You now have a framework that will support the telling of the data story. Your audience will be able to locate least profitable items within the context of a selected category. Then, the selection of an item will answer the question as to whether it has always been unprofitable in every location. To enable this flow and meet your objectives, you'll often need to enable interactivity. In this case, we'll use actions. We'll conclude this example with some specific steps and then unpack the intricacies of actions:
- Click the Use as Filter button on the Overall Profit by Category view. This will cause the view to be used as an interactive filter for the entire dashboard. That is, when the user selects a bar, all other views will be filtered based on the selection:
- From the main menu, select Dashboard | Actions. You'll see a list containing one action named Filter 1 (generated). This is the action that was created when you selected Use as Filter previously:
- Click the Add Action > button and select Filter. The resulting dialog gives you options for selecting the source and target, as well as additional options for the action.
- Here, we want an action that filters everything except the Overall Profit by Category view when the user selects an item. In the Add Filter Action dialog, set Source Sheets to Top 10 Least Profitable Items, and Target Sheets to Profit by State and Profit Trend. Make sure that the action is set to run on Select. Name the filter Filter by Item, and then click OK on this dialog. Do the same on the Actions dialog:
You now have three filters (two are actions) that drive the dashboard:
- Selecting a Department from the drop-down will filter the entire dashboard (and actually all views in the workbook as you set it to filter every view using the data source)
- Selecting a Category (clicking a bar or header) will filter the entire dashboard to that selection
- Selecting an Item (clicking a bar or header) will filter the Profit by State and Profit Trend dashboards
You can clear a selection in a view by clicking a blank area or by clicking the selected mark one more time. For example, if you clicked the bar for Bookcases to select it (and thus filter the rest of the dashboard), you may click the bar one more time to deselect it.
Experiment with the filters and actions to see how your dashboard functions.