Tableau Project Demonstration

Step 1: Connect to your data

Step 2: Drag and drop to take a first look

1. From the Data pane, drag Order Date to the Columns shelf.

Note: When you drag Order Date to the Columns shelf, Tableau
creates a column for each year in your data set. Under each column is
an Abc indicator. This indicates that you can drag text or numerical
data here, like what you might see in an Excel spreadsheet. If you
were to drag Sales to this area, Tableau creates a crosstab (like a
spreadsheet) and displays the sales totals for each year.

2. From the Data pane, drag Sales to the Rows shelf.

Refine your view

To gain more insight into which products drive overall sales, try adding
more data. Start by adding the product categories to look at sales totals in a
different way.

1. From the Data pane, drag Category to the Columns shelf and place it to
the right of YEAR(Order Date).

Your view updates to a bar chart. By adding a second discrete

dimension to the view you can categorize your data into discrete
chunks instead of looking at your data continuously over time. This
creates a bar chart and shows you overall sales for each product
category by year.

Your view is showing sales by category—furniture, office supplies, and

technology. An interesting insight is revealed!

From this view, you can see that sales for furniture is growing faster
than sales for office supplies, even though Office Supplies had a really
good year in 2021. Perhaps you can recommend that your company
focus sales efforts on furniture instead of office supplies? Your
 company sells a lot of different products in those categories, so you'll
need more information before you can make a recommendation.

To help answer that question, you decide to look at products by sub-

category to see which items are the big sellers. For example, for the
Furniture category, you want to see details about bookcases, chairs,
furnishings, and tables. Looking at this data might help you gain
insights into sales and later on, overall profitability, so add sub-
categories to your bar chart.

2. Double-click or drag Sub-Category to the Columns shelf.

Note: You can drag and drop or double-click a field to add it to your
view, but be careful. Tableau makes assumptions about where to add
that data, and it might not be placed where you expect. You can
always click Undo to remove the field, or drag it off the area where
Tableau placed it to start over.

Sub-Category is another discrete field. It creates another header at

the bottom of the view, and shows a bar for each sub-category (68
marks) broken down by category and year.

Step 3: Focus your results

You've created a view of product sales broken down by category and sub-
category. You are starting to get somewhere, but that is a lot of data to sort
through. You need to easily find the interesting data points and focus on
specific results. Well, Tableau has some great options for that!

Filters and colors are ways you can add more focus to the details that
interest you. After you add focus to your data, you can begin to use other
Tableau Desktop features to interact with that data.

Add filters to your view

You can use filters to include or exclude values in your view. In this
example, you decide to add two simple filters to your worksheet to make it
easier to look at product sales by sub-category for a specific year.

1. In the Data pane, right-click Order Date and select Show Filter.

2. Repeat the step above for the Sub-Category field.

 The filters are added to the right side of your view in the order that
you selected them. Filters are card types and can be moved around on
the canvas by clicking on the filter and dragging it to another location
in the view. As you drag the filter, a line appears that shows you
where you can drop the filter to move it.

Add color to your view

Adding filters helps you to sort through all of this data—but wow, that’s a
lot of blue! It's time to do something about that.

Currently, you are looking at sales totals for your various products. You can
see that some products have consistently low sales, and some products
might be good candidates for reducing sales efforts for those product
lines. But what does overall profitability look like for your different
products? Drag Profit to color to see what happens.

From the Data pane, drag Profit to Color on the Marks card.

By dragging profit to color, you now see that you have negative profit in
Tables, Bookcases, and even Machines. Another insight is revealed!

Note: Tableau automatically added a color legend and assigned a diverging

color palette because your data includes both negative and positive values.

Find key insights

As you've learned, you can explore your data as you build views with
Tableau Desktop. Adding filters and colors helps you better visualize your
data and can identify problems right away.

The next step is to interact with your view so that you can begin drawing
conclusions.

Looking at your view, you saw that you had some unprofitable products, but
now you want to see if these products have been unprofitable year over
year.

It's time to use your filters to take a closer look.

