Why Do You Need Actions In Tableau?

Tableau has taken the Business Intelligence industry by storm and it is one of the best tools for Data Visualization. This article explains an important Tableau concept that is Actions In Tableau. Following pointers will be covered in this article,

If you want to brush up on some Tableau basics, which I recommend you to do before going ahead with this Actions in Tableau, take a look at this video

So let us get started quickly,

Why do you need ‘Actions’ in Tableau?

Well, by using Actions in Tableau, you bring interactivity to your data. Be it a dashboard or worksheet, users are redirected to specific Actions that you set up by merely hovering or clicking in your viz.

We will now learn about some Actions,

Tableau Actions

First, let us create 3 worksheets using Global Superstore data:

• Month wise Profit & Sales
• Country-wise Profit
• Category wise Sales & Profit
• Also, drag and drop ‘Web Page’ from the Objects pane present at the left and click Ok. (I’ll tell you why we doing this later)

And finally, combine them to form a dashboard like this:

Now we will use Actions one by one.

When you are on your Tableau dashboard, you can open the Actions Dialog Box by clicking on Dashboard>Actions, or by simply pressing ‘Ctrl+Shift+D’. You will see this dialogue box:

Let us see how can we use some filters,

Using a Filter Worksheet on Tableau Dashboard

You can use any worksheet as a filter to your dashboard. When the user selects a given parameter on a worksheet, then the whole dashboard gets filtered according to the selected parameter.

• Click on Add Actions> Filter
• Give a name to your filter to avoid confusion. I have given the name ‘Market – Filter’
• Select the source sheet which you want to use as a filter to the dashboard, I am using Category Wise Sales & Profit
• On the right pane, choose Run action on ‘Select’
• Choose the target sheets, in general, we choose all the sheets of Dashboard here, but you can choose according to your requirement.
• These sheets will get filtered out when the user chooses the parameter on Source Sheet. (Here the source sheet is: Category Wise Sales & Profit).
• Click ok and close the Actions dialogue box.

Now, when you click on the Asia Pacific, you will see that all the sheets on the dashboard are showing values relevant to the Asia Pacific. This is a very useful and interactive filter as it gives end-users the ability to filter out the worksheet from Visualization itself.

What if you want to redirect the user to a specific webpage when he/she clicks on a particular field?

This can be easily done using Actions in Tableau.

Here, I am taking an example of opening a Wikipedia page of a specific country chosen by the user on the map.

This can be easily done following these steps:

• Open Actions dialog box (use Ctrl+Shift+D) and click on ‘Add Action’.
• Give a name to the link, and select the Source Sheet which consists of a map or name of the country, according to your visualization.
• In general, the Wikipedia URL for different countries is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<Country Name>

As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India

• • Paste a general URL like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ and then click on Arrow, now choose a field according to which web page should be changed. I am choosing the Country here. Notice that the URL is now changed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

• You can test this link by clicking on ‘Test Link’. If it works, then you are good to go, if not, kindly recheck the general URL.
• Choose ‘Web Page Object’ as URL Target. You can choose either the first or last option if you wish to redirect the user on a browser, instead of restricting him to the dashboard.
• Now click Ok and close the Actions Dialog box.

When the user clicks on any country on the map, the Wikipedia page of that country shows up:

These are the most commonly used Tableau Dashboard Actions. We shall always try to build an interactive and informative dashboard as much as we can, and Actions surely play a vital role in bringing interactivity to your sheets.

This brings us to the end of this article on Actions in Tableau. If you wish to master Tableau, Edureka has a curated course on Tableau course which covers various concepts of data visualization in depth.

Got a question for us? Please mention it in the comments section of this article and we will get back to you at the earliest.