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Tableau Tip | Creating A Dynamic Bar Chart With Set Actions

Tableau Tip Creating A Diverging Likert Chart

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Interactivity is a core component of good Tableau dashboards. It creates a better user experience, and can help your audience find deeper insights in their data. In Tableau, one way of introducing interactivity is through Set Actions.

A quick overview of Set Actions

As Bethany Lyons, a senior product manager at Tableau writes:

“Set actions feature extends the interactivity in Tableau, allowing for deeper, more diverse comparisons through user selections and opportunities to see your data in a new light… Set actions make interactivity more expressive, providing precise control on dashboard design without any programming. They enable users to design a variety of custom responses to end user interactions. It’s now possible to coordinate different behaviours across multiple visualisations with a single selection, creating nearly endless compositions.”

Creating A Dynamic Bar Chart With Set Actions

In this tutorial I demonstrate how to create a dynamic drill down  bar chart using set actions – allowing users to filter their view from from a higher to lower level of granularity with the click of a button.

This is particularly useful if you want to display a high level of detail on a dataset, but are restricted by space on your Tableau dashboard.

 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x–97ex5TQ[/embedyt]

 

Formulas:

_C_State In Set:
IF [_S_State Set] THEN [State] END

_C_State To City Drill Down (action):
IF { COUNTD([_C_State In Set]) } = 1
THEN [City]
ELSE [State]
END

_C_State To City Drill Down (sheet name):
IF { COUNTD([_C_State In Set]) } = 1
THEN [State]
ELSE “All States”
END

Related Tutorials:

Tableau GIF Tutorial: Add Drill Down To Your Chart Using Set Actions
A great tutorial from Jamie Reyes on applying drill down features to scatter plots.

3 Tier Map Drill-downs with Tableau Set Actions
An advanced tutorial from Craig Dewar on creating three layer drill down maps.

8 ways to bring powerful new comparisons to viz audiences with Tableau set actions
Bethany Lyons original blog introducing the power set actions –  a great place to start if you’re new to this feature.

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