

Daniel Caroli Tableau Date Calculations: When Close is Good Enough

Igor Garlowski Interactive Date Comparisons with Tableau Parameters

James Goodall Tableau Bitesize: Buffer Calculations

Prep

Spencer Baucke Tableau 2020.3 – Write to Database in Tableau Prep

Igor Garlowski Local Scheduling and Flow Refreshes with Tableau Prep

Server

Mitchell Scott Switching from Core to Role-Based Licensing in Tableau Server

Rowan Bradnum Increasing Tableau Server User Adoption: Five Ways to Earn Quick Wins

Timothy Vermeiren Tableau Server Webhooks, REST API and Slack: a learning experience

Carl Slifer Increasing Tableau Server User Adoption: Improve Data Quality & Content

Set and Parameter Actions

Keith Dykstra Simplified Parameter Actions in Tableau

Spencer Baucke Tableau 2020.2 – Set Controls

Ethan Lang How to Use Secondary Data Sources for Tableau Parameter Actions

Steve Wexler Set Controls and survey data – how to compare responses for this group vs that group vs overall

Andrew Watson Use Set Action for Viz in Tooltip Grand Totals

Tableau Conference(ish)

Adam Mico The (ish) Experience: My 1st Tableau Conference 

Sarah Bartlett Tableau Conference….ish #Data20 Highlights

The Datum Podcast S3 E9: Byte: Tableau Conference 2020 roundup

Dustin Wyers Tableau Conference 2020: Highlights from Devs at Desks