When we build dashboards, we give our end users a holistic view of the data. However, to see what is really happening with the data, the users need to interact with the dashboard and uncover insights all by themselves. We can make this process a little easier for the end users by guiding them via some instructions on the dashboard; however, it is still an investigative approach. It can be time-consuming for the end users to first find the insights and then take action, so rather than making our users dig out the findings, it would be great if we could give them some readily consumable insights by placing data in an easy-to-understand manner.
Story points in Tableau help us achieve this objective by giving us a framework for walking the end users through series of data points that require attention. Very simply put, story points in Tableau helps us tell stories about our data while still being connected to the data, so when the data changes, our story updates accordingly.
For this recipe, we will use the fields from the already connected World Indicators.tde
dataset that we downloaded for our earlier chapter from the following link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Av5QCoyLTBpnhks3n2mxItiI7-tb.
We downloaded this extract file earlier and saved it to our Tableau Cookbook data
folder in Documents/My Tableau Repository/Datasources
. We will continue working in the same workbook My first Tableau Workbook
. Since we have already made a connection to this .tde
file, it should be available for us to use in the Data window of the Tableau workbook. Let us get started with the recipe.
Global Energy Usage
.World Indicators.tde
data source from the Data pane to see the Dimensions and Measures of that data source. Refer to the following screenshot:Energy Usage Trend for US & China
.Energy Usage Trend for US & China
and rename it as Energy Usage vs CO2 Emissions
. We'll then make some quick modifications to this sheet. To begin with, remove Country field from Color shelf and place it in the Rows shelf. Refer to the following screenshot:Energy usage vs CO2 Emissions
trend has been steady for United States whereas for China the CO2 Emissions have increased multiple times with the increase in Energy Usage. Further more, in this chart, the line color indicates the Measures and not the Country, as shown in the previous sheet. This can be confusing for our end users. Therefore, let's quickly make sure to change the color in the preceding chart and to do so, we will right-click on the Color legend and select the Edit Colors… option. Select the new colors and our view will update as shown in the following screenshot:My sample storyboard
instead of Story 1
. Now, just like we dragged the sheets on our dashboard earlier, we will drag the sheets on the Story. Refer to the following screenshot:Energy Usage Trend for US & China
sheet on the story. We will drag the sheet from our Sheets section on the left-hand side and drop it over the button which reads New Blank Point. Refer to the following screenshot:Energy Usage Trend for US & China
sheet, let's also get the Energy Usage vs CO2 Emissions
sheet by dragging and dropping it into the next Add New Point tab. Once we do that, our view will be as shown in the following screenshot:Energy usage across the Globe
; on the next Add a caption tab, type Energy usage trend across years for US & China
, and finally, on the third Add a caption tab, type Energy usage vs CO2 emission trend across years for US & China
. This will update our view to that shown in the following screenshot:Energy Usage Story
. Refer to the following screenshot:My sample storyboard
and select the Hide All Sheets option. Refer to the following screenshot:In the preceding recipe, we saw how to create a story. Now, when we click on each tab, it gives us one Story point from the entire Story we are trying to convey to the end user.
In the earlier recipe, we pulled individual sheets on to our storyboard. However, in case we wish to use our dashboards as story points, we can do that as well. When we look at the Sheets section on the left-hand side, we will see the list of all the worksheets, as well as the dashboards we have created so far. Refer to the following screenshot:
Further more, in the preceding recipe, if we want to give more details to our end user or perhaps explain why we are narrowing our focus only to the US and China, we can do so by adding descriptions to our story points. For this, we can select our desired Story point and then double-click on Description in the left-hand section. Refer to the following screenshot:
To learn more about Story, refer the following link: http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/stories.html.