Putting Everything Together

We will start by adding all of our worksheets to the dashboard and arranging them. Much of this is subjective, so do not feel compelled to give your worksheets the same positions and sizes as the ones shown unless you want to. The goal is to have all of the worksheets in one space. The worksheets provide very little data on their own compared to how much information they provide when given the context of all the others.

Learning Objectives

• Create a dashboard.
• Add worksheets to a dashboard.
• Change worksheet size and position.
• Add a non-worksheet object to a dashboard.

Creating a New Dashboard

1. Click the New Dashboard button (between the New Worksheet button and the New Story button at the bottom of the application).
2. Right click Dashboard 1 and rename it to Mods Dashboard (or any other descriptive name).

By default, Tableau has provided a range for the minimum and maximum height for displaying the visualization. If it is given more space than the maximum that extra space will not be filled, and if it is given less space than the minimum we will have to scroll to view the whole visualization. We can choose a fixed size instead or modify the minimum and maximum values for the range. We can also set the size to automatic, which means the visualization will fill whatever size screen it is given. This can be convenient, but it can also change the proportions depending on the width and height of a given viewer's screen. It could also cause problems if the visualization needs to be a certain size to be seen clearly. A range allows that minimum size to be specified, while still allowing for automatic readjustment within the minimum and maximum values provided.

Locate the Size section on the left. It should say something like min 420x560-max 650x8.... Clicking on the arrow to the right of the provided range will open a dropdown menu where we can change the minimum and maximum values for the range. The arrow next to the text Range will open a second dropdown that allows us to switch between fixed sizes, a range, or automatic sizing. When creating a visualization you will most likely want to test out size options to find what works best. For this tutorial we will go with automatic for simplicity.

Adding Worksheets

Take note of the Sheets section on the left, which contains a list of all of our worksheets. We will add worksheets to our dashboard from here the same way we added dimensions and measures to the worksheets.

1. Drag Map onto the empty dashboard. The worksheet will fill up the entire space.
2. Drag Top Tags onto the dashboard. You will see different areas become highlighted depending on where you position it. Tableau arranges items on dashboards as tiles, so this highlighted portion is indicating where the Top Tags tile would go. Drop the worksheet onto the top half of the dashboard to see what that looks like.

I am instantly filled with regret. This is not the ideal location for the bar chart, as Top Tags could use more height than width.

Rearranging Worksheets

Fortunately, we can move tiles on the dashboard as much as we want.

1. Make sure that Top Tags is selected. The selected tile will be outlined in dark gray.
2. Find the gray box in the top center. Hovering over it changes the cursor into arrows. Clicking and dragging will allow us to rearrange tiles.
3. Instead of having the bar chart on top of the map, we want the bar chart and map to be side by side. Click on the gray center box and drag the Top Tags tile to the left side of the dashboard. It may look like it will only be added to the bottom left, but both tiles will resize to take up the top and bottom.

It is not perfect, but it does look a lot better.

Adjusting Sizes

This would look better if the map were given more space. Hovering over the line between Top Tags and Map in the dashboard should turn the cursor into arrows indicating the direction of movement available. In this case we can click and drag the bar right or left. We want Top Tags to have less space (or more to the point, we want Map to have more), so we will drag the bar to the left.

Now we have seen how Tableau treats worksheets as "tiles," how to move those tiles around, and how to adjust the sizing of our worksheets. We still need to add both scatter plots, but this is an excellent chance to practice arranging the dashboard. In the screenshot below I have added them side-by-side below the map. If you like that location, try adding them somewhere else and moving them around. If you do not like that location, try adding them there first and then moving them where you like.

Adding Non-Worksheet Objects

On the left of the application (below Size and Sheets), note the Objects section. This is where we can add things like text boxes and images to our dashboard. In this case, we want to add a Text object to provide the source for the data we are visualizing.

We can add objects the same way we add worksheets - by clicking and dragging them onto the dashboard. I decided to put the text above the Top Tags bar chart. After dragging it the dashboard does not change immediately. We must first provide the text we want to show. We can edit the text after adding the object, but we may as well add it now and save a step later.

Text to add: CLIP: Data from: https://github.com/ou-ds-data/skyrim-mods

After clicking OK we can see the object we added.

Final Adjustments

The column on the right is wasting a lot of space. In the screenshot below I have moved both the category filter and the legend to the same column as the text box and the bar chart. I have also adjusted the sizing so that the bar chart is a little bit taller. I prefer not to scroll to see all twenty top tags.

Notice that moving both filter and legend means that the right column has disappeared, which means more space for the rest of our visualization. Note that the Endorsements scatter plot is now wider than the Approval Ratio scatter plot. This could use adjusting. If you have chosen a different configuration you may not have this issue.