Book Image

Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x

By : Tristan Guillevin
Book Image

Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x

By: Tristan Guillevin

Overview of this book

Tableau is one of the leading business intelligence tools used worldwide, in organizations of every scale. In its latest release, Tableau 2018 promises richer and more useful features related to visual analytics, reporting, dashboarding, and a host of other data visualization aspects. Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x will get you up and running with these features. The book starts with all the new functionalities of the different Tableau 2018 versions, along with concrete examples of how to use them. However, if you're new to Tableau, don't worry! The rest of the book will guide you through each major aspect of Tableau with examples. You'll learn how to connect to data, build a data source, visualize your data, build a dashboard, and share it online. In the final chapters, you'll also learn advanced techniques such as creating a cross-database join, data blending, and more. By the end of the book, you will have a firm understanding of how to effectively use Tableau to create quick, cost-effective, and business-efficient business intelligence solutions.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Catching Up with Tableau 2018
Index

Creating a year-on-year comparator


To create a year-on-year comparator, you need to combine everything that we saw previously: Calculated FieldReference Line, and Parameter

Your mission (if you accept it) is to build a visualization where you can see the Sales by Sub-Categories of a selected year compared to the previous year with a Reference Line. Color also helps you to quickly spot the sub-categories where the sales are lower than the past year. Here's the final result: 

Quite impressive, isn't it? Let's build it! Follow the tutorial:

  1. Create a Parameter to choose the year. Configure it as an Integer with a List of allowable values. The list is composed of four values: 2015, 2016, 2017,  and 2018. You can, if you want to make it perfect, change the display of the values to remove the thousand separators (by modifying the display format or editing the Display As column). Name it Select a year, and choose 2018 as the current value.

Your Parameter configuration window should look like this...