Building Dashboards is definitely one of the most important aspects of using Tableau Desktop. Fortunately, building a simple Dashboard is also something very easy and enjoyable to do. In the process of always making our life easier, Tableau has developed a few very nice new features.
If you are not new to Tableau, I'm sure you've already made (or had to make) a Dashboard with lots of filters and legends. You know, something that looks like this:
Adding a toggle button is quite easy: select the containers (with the Select Container option when you click on an item, or use the Item hierarchy in the Layout pane), then select Add toggle button from the container options. A default toggle button is automatically added to your Dashboard. Among the button options, you'll find the ability to Show or Hide the container and edit it with the Edit Button… option.
Unzip the ToggleButtonStart.zip
file and you'll find a Tableau Packaged Workbook that is the start of the example:
- Open the
ToggleButtonStart.twbx
workbook. - Select the filters and legend container, either by double-clicking on the grip part or using the Select Containers option of the items, or by using the Item hierarchy in the Layout pane. You should see the entire horizontal container with a blue outline, like this:
- Go to the option using the descending arrow and select Floating.
- Using the grip part, move the containers at the top left. Then, by selecting the left border, increase its width, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Click on the arrow to option the container options and select Add Show/Hide button.
- You can now use this button to show and hide the container with the filters and legends. To finalize the Dashboard, you can move the button next to the title, increase its size, and add a tooltip among the button options. Here's the final result:
This is the kind of feature we love: simple and efficient. With Tableau 2019.2, you can now replace any Worksheet in a Dashboard with another new Worksheet. This may not sound like a big deal to newcomers, but Tableau veterans know how useful this new feature is.
- Export to PowerPoint: On Tableau Desktop, among the File top menu, you'll find the Export As PowerPoint option. On Tableau Server, you'll find the PowerPoint option when you click on the Download button in the toolbar. In Tableau 2019.2, this feature was improved to export Stories, with each Story point being a new slide (2019.1).
- Name zone: In the Item hierarchy part of the Layout pane of a Dashboard, you can now give a meaningful name to each item. This is a great feature to combine with the Show/Hide button. Here's an example (2019.1):
- Auto phone layout: Any Dashboard built with Tableau Desktop 2019.1 or later automatically starts with an automatically generated phone layout. Don't forget to remove it if you don't want it (2019.1).
That's it for Tableau Desktop. In the next section, we'll see what's new in Tableau Server.