Tableau Stories and Dashboards

Finally, we want to cover how to combine individual charts in Tableau to make stories and dashboards.

Often in your career you won’t find that one visualization that says all that you need it to. You may have to create a series of visualizations to show off your analysis.

A worksheet holds one chart.

Tableau has two different ways to combine worksheets to convey your findings: stories and dashboards.

Stories look like presentations in that each chart is on its own slide. Dashboards are one page where you can add as many visualizations as you want.

How to Create a Dashboard

In the bottom left-hand corner, you have three buttons for creating a new worksheet, a new dashboard, and a new story.

The button to create a new dashboard looks like a grid with a plus sign. Click on it to make a new blank dashboard. You can drag available worksheets into your dashboard.

Before you start adding any visualizations, you might find it helpful to sketch out what you want to put in your dashboard. A dashboard works best when multiple visualizations are meant to be viewed all at once.

For example, if you used Tableau for your personal budgeting, you might want to combine a visualization for your monthly expenses and your annual spending into a dashboard. Such a dashboard might help you more easily spot discrepancies in your spending on groceries or dining out.

Another benefit of Tableau dashboards is that you can add interactivity for the user. You can add filters and navigation to help users seamlessly transition between dashboards or between a dashbord and a story.

Filling in the Gaps: PluralSight Content (see warning notice below)

At this moment, please pause your reading of the textbook and complete the PluralSight course linked below. This course will help you further understand how to build your dashboard. Once you are finished with this course, please continue reading the chapter.

1. Build Your First Dashboard with Tableau

How to Create a Story

Unlike dashboards, stories help us group together related visualizations that we want to include in the same conversation, but do not want to directly compare.

In the bottom left-hand corner, you can click the icon that looks like an open book with a plus sign to create your first story. Your first story point is blank. However, on the left-hand side, you will find all the available worksheets and dashboards you can add. To add an item to your first story point, drag it inside the story point window.

For each story point, your captions will appear above the visualization.

Click on the gray box labeled Add a caption to enter your caption text. Remember: you might not get a chance to explain all the details of your analysis, so a caption can support your visualization if you do not get a chance to talk about it with your viewers.

To add a new story point, you will want to redirect your attention back to the left-hand side and select Blank under New Storypoint. You can add as many story points as you need to convey your findings to your audience!

Story Best Practices

While much of what we have already covered will serve you well when making effective stories, we want you to consider two new items when making your work shine:

1. The order of your visualizations
2. The screen size of the story

For the order of your visualizations, there is no right or wrong way we can summarize here.

The most effective order depends on your audience and what you want to share. All we can say is that you may find it helpful to sketch out the order before you start assembling your story. As you make note of each viz, ask yourself “What is this visualization revealing to my audience and do the visualizations that come before it help enhance that point?”.

You want your story points to support each other and build up to your conclusions.

Your audience may not view your story on the same size screen you built it on. If you do not size your story based on your audiences expected screen size, your visualizations may end up getting re-sized in a way that makes the legends and axes difficult to read.

Below the listing of available worksheets and dashboards in Tableau, you will find the list of available sizes. You can choose a standard size or set a custom size.

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