Fix the number of pages to export pdf from Tableau
Sometimes download / export to pdf is a requirement of your Tableau dashboard. Whether it's using the Tableau Server download button or downloading the pdf from Tableau Server using the URL the appearance is important. Components should fit cleanly on their page. For example splitting a [...]
Tableau Developers – where should they sit within an organisation?
Often large organisations struggle with where Tableau developers should sit within the organisation. This could also apply to any other reporting software, the likes of Power BI, Qlik, etc. As some technology is involved (i.e. Tableau) there is often a strong argument to lump it in [...]
Tableau error measuring utf8 to utf16
The Tableau error "Tableau Data Engine Error: 40583: error measuring utf8 to utf16" can be caused by creating a TDE in Alteryx. I have seen this error when using the Alteryx Output tool to output a Tableau Data Extract file (TDE) based on CSV files (and [...]
Tableau Measure Names Filter
Ever want to use Measure Names as a filter in Tableau? You want to offer the user a limited selection of measures to choose in a filter and find it frustrating all measures appear in the list? There is a way around this: […]
Tableau how to show prior period when filter is applied
This type of question, 'How do I show prior month when using a month filter?', 'My Year on Year is blank when I filter?', appears A LOT on the Tableau forums. There are two main ways to show the prior period / keep a previous value [...]
Excel Product function in Tableau
I stumbled across a question on the Tableau forums asking how to write the Excel Product function in Tableau. Full credit for the answer goes to Brian Bell in the comments of this thread https://community.tableau.com/ideas/1857. The Excel Product formula in Tableau is: EXP (SUM( LN ([FieldName]) [...]
How to display non-standard labels in a Tableau line chart
The standard Tableau label options for line charts in give a lot of flexibility. But what if you want to do something non-standard, something that’s not one of the default options? […]
Keep dashboards simple
Within the Tableau community I see many dashboards shared that look great. Often they are highly complex, sometimes like works of art. In reality, in my professional career I have never seen dashboards of that type. Dashboards should be simple. In the commercial environment dashboards are [...]
Tableau format zero values
To format zeroes (0) in Tableau to something else, such as a dash (-) for example, is simple using standard formatting techniques. For example use this technique to not show zero values, simply by formatting zero as a zero length string (“”). In the standard Tableau [...]
Create fixed bins from a measure in Tableau
What feels like a long time ago, pre-Tableau 9, I wrote an article on how to create fixed bins from a measure in Tableau. Back then it was complicated. It required data duplication and data blending. Then Tableau 9 came along and this suddenly creating bins from [...]