A common piece of feedback about Tableau is that the learning curve is a little steeper than some of the other products on the market – and I would agree! The blank canvas can be intimidating and dashboards can get so complex and intricate it can be difficult to know where to begin as an end user.
This post is for those who create dashboards and are looking to enable their end users to explore a dashboard in the way you intend.
There are a few different ideas out there for providing links/embedded videos or having “help” tool-tips where users can read how to use the dashboard. These are great options, but things happen so fast in Tableau, it’s easy to forget what you saw in the video. As for reading text…It can be difficult to describe how a drill down path works.
Enter, embedding GIFs into your dashboard! A GIF is a great way to have a loop replaying on your dashboard to show your end user how to navigate the dashboard. No external links, no need to pause, rewind, etc. watch the GIF a few times and you are ready to rock and roll. Here is an example of what we are working toward (give it a second when you click the button, Tableau Public is a little delayed).
This tutorial will start with the assumption you have already created the GIF. I personally like ezgif.com. We will also leverage Google Drive to host the GIFs.
First, upload you GIF into Google Drive. Open the file and choose the drop-down to open in it’s own window.
Next, choose the share option:
And click the link, so that anyone can access the file:
Hit done, and from the same drop down menu choose embed:
and grab the embed code. You will only need the url, not the iframe part.
Now, in a new dashboard, we can simply bring in the “web page” element and put our link in there:
And there is the GIF! Ready to be viewed over and over again in all of its glory.
You