Learn How to Enhance Views with Filters, Sets, Groups and Hierarchies in Tableau?

Enhancing views with filters, sets, groups and hierarchies

Sorting isn’t the only way to arrange data. Creating drill-down hierarchies are easy in Tableau. Perhaps your data include a dimension set with too many members for convenient viewing. Grouping dimensions within a particular field is also available. Interacting with your data may uncover measurement outliers that you would like to save and reuse in other visualizations. That capability is enabled via sets. Even group of sets can be created on-the-fly.

Making hierarchies to provide drill-down capability:

Hierarchies provide a way to start with a high-level overview of your data, and then drill down to lower levels of detail on demand. In below diagram you can see a two-level view of the data that includes product category and then sub-category. That presentation may include more detail than you prefer to see. A hierarchy that combines category and sub-category can address both needs. Below diagram uses a hierarchy to show category first and sub-category on demand.

Hierarchy using category and sub-category Diagram :

Making a custom hierarchy Diagram :

The bar chart on the left displays the summary product category. By pointing at the category heading, a small plus sign will appear. Clicking on that causes the sub-category level of detail to be exposed. To collapse the hierarchy, the point at the category heading again and click on the minus sign. You can create as many levels in your hierarchy as you desire.

Hierarchies are created by pointing at a dimension field and dragging it on top of another field. The order of appearance is defined by dragging the field names contained within the hierarchy icon to the desired position. Below diagram shows the hierarchy icon with category and sub-category. You can change the hierarchy name by pointing at the text to the right of the hierarchy icon and typing product hierarchy.

Other fields can be added to the hierarchy by positioning them in the order desired inside the hierarchy grouping, on the dimension shelf.

Creating and Using Filters

There are a few different ways to add filtering to your visualization. Dragging any dimension or measure onto the filter shelf provides filtering that is accessible to the designer. Make that filter accessible to more people by turning it into a Quick Filter. This places it on the desktop where it is accessible to anyone— even those reading your report via Tableau Reader or Tableau Server. You can also create conditional filters that operate according to rules you define.

Creating a Filter with the Filter Shelf:

In the below diagram, the category and sub-category view contains seventeen different rows of data. Suppose you want to hide five of those rows from view. Dragging the sub-category field from the dimension shelf and placing it in the filter shelf exposes the filter menu. Below diagram shows the filtered data with the general tab of the filter menu. The sub-categories that do not have check marks have been filtered out of view.

Diagram of Applying a filter via the filter shelf :

Notice that there are three other tabs on the filter menu. The Wildcard tab is typically used to search for text strings to filter. If you want to filter using another field that isn’t in your view you can use the Condition tab to select any field in your data source and filter using that field. The Top tab facilitates building top and bottom filtering or filtering requiring other formula conditions. If you use more than one of the filtering option tabs to define your filter, Tableau applies the conditions defined in each tab in the order tabs appearing from left to right. General conditions will be applied first, then wildcard, then condition, and the top tab conditions last.

Below the general field list to the right of the None button there is a check box for the Exclude option. If Exclude is checked, the items that include check marks are filtered out of view. Exclude filters can take a little longer to execute than Include filters, especially if your data set is very large.

Quick Filters:

If you want to make the filter available for people that are viewing the report via Tableau Reader or Server you need to expose the filter control on the desktop. To create a Quick Filter, point and right-click on any pill used on any shelf in your worksheet, then select the Show Quick Filter option. Below diagram includes Quick Filters using the category and sales fields.

Diagram of Adding quick filters to the desktop :

The default quick filter styles are dependent on the type of field you apply within the quick filter control. In below diagram, the discrete category field results in discrete filter options (furniture office supplies, technology). Discrete filters are expressed using radio buttons or multi-select boxes. The second quick filter for sales (a continuous range of values) is expressed using slider-type filters. Editing the quick filter type can be done from inside the quick filter itself. Click on the title bar of the filter to expose the available options. Below diagram shows examples of the menus that can be activated from the category and sales quick filter title bars.

Editing quick filter types Diagram :

The menu on the left side of the below diagram relates to discrete category filters. The right menu is for the continuous filters. In addition to controlling the filter style, you can adjust many other attributes. You can edit the titles of each filter by including the words, discrete and continuous and applying a different color to each word and centering the title. The quick filter titles in below diagram have been modified in this way. These are the quick filter menus (both continuous and discrete):

• • Edit filter— Exposes the main filter menu.

• • Clear filter— Removes the Quick Filter.

• • Apply to worksheets— Apply the filter to all or selected worksheets.

• • Customize— Turn on or off different filter controls.

• • Show title— Turn off or on the Quick Filter title.

• • Edit title— Modify the text in the Quick Filter title.

• • Only relevant values— Turning this on reduces the set members displayed in the filter.

• • Include values— Causes selected items in the filter to be included in the view.

• • Exclude values— Causes selected items in the filter to be excluded from view.

• • Hide card— Removes the Quick Filter from view, but leaves it on the filter shelf.

These are the Quick Filter menu items that appear only if the Quick Filter is on a dashboard:

• • Floating— If activated, allows the filter to float on top of other worksheet objects.

• • Select layout container— Activates the layout container in the dashboard.

• • Deselect— Removes the layout container selection in the dashboard.

• • Remove from dashboard— Removes the Quick Filter from the dashboard.

The remaining sections of each filter type control the style of quick filter. There are seven styles of discrete and three styles of continuous quick filter types available. An additional feature available directly from the quick filter is the ability to control the relevant values displayed directly from the desktop. Below diagram displays a small control (three bars).

Diagram of including all or relevant values :

This is important when you have several quick filters exposed in a view. For example, a hierarchy of quick filters might include a filter to select state, then city. Restricting the city filter to include only the relevant values means that if a particular state (Georgia) is selected in the first quick filter, the city quick filter would only display cities in the state of Georgia. If the city filter didn’t apply only relevant values, the filter would contain every city in the United States.

Context Filters:

One type of filter that many experienced Tableau users are unaware of is the context filter. Context filters do not only filter the data, they cause Tableau to create a temporary table that contains only the filtered data. For this reason they execute more slowly than a normal filter. Context filters are denoted by a gray-colored pill. They can be useful if you want to work with a subset to achieve a particular result. Don’t use a context filter if you plan to alter the filter frequently.

Tableau provides robust filtering. In Chapter 8 on dashboards, you’ll learn how to save space on dashboards by making the data act as a filter by using actions to apply filters.

Grouping Dimensions:

When you have a dimension that contains many members and your source data doesn’t include a hierarchy structure, grouping can provide summarized view of the data. You can manually group items from headers or multi-select marks in a chart. Tableau also provides a menu option with fuzzy search that will help you group by searching strings in large lists of values. You can even group by selecting marks in a view. If you need to work with data that isn’t structured the way you want it, grouping allows you to build that structure within Tableau.

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How to Enhance Views with Filters, Sets, Groups and Hierarchies