Building a Dashboard
If you and your group have any questions or get stuck as you work through this in-class exercise, please ask the instructor for assistance. Enjoy! For this exercise, we are going to build a dashboard using the different visualizations created in Activity 2.
Part 1
1. Building a Data Dashboard
- Click the Dashboard icon
on the bottom toolbar to create a new dashboard. - On the left side of the window, under Size, click the drop-down arrow next to Range and select Automatic. This will automatically adjust the size of the dashboard to fit the screen on which it is displayed.
- Under Sheets on the left side, you will see the worksheets you created in Activity 2.
- From the Sheets list, drag the Total Sales by Country map onto the dashboard.
- From the Sheets list, drag the Quarterly Profit and Sales by Product chart onto the bottom half of the dashboard. The two visualizations should now be arranged from top to bottom.
2. Creating a Visualization Filter
- Click the white space on the Total Sales by Country map. Icons should appear in the top-right corner of the visualization.
- Click the Use as Filter icon to make the map act as a filter for the other visualization.
- Click on any country on the map. The Quarterly Profit and Sales by Product chart will automatically update to display data for the selected country.
3. Saving Your Visualizations and Dashboard to Tableau Public
- Click File > Save to Tableau Public As…
- Sign in when prompted. If you do not already have a Tableau Public account, you will need to create one.
- Your workbook, including the visualizations and dashboard, will be saved to Tableau Public.
4. Saving Your Workbook in Tableau Desktop
- Click File > Save As and save the workbook to your desired location.
Your final output should look like this:
Part 2
This part will cover the creation of an interactive dashboard using the visualizations created in Activity 2.
- Click the Dashboard icon on the bottom toolbar to create a new dashboard.
- On the left side of the window, under Size, click the drop-down arrow next to Range and select Automatic. This will automatically adjust the size of the dashboard to fit the screen on which it is displayed.
- Under Sheets on the left side, you should see the following worksheets: Profit by Year, Orders by Person, and Date/Category/Profit.
- From the Sheets list, drag Date/Category/Profit onto the dashboard. It will initially take up the available space on the dashboard.
- From the Sheets list, drag Profit by Year onto the lower half of the dashboard. Tableau will allow you to place the visualizations in different areas of the dashboard and will automatically adjust their sizes. At this point, your dashboard should look like this:
- From the Sheets list, drag Orders by Person onto the lower-right side of the dashboard.
- Manually resize Orders by Person so that it does not take up too much space. Experiment with the placement and size of the visualizations. The goal is to create a dashboard that presents the data in a clear and meaningful way.
- Now you will make the dashboard interactive. Click on the Orders by Person visualization. A menu should appear in the top-right corner of the visualization.
- Click Use as Filter. This will allow you to use the Orders by Person visualization to filter the other visualizations on the dashboard.
- Click on any name in the Orders by Person visualization. The other visualizations will automatically update to display data for the selected person.
- The dashboard now tells a story about a salesperson, including their profits by year and a breakdown of the categories of goods they sold. Your dashboard should now look like this:
- You can make any of the visualizations on the dashboard act as a filter to tell a different story. For example, click on the Date/Category/Profit visualization and select Use as Filter from the menu in the top-right corner.
- Then, select Bookcases under the Furniture category by clicking directly on the corresponding line in the visualization. The other visualizations will update to display data for that selection.
- Feel free to experiment with the different filters and selections to see if you can come up with a different interpretation of the data!
