In order of usefulness, here are some Tableau tips that I learnt today:
Showing a Grid on a Dashboard
All you need to do is press G.
Just press G when on a dashboard, and bam! A grid shows up:
This is super useful for aligning text, containers and general formatting!
Dashboard Action Shortcut
For my World Cup Viz, I had 20+ actions that I had to create for the interactiviy that I wanted, and that was a very long process.
I wish I knew about this shortcut sooner to open up dashboard actions:
Control + Shift + D
It saves you a whole click and no need to move your mouse! Wonder what I'm gonna do with all this spare energy that I'm not wasting.... anyways.
Text Labels on Percentages
This is quite niche, but will eventually come in handy.
Tableau has custom formatting for numbers available in the format pane, with the syntax:
[PositiveN] ; -[NegativeN] ; [ZeroValues]
Here is a demonstation below, and the resulting effects on the bar labels:
This potentially can be very useful if you want to return a string for all values of a certain type, i.e. all zero values.
Renaming Containers
Too often, you will have containers inside containers inside ..... you get it - containerception.
When on a dashboard, you are able to rename containers. First, click on the sheet inside the container, and then keep double-clicking until you reach your desired container, you can see this view in the layout tab on the left.
You can then rename the container, which can grately help for clarity, as well as some selections where you need to know which container to use (like buttons).
Emoji Quick Access
Click Windows + . (fullstop)
This opens up a quick emoji keyboard, which can be usefull when coding in up or down arrows 🔻🔺for certain tooltips, or even including emojis in titles or text.
I hope this one is useful! 👍😊