1. In the view, in the Sub-Category filter card, clear all of the check
boxes except Bookcases, Machines, and Tables.

Now you can see that, in some years, Bookcases and Machines were
profitable. However, recently Machines are unprofitable. While you've made
an important discovery, you want to gather more information before
proposing any action items to your boss.

On a hunch, you decide to break up your view by region:

2. Select All in the Sub-Category filter card to show all sub-categories

again.

3. From the Data pane, drag Region to the Rows shelf and place it to
the left of Sum(Sales).

Tableau creates a view with multiple axes broken down by region.

Now you see sales and profitability by product for each region. By adding
region to the view and filtering the Sub-Category for Machines only, you
notice that machines in the South are reporting a higher negative profit
overall than in your other regions. You've discovered a hidden insight!

This view best encapsulates your work so far. Select All in the Sub-
Category filter card (if you changed your filter) to show all sub-
categories again, name the worksheet, and add a title.

4. At the bottom-left of the workspace, double-click Sheet 1 and

type Sales by Product/Region.

You choose to focus your analysis on the South, but you don't want to
lose the view you've created. In Tableau Desktop, you can duplicate
your worksheet to continue where you left off.

5. In your workbook, right-click the Sales by Product/Region sheet and

select Duplicate.

6. Rename the duplicated sheet to Sales in the South.

7. In your new worksheet, from the Data pane, drag Region to

the Filters shelf to add it as a filter in the view.

8. In the Filter Region dialog box, clear all check boxes

except South and then click OK.

Your view updates to look like the image below.

Now you can focus on sales and profit in the South. You immediately
see that machine sales had negative profit in 2018 and again in 2021.
This is definitely something to investigate!
 4. Save your work by selecting File > Save As. Give your workbook a
name, such as Regional Sales and Profits

Step 4: Explore your data geographically

You've built a great view that allows you to review sales and profits by
product over several years. And after looking at product sales and
profitability in the South, you decide to look for trends or patterns in that
region.

Because you're looking at geographic data (the Region field), you have the
option to build a map view. Map views are great for displaying and
analyzing this kind of information.

For this example, Tableau has already assigned the proper geographic roles
to the Country, State, City, and Postal Code fields. That's because it
recognized that each of those fields contained geographic data. You can get
to work creating your map view right away.

Build a map view

Start fresh with a new worksheet.

1. Click the New worksheet icon at the bottom of the workspace.

Tableau keeps your previous worksheet and creates a new one so that
you can continue exploring your data without losing your work.

2. In the Data pane, double-click State to add it to Detail on the Marks

card.

Now you’ve got a map view!

Because Tableau already knows that state names are geographic data
and because the State dimension is assigned the State/Province
geographic role, Tableau automatically creates a map view.

There is a mark for each of the 48 contiguous states in your data

source. (Sadly, Alaska and Hawaii aren't included in your data source,
so they are not mapped.)
 Notice that the Country field is also added to the view. This happens
because the geographic fields in Sample - Superstore are part of a
hierarchy. Each level in the hierarchy is added as a level of detail.

Additionally, Latitude and Longitude fields are added to the Columns

and Rows shelves. You can think of these as X and Y fields. They're
essential any time you want to create a map view, because each
location in your data is assigned a latitudinal and longitudinal value.
Sometimes the Latitude and Longitude fields are generated by
Tableau. Other times, you might have to manually include them in
your data. You can find resources to learn more about this in the
Learning Library.

Now, having a cool map focused on 48 states is one thing, but you
wanted to see what was happening in the South, remember?

3. Drag Region to the Filters shelf, and then filter down to

the South only. The map view zooms in to the South region, and there
is a mark for each state (11 total).

Now you want to see more detailed data for this region, so you start to
drag other fields to the Marks card:

4. Drag the Sales measure to Color on the Marks card.

The view automatically updates to a filled map, and colors each state
based on its total sales. Because you're exploring product sales, you
want your sales to appear in USD. Click the Sum(Sales) field on
the Columns shelf, and select Format. For Numbers,
select Currency.

Any time you add a continuous measure that contains positive

numbers (like Sales) to Color on the Marks card, your filled map is
colored blue. Negative values are assigned orange.

Sometimes you might not want your map to be blue. Maybe you prefer
green, or your data isn’t something that should be represented with
the color blue, like wildfires or traffic jams. That would just be
confusing!

