Tableau Adventurer

How to (visually) inspect Tableau’s forecast accuracy

Tableau offers some “out of the box” forecasting options. And while these will not be as great as advanced machine learning approaches, they still can offer some guidance on how – for example – your sales might develop. Adding a forecast is simple: as long as you have a decently filled timeline (notice: I will…

18. September 2025

Quicke: 2025.2 Find in data pane

Tableau 2025.2 dropped recently and whilst it has lots of cool new features (dynamic spatial parameters, anyone?) it is also often the small things that can make your life so much easier. Have you noticed Tableau offers “find in data pane”? Just right click a dimension or measure on your view and it will offer…

20. June 202516. September 2025

Relationships and (Data Source) Filters – Follow up blog post with Kirk Munroe

Following up on my >> previous blog post << I had the pleasure to virtually meet with Kirk Munroe and discuss the issues outlined in my posting. For those of you not yet familiar with Kirk, he is the author of “Data Modelling with Tableau.” He is also a frequent guest on renowned Tableau blogs…

4. June 2025

Tableau 2025.1 Relationships, Data Source Filters and an unexpected behavior.

Today at work I ran into an unexpected behavior when using relationships in Tableau 2025.1.1 with the new feature of table specific data source filters. For those of you who might not be aware, this is the new feature I am talking about: Notice how we are now able to select the scope of the…

8. May 2025

Quickie: How to make a parameter “fire” on apply, not on change.

For today just a small tip on how to align your parameter changes and filters to all become effective on clicking the same button, like here: How to do this Parameters in Tableau allow the user to provide single values to their workbook. This feature enables interactivity in dashboards. It also allows for the dynamic…

31. March 2025

Automatically set a date picker parameter to Sunday

This is a question that recently came up and my solution to this is quite simple. Assume you have an empty date parameter, that is a parameter of “date” type with no limitations like this: This will enable your users to click it and be greeted with a calendar style date picker w/o any further…

3. February 202526. January 2025

Let’s build – Workout Wednesday 2024 W47 Bonus Version (Multi-Select)

Over my Christmas Holiday’s I finally had a little bit of time to go back to practicing a bit / playing around with Workout Wednesday challenges and since I had’t done so in a long time, there were plenty for me. Week 47 by Erica Hughes asked us to provide a solution to a three…

5. January 2025

How To select preceding periods with broken time ranges or cross year using sets.

Assume you have been tasked with creating an option for your users to freely select any (monthly) time period. This period shall be compared not to the previous year but to the preceding months. Example: Your user select Jan, Feb and March 2024, then your preceding periods would be Oct, Nov and Dec 2023. The…

13. December 2024

Dude, Where’s My S(C)roll b(ar)?

Anyone remember this move straight from the Millenium? Heavens, time flies. Anyways, I kinda felt like the guys in the movie today. After weeks of work on Tableau Desktop, I uploaded a Dashboard for final release. It was meant to be shared with a wide audience on our Tableau Cloud instance. Some checks here, some…

21. October 202421. October 2024

An easy way to limit set selection

For today we shall have a look at an easy way to limit the number of selections like in this example. Create the sets First, start by right clicking Customers and select “create –> set”. Select all customers and name it [SET – All customers]. Next, do the same again but this time don’t select…

16. October 202419. December 2024

Filter a table w/o filtering

For this month’s posting we will have a look at how to enable your users to “filter” columns from a text table without actually filtering it. Why would that be needed? Well one idea could be that you have one of these massive tables (you know, the ones you do not want to built but…

1. September 2024

Using a SET to Filter “and” condition

Recently on the forums a user asked how they could use a filter that was conditioned to imply “and” instead of “or” (factually I think Tableau translates any multi-select as an “in” clause like “where xyz in (….)” ). So, what did the user want to do? The requirement Let’s have a look to better…

18. July 202419. December 2024

Let’s build: Creating a Carousel in Tableau

By popular request: Are you tired of ordinary visualizations? Unveil the magic of building a captivating carousel in Tableau with just one parameter and five calculations. Skip the “why” and plunge into the how, or join me for a deep dive into the process. Harness the power of X and Y calculations, dynamic positioning, and…

17. June 202417. June 2024

Mastering Table Calculations Pt. 3: Practical Application at the Example of WOW2024-W15

In the final part of the series on table calculations, we apply our knowledge to create a dynamic trellis chart for the WOW2024-W15 challenge. Addressing the challenges of data padding and domain completion, we ensure the accuracy of our visual results. Two options – “At the Level” and Domain Completion – are explored to fix…

14. June 20242. June 2024

Mastering Table Calculations Pt. 2: Excursus on Domain Padding and Domain Completion

This part of the series on table calculations explores Domain Completion and Domain Padding as methods for dealing with sparse data in Tableau.

7. June 20242. June 2024

Mastering Table Calculations Pt. 1: From Basics to Advanced Settings

Ignited by WOW2024-W15 my new mini-series focuses on table calculations in Tableau. Part 1 delves into the intricacies of table calculations going from bascis to advanced. Data densification is and its relation to table calcs is explored in Part 2. The seriess concludes with a practical application of the learnings at the example of WOW2024-Week…

31. May 202431. May 2024

Quickie: how to handle missing geo data on webedit

Lately, I had shared a quick tip of using a simply calculated field with just a country name in it to createa country field that you can use for example to beautify your map visuals. Another use case is when your dataset does not allow you to edit it and only carries values that are…

18. April 202419. December 2024

Quickie: how often do our sales staff need more days than the allowed threshold between sales?

Heavens, time is flying by, isn’t it? Already time for a new blog post. Since I am somewhat short on time these days, I just have a quick one to share. Assume your task is to provide your sales management with an overview that allows them to easily figure out how often it takes a…

2. April 202419. December 2024

Fair cohort retention analysis

My today’s posting is not only technical but a reminder to always think about what you provide when being tasked with something. Do not only technically solve something, make sure that it is logically viable. Imagine your superior comes to you and tasks you with the following. “We need to do a cohort retention analysis…

1. March 202419. December 2024

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