In Tableau, an action is a user initiated event that triggers a response from Tableau. You've seen a few examples of actions being used in dashboards already. We'll now consider some details of how actions work in Tableau.

Tableau supports five kinds of actions:

• Filter actions: The user's action causes one or more filters to be applied to one or more views.
• Highlight actions: The user's action causes specific marks and headers to be highlighted in one or more views.
• URL actions: The user's action causes a specific URL to be opened (either in a browser, a new tab, or in an embedded web object).
• Set actions: The user's action defines a set. Sets may be used in calculations, filters, and on shelves to define visual attributes of marks. This opens a lot of possibilities to allow for complex and creative interactions.
• Parameter actions: The user's action changes the value of a parameter. This allows the user to visually interact with parameters in new and exciting ways! (As of this writing, parameter actions have not been released, but are planned in the near future).

Certain actions are automatically generated by Tableau based on shortcuts. For example, you can select Use as Filter from the drop-down menu of a view on a dashboard, which results in an automatically generated filter action. Enabling highlighting using the button on a discrete color legend or from the toolbar will automatically generate a highlight action:

You can also create or edit dashboard actions by selecting Dashboard | Actions from the menu. Let's consider the details of each type of action.