No need to worry, you can change the color palette just like you did
before.

5. Click Color on the Marks card and select Edit Colors.

 For this example, you want to see which states are doing well, and
which states are doing poorly in sales.

6. In the Palette drop-down list, select Red-Green Diverging and

click OK. This allows you to see quickly the low performers and the
high performers.

Your view updates to look like this:

But wait. Everything just went red! What happened?

The data is accurate, and technically you can compare low performers
with high performers, but is that really the whole story?

Are sales in some of those states really that terrible, or are there just
more people in Florida who want to buy your products? Maybe you
have smaller or fewer stores in the states that appear red. Or maybe
there’s a higher population density in the states that appear green, so
there are just more people to buy your stuff.

Either way, there’s no way you want to show this view to your boss
because you aren't confident the data is telling a useful story.

7. Click the Undo icon in the toolbar to return to that nice, blue
view.

There’s still a color problem. Everything looks dandy—that’s the

problem!

At first glance, it appears that Florida is performing the best.

Hovering over its mark reveals a total of 89,474 USD in sales, as
compared to South Carolina, for example, which has only 8,482 USD
in sales. However, have any of the states in the South been profitable?

8. Drag Profit to Color on the Marks card to see if you can answer this
question.

Now that’s better! Because profit often consists of both positive and
negative values, Tableau automatically selects the Orange-Blue
Diverging color palette to quickly show the states with negative profit
and the states with positive profit.
It’s now clear that Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida have negative
profit, even though it appeared they were doing okay—even great—in Sales.
But why? You'll answer that in the next step.

Step 5: Drill down into the details

In the last step you discovered that Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida
have negative profit. To find out why, you decide to drill down even further
and focus on what's happening in those three states alone.

Pick up where your map view left off

As you saw in the last step, maps are great for visualizing your data broadly.
A bar chart will help you get into the nitty-gritty. To do this, you create
another worksheet.

1. Double-click Sheet 3 and name the worksheet Profit Map.

2. Right-click Profit Map at the bottom of the workspace and

select Duplicate . Name the new sheet Negative Profit Bar Chart.

3. In the Negative Profit Bar Chart worksheet, click Show Me, and then
select horizontal bars.

Show Me highlights different chart types based on the data you've

added to your view.

Note: At any time, you can click Show Me again to collapse it.

You now have a bar chart again—just like that.

4. To select multiple bars on the left, click and drag your cursor across
the bars between Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida. On the
tooltip that appears, select Keep Only to focus on those three states.

Note: You can also right-click one of the highlighted bars, and
select Keep Only.

Notice that an Inclusions field for State is added to the Filters shelf to
indicate that certain states are filtered from the view. The icon with
two circles on the field indicates that this field is a set. You can edit
this field by right-clicking the field on the Filters shelf and
selecting, Edit Filter.

Now you want to look at the data for the cities in these states.
 5. On the Rows shelf, click the plus icon on the State field to drill-down
to the City level of detail.

There’s almost too much information here, so you decide to filter the view
down to the cities with the most negative profit by using a Top N Filter.

Create a Top N Filter

You can use a Top N Filter in Tableau Desktop to limit the number of marks
displayed in your view. In this case, you want to use the Top N Filter to
hone in on poor performers.

1. From the Data pane, drag City to the Filters shelf.

2. In the Filter dialog box, select the Top tab, and then do the following:

a. Click By field.

b. Click the Top drop-down and select Bottom to reveal the

poorest performers.

c. Type 5 in the text box to show the bottom 5 performers in your

data set.

Tableau Desktop has already selected a field (Profit) and

aggregation (Sum) for the Top N Filter based on the fields in
your view. These settings ensure that your view will display only
the five poorest performing cities by sum of profit.

a. Click OK.

What happened to the bar chart, and why is it blank? That's a great
question, and a great opportunity to introduce the Tableau Order of
Operations.

The Tableau Order of Operations, also known as the query pipeline, is

the order that Tableau performs various actions, such as the order in
which it applies your filters to the view.

