Lecture 18: Dashboards in Tableau

Nick Huntington-Klein

23 June, 2022

Dashboards in Tableau

  • Tableau is designed for dashboards, and they make it easy
  • Most of what we’ll cover today you could probably figure out yourself by clicking “New Dashboard” at the bottom and clicking around
  • So we’ll keep this brief and then get to trying stuff out

Creating a Dashboard

  • Create your visualizations and tables
  • Then down at the bottom, next to the Sheets, there’s a + icon for “New Dashboard”
  • Click it!

Adding Worksheets to the Dashboard

  • From here you’ll see:
  • The Layout option (in a sec)
  • Your worksheets - drag them in!
  • Options at the bottom to add navigation, images, text, web pages

Adding Worksheets to the Dashboard

Layout

  • Tableau Dashboards can be laid out for desktop, mobile, or tablet
  • Check your Size options, and try Device Preview with a few things on
  • Also check the Layout tab for other options
  • Keep the audience in mind, and whether some visualizations might not translate to tiny sizes!

Layout

  • You can “float” elements of the dashboard but this isn’t generally a good idea
  • What is a good idea is moving things like legends (if you have them) close to where the actual viz that uses them is
  • You don’t want the legend for Viz B sitting next to Viz A - confusing!

Formatting

  • Format \(\rightarrow\) Dashboard brings up the formatting panel for things like overall coloring, fonts, etc.
  • You can also format the individual worksheets included by clicking on them as normal
  • Any re-decoration you want to do at this point is on the table!

Formatting

Filters

  • You can add interactive filters to look at different parts of the data, and apply those filters broadly
  • Select a viz that uses the variable you want to filter on and hit the “use as filter” button (looks like a funnel) and then the down arrow and Filter to select the variable to filter on
  • A filter will appear. On the down arrow for THAT, you can change the kind of filter you get (dropdown, etc.) and also which worksheets the filter applies to - can update the whole dashboard at once with one filter if you like!

Considerations for Dashboards

If you’re planning to end up with a dashboard…

  • Hold off on annotations until the end; what looks good on a single image might get cramped on multiples
  • Consider how you might reduce the number of legends required to understand things. Lots of legends can get confusing
  • Try to make dashboard and worksheet formatting consistent
  • Use a grid layout! Don’t get wild
  • Consider including the “Export to PDF” option

Sharing Dashboards

  • Save as an image (no interactivity) with Dashboard \(\rightarrow\) Export Image
  • Send the workbook which can be opened with Tableau or (free) Tableau Reader
  • Tableau Server and Tableau Online store the workbook online - automatically updated as necessary. Users can also subscribe for update notifications. Requires paid license

Let’s Do This

  • See the provided workbook file Lecture_18_Oster_Data
  • This contains data from NHANES, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Let’s Do This

  • Specifically, an extract from Oster (2020), who was trying to tell the following story:
    • From 1999-2004, Vitamin E was a recommended supplement
    • Before 1999 and after 2004, it wasn’t, and was actually recommended against
    • From 1999-2004, people who pay the most attention to their health will be more likely to follow the recommendation, i.e. take Vitamin E
    • So, during that time, the relationship between taking Vitamin E and health outcomes like mortality should be stronger

Let’s Do This

  • Try to tell this story in a dashboard!
  • Careful: how can you show that a relationship gets stronger or weaker over time? This is trivariate!