Dashboard Actions

This is my first blog and I felt inspired to ‘take the plunge’ - so to speak - because I love dashboard actions! Dashboard actions can be very useful to filter views, highlight points, and so much more. I am such a big fan of dashboard actions because I think it helps the end user to better interact with the data and give them more than just a static visualization. More recently, Tableau has added more dashboard actions which has improved the end users’ ability to interact with the data.

Let’s look at what dashboard actions can do for your visualizations.

In the beginning, dashboard actions allowed us to apply a filter from one visualization to another visualization either on the same dashboard or to navigate to a separate dashboard. For example, if I have a map showing sales by state, I can filter a profit bar chart by the same state.

The Highlight action is similar but of course does not filter but instead highlights marks in another view provided the target view has the corresponding dimensions on the visualization.

URL actions are less common but no less useful. The ability to navigate to a webpage either external to Tableau or in a web object on a dashboard could be very valuable for the appropriate use case.

Then, Tableau Conference 2018 happened and our eyes were opened. Set actions debuted and the community swooned. The ability to make a set and then dynamically change the members of a set based on selections a user chooses on the dashboard has so many possibilities. A simple example such as the dashboard above we used to illustrate the profit for a selected state can now be displayed as a ‘portion of the whole’. We can see how a state’s sales contribute to the overall profitability for a dataset (or a company, or a quarter, or…). 

Most recently, parameter actions were introduced with version 2019.2. I am really looking forward to the demonstrations at this years’ conference. Again, we are given countless opportunities to engage our audience to interact with the data and learn what is driving their business. In this case below, modified from a tutorial by Ryan Sleeper, a parameter action uses the visualization to select the parameter values and update those dynamically. The visualization now updates the profitability contributed by the chosen state and uses a parameter action to display the total sales number at the bottom.

Dashboard actions can now change the world of visualization from a ‘choose from the drop down filter’ to ‘select a mark on the view’ kind of navigation, which is so much more inherent for the target audience. No more will we wonder and test the best location for a series of filters. We can merely set up the actions and watch the end user interact and learn from the exploration. What an exciting prospect indeed!