Tableau applies filters in the following order:

1. Extract Filters

2. Data Source Filters

 3. Context Filters

4. Top N Filters

5. Dimension Filters

6. Measure Filters

The order that you create filters in, or arrange them on

the Filters shelf, doesn't change the order in which Tableau applies
those filters to your view.

The good news is you can tell Tableau to change this order when you
notice something strange happening with the filters in your view. In
this example, the Top N Filter is applied to the five poorest
performing cities by sum of profit for the whole map, but none of
those cities are in the South, so the chart is blank.

To fix the chart, add a filter to context. This tells Tableau to filter that
field first, regardless of where it falls on the order of operations.

But which field do you add to context? There are three fields on
the Filters shelf: Region (a dimension filter), City (a top N filter),
and Inclusions (Country, State) (Country, State) (a set).

If you look at the order of operations again, you know that the set and
the top N filter are being applied before the dimension filter. But do
you know if the top N filter or the set filter is being applied first? Let's
find out.

3. On the Filters shelf, right-click the City field and select Add to
Context.

The City field turns gray and moves to the top of the Filters shelf, but
nothing changes in the view. So even though you're forcing Tableau to
filter City first, the issue isn't resolved.

4. Click Undo.

5. On the Filters shelf, right-click the Inclusions (Country, State)

(Country, State) set and select Add to Context.

The Inclusions (Country, State) (Country, State) set turns gray and
moves to the top of the Filters shelf. And bars have returned to your
view!
 You're on to something! But there are six cities in the view, including
Jacksonville, North Carolina, which has a positive profit. Why would a
city with a positive profit show up in the view when you created a
filter that was supposed to filter out profitable cities?

Jacksonville, North Carolina is included because City is the lowest

level of detail shown in the view. For Tableau Desktop to know the
difference between Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Jacksonville,
Florida, you need to drill down to the next level of detail in the
location hierarchy, which, in this case, is Postal Code. After you add
Postal Code, you can exclude Jacksonville in North Carolina without
also excluding Jacksonville in Florida.

Identify the troublemakers

You decide to break up the view by Sub-Category to identify the products

dragging profit down. You know that the Sub-Category field contains
information about products sold by location, so you start there.

1. Drag Sub-Category to the Rows shelf, and place it to the right of City.

2. Drag Profit to Color on the Marks card to make it easier to see which
products have negative profit.

3. In the Data pane, right-click Order Date and select Show Filter.

You can now explore negative profits for each year if you want, and
quickly spot the products that are losing money.

Machines, tables, and binders don’t seem to be doing well. So, what if
you stop selling those items in Jacksonville, Concord, Burlington,
Knoxville, and Memphis?

Verify your findings

Will eliminating binders, machines, and tables improve profits in Florida,

North Carolina, and Tennessee? To find out, you can filter out the problem
products to see what happens.

1. Go back to your map view by clicking the Profit Map sheet tab.

2. In the Data pane, right-click Sub-Category and select Show Filter.

 A filter card for all of the products you offer appears next to the map
view. You'll use this filter later.

3. From the Data pane, drag Profit and Profit Ratio to Label on the
Marks card. To format the Profit Ratio as a percentage, right-
click Profit Ratio, and select Format. Then, for Default Numbers,
choose Percentage and set the number of decimal places you want
displayed on the map. For this map, we'll choose zero decimal places.

Now you can see the exact profit of each state without having to hover
your cursor over them.

4. In the Data pane, right-click Order Date and select Show Filter to
provide some context for the view.

A filter card for YEAR(Order Date) appears in the view. You can now
view profit for all years or for a combination of years. This might be
useful for your presentation.

5. Clear Binders, Machines, and Tables from the list on the Sub-
Category filter card in the view.

Recall that adding filters to your view lets you include and exclude
values to highlight certain parts of your data.

As you clear each member, the profit for Tennessee, North Carolina,
and Florida improve, until finally, each has a positive profit.

Hey, you made an interesting discovery!

Binders, machines, and tables are definitely responsible for the losses
in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida, but not for the rest of the
South. Do you notice how profit actually decreases for some of the
other states as you clear items from the filter card? For example, if
you toggle Binders on the Sub-Category filter card, profit drops by
four percent in Arkansas. You can deduce that Binders are actually
profitable in Arkansas.

