How to Make Tableau Dashboard More Interactive with Dynamic Dimensions

Introduction

Interactive dashboards are an excellent way to track, analyze, and display data in various ways. Tableau is a great tool for building user-friendly and customized interactive dashboards, which allows us to create tooltips, filters, sets, parameters, and many sheet and dashboard actions. Dynamic dimensions could be leveraged to make the dashboard more interactive by having options to display different values within the same dashboard or visualization.

Dynamic dimensions

Dimensions of our visualizations could be changed using parameters and calculated fields. We can analyze this with an example. Here is a simple dashboard built using a superstore sample dataset showing sales in different categories. The buttons at the top of the dynamic dashboard allow users to pick the top five fields based on sales: customers, products, and cities. When users click on the buttons, our graphs/tables alter accordingly.

1) Create a parameter that would change the view.

In our example, we want to see our graphs and tables in three different categories: customers, products, and cities.

2) Create a calculated field for our dynamic dimensions

3) Place your calculated field in your viz

4) Create sets

As we want to see top 5 values based on sales, we need to create sets to filter.

5) Create another calculated field for sets and place it as filter

6) Implement this to all your graphs/tables

We can use the dropdown or make our buttons stand out on our interactive dashboard.

Let’s now dive into how we can build those buttons with a highlighting effect:

a) Create a new worksheet

b) Create two calculated fields for your text using the parameter created previously.

So, we hide one text when the button is not clicked, while the rest will be colored black, and hide the other two when it's clicked, while the remaining will be colored blue.

c) Place these calculated fields in the marks and adjust with the font, font size, or color based on our need.

d) Put a dummy number on the sheet to create the parameter action. In this case, 1 will be the value that we have colored text in.

e) After placing the worksheet on the dashboard, resize it and then go to the dashboard > actions. Create a parameter action as:

e) Implement the same procedure for other buttons.

Conclusion

Dynamic dimensions technique could be leveraged for enhancing user interaction, improving dashboard flexibility, and enabling on-the-fly data exploration. This technique reduces dashboard clutter and increases ingredients for compelling data storytelling by allowing end-users to switch dimensions seamlessly, unlocking a more tailored and insightful analytical experience.