Actions Get Reactions
1
Guiherme Bronner
Ray Randall
Product Consultant
Product Consultant
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Filter Action (quick)
This dashboard (#1) shows a map of our world with
each country that has participated in the World
Cup from 1930 to 2006.
The countries are colored by a composite score of
their finishing positions for each World Cup. For
example, a country with a high score may have
placed 1st or 2nd for multiple World Cups.
Understanding the geographic location of a country is
important for my analysis, so when I select a
country’s name from the country list on the left,
I’d like to have the map only show my selected
country.
To quickly create an action filter:
1. Use the drop down arrows at the top corner of
every sheet.
2. Select to use the sheet as a filter (‘Use as
Filter’).
2
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Filter Action (manual)
Another way to create the filter action would be to
create it manually. The next dashboard (#2) shows
a couple sheets tracking the performance of each
team. The first shows a score trend for each World
Cup and the second sheet shows at what point
each team exited a tournament.
I’d like to be able to select a particular point on the
line chart and have the tournament chart update
to show me that specific year.
To create this action we will need to manually define
what fields to filter on.
1. Enter the Actions window from the Dashboard
menu.
2. Add a ‘Filter Action’.
3. Set your ‘Highlight Scores’ sheet as a Source
Sheet and the ‘Tournament Sheet’ as the
Target Sheet. (See screenshot)
4. Run the action on ‘Select’
5. Edit Target Filters to ‘Selected Fields’ and filter
on Year
6. TIP: Don’t forget to name your action! Click OK
Your selection on the Highlight Scores sheet will now
filter the Tournament sheet on the Year field.
3
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Highlight Action
This line chart may also benefit from a highlight
action. Using a highlight action, we can quickly
identify a Team of interest just by picking that
team in the color legend. To quickly create a
highlight action on a color legend, click the
highlight icon in the corner of the legend.
Similar to the Use as Filter option, the Highlight icon
generates a highlight action in the Actions menu.
Let’s go into the action menu and see what we can
change. The Edit Highlight Action options are
nearly identical to the Edit Filter Action options.
The key difference here is that we no longer have
options for filtering (excluding and showing all).
Instead we have the option to change the targets
of our highlight action.
When we select a point on our line chart, the Team
selected is highlighted on both our color legend
and the Tournament chart as well, since it is set as
a Target sheet.
Highlight actions are powerful tools in guiding the
user to quickly identify data points of interest.
4
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Cross-sheet Filter Action
In cases where we have multiple sheets or
dashboards, we may want to have our action on
one sheet filter the data on another sheet. This is
especially useful when we want utilize multiple
dashboards to avoid placing too many sheets on
one dashboard.
In this case, we have another dashboard (#3) that
shows various team metrics. Let’s build a filter
action so that our action on the Tournament chart
will jump us to the next dashboard and filter to the
relevant data.
Remember to name your filter action. Set the source
sheet to Tournament and the target sheet to
dashboard 3. If you choose to filter on All fields,
then our table will only show information for one
team. If we filter on just year we can compare
across all teams on a selected Year.
Test your new filter action now. Remember, if you set
your filter action to run on a Menu select, then you
will have to select the link in the tooltip of your mark.
5
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Dynamic Title
Great, we can jump to another dashboard now. Let’s
make a dynamic title that shows us what year
we’re looking at.
1. Double click the title to edit it.
2. Drop the Year tag into the title. Use the ‘Year
title’ dimension
Tags update dynamically based on the value currently
shown in the view.
6
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Jump Back Button
So we can now jump to a new dashboard and apply
filters, but what if we want to jump back to our
previous dashboard?
We can build a filter action to take us back.
1. Create a new sheet and call it ‘back button.’
2. Add Number of Records (a measure) to the
Detail shelf and change the mark type to
shape. (screenshot 1)
3. Select a shape that you’d like as your back
button by clicking on the Shape shelf button.
4. Go to dashboard 3 and drop the back button
sheet onto the dashboard. Right click the title
and hide it. Set the view size to Entire View.
(screenshot 2)
5. Create a dashboard action and set the back
button, on Dashboard 3, as the Source and
Dashboard 2 as the target. You can filter on All
Fields because the mark on the sheet doesn’t
have any fields associated with it so it won’t
actually be filtering any data. It will however
still jump to the target. (screenshot 3)
2.
1.
3.
7
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Informative Tooltip for Back Button
We can also add a comment to button that appears
when we mouse over the button.
1. From dashboard 3, select the back button
sheet, then open the Worksheet menu and
select Tooltip.
2. Type in your own message and uncheck
‘Include command buttons’.
Click Steps
Screenshots
8
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
URL Action
The bar chart shows each host of the world cup and
the number of attendees. Let’s build a URL filter
that brings in relevant data from the web based
on our selection.
1. Drag out a Web Page object and leave the URL
blank.
2. Go to the actions menu and create a new URL
action.
3. Our selections in our source sheets will serve
as inputs to the URL. The input will be injected
into the URL wherever we drop the data tag.
This is how we can interact with our browser.
In this case, I want to retrieve information on
a certain world cup, so I may want to use the
Host or Year tag.
4. Retrieve the base URL. In this example, I’m
using Wikipedia and I will be inputting
searches, so my base URL is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=
5. Paste the base URL in the URL text box and
add your search parameters with your tag.
(see screenshot)
9
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software
Click Steps
Screenshots
Cross Data source Filter Action
Now, what about situations where you are using
multiple data sources and you want to filter from
one data source to another?
The trend chart at the bottom of our dashboard is
from another data source.
This data is from the World Bank showing the GDP in
US dollars for many countries as well as the
percent growth from the previous year. Going
back to the dashboard, let’s create a filter that,
based on our selection, will filter our trend chart
to the country of interest.
1. Create a new action.
2. Choose to filter on Selected Fields, we will
have the option to define our Target Data
Source. Be sure to target the correct Data
Source (GDP from the World Bank).
(screenshot)
This use case would also benefit with a highlight
action that highlights the year that the country hosted
on the GDP trend chart.
1. Add a Highlight Action
2. Set the source to the Hosts sheet and the
Target to World Bank GDP.
3. Run on Select
4. Target all fields.
10
Copyright 2013 Tableau Software