You want to share this discovery with the team by walking them
through the same steps you took.

6. Select (All) on the Sub-Category filter card to include all products

again.
Now you know that machines, tables, and binders are problematic products
for your company. In focusing on the South, you see that these products
have varying impacts on profit. This might be a worthwhile conversation to
have with your boss.

Next, you'll assemble the work you've done so far in a dashboard so that you
can clearly present your findings.

Step 6: Build a dashboard to show your

insights
You’ve created four worksheets, and they're communicating important
information that your boss needs to know. Now you need a way to show the
negative profits in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida and explain some
of the reasons why profits are low.

To do this, you can use dashboards to display multiple worksheets at once,

and—if you want—make them interact with one another.

Set up your dashboard

You want to emphasize that certain items sold in certain places are doing
poorly. Your bar graph view of profit and your map view demonstrate this
point nicely.

1. Click the New dashboard button.

2. In the Dashboard pane on the left, you'll see the sheets that you
created. Drag Sales in the South to your empty dashboard.

3. Drag Profit Map to your dashboard, and drop it on top of the Sales in
the South view.

Your view will update to look like this:

But sadly, the bar chart is a bit squished, which isn’t helping your boss
understand your data.
Arrange your dashboard

It's not easy to see details for each item under Sub-Category from your
Sales in the South bar chart. Also, because we have the map in view, we
probably don't need the South region column in Sales in the South, either.

Resolving these issues will give you more room to communicate the
information you need.

1. On Sales in the South, right-click in the column area under

the Region column header, and clear Show header.
2. Repeat this process for the Category row header.

2. You've now hidden unnecessary columns and rows from your

dashboard while preserving the breakdown of your data. The extra
space makes it easier to see data on your dashboard, but let's freshen
things up even more.

3. Right-click the Profit Map title and select Hide Title.

The title Profit Map is hidden from the dashboard and even more
space is created.

4. Repeat this step for the Sales in the South view title.

5. Select the first Sub-Category filter card on the right side of your
view, and at the top of the card, click the Remove icon .

6. Repeat this step for the second Sub-Category filter card and one of
the Year of Order Date filter cards.

7. Click on the Profit color legend and drag it from the right to below
Sales in the South.

8. Finally, select the remaining Year of Order Date filter, click its drop-
down arrow, and then select Floating. Move it to the white space in
the map view. In this example, it is placed just off the East Coast, in
the Atlantic Ocean.

Try selecting different years on the Year of Order Date filter. Your
data is quickly filtered to show that state performance varies year by
year. That's nice, but it could be made even easier to compare.

9. Click the drop-down arrow at the top of the Year of Order

Date filter, and select Single Value (Slider).
 Now your dashboard is looking really good! Now, you can easily
compare profit and sales by year. But that’s not so different from a
couple pictures in a presentation—and you're using Tableau! Let's
make your dashboard more engaging.

Add interactivity

Wouldn't it be great if you could view which sub-categories are profitable in

specific states?

1. Select Profit Map in the dashboard, and click the Use as

filter icon in the upper right corner.

2. Select a state within the Southern region of the map.

The Sales in the South bar chart automatically updates to show just
the sub-category sales in the selected state. You can quickly see which
sub-categories are profitable.

3. Click an area of the map other than the colored Southern states to
clear your selection.

You also want viewers to be able to see the change in profits based on
the order date.

4. Select the Year of Order Date filter, click its drop-down arrow, and
select Apply to Worksheets > Selected Worksheets.

5. In the Apply Filter to Worksheets dialog box, select All in dashboard,

and then click OK.

This option tells Tableau to apply the filter to all worksheets in the
dashboard that use this same data source.

Explore state performance by year with your new, interactive dashboard!

Rename and go

You show your boss your dashboard, and she loves it. She's named it
"Regional Sales and Profit," and you do the same by double-clicking
the Dashboard 1 tab and typing Regional Sales and Profit.
In her investigations, your boss also finds that the decision to introduce
machines in the North Carolina market in 2021 was a bad idea.

Your boss is glad she has this dashboard to explore, but she also wants you
to present a clear action plan to the larger team. She asks you to create a
presentation with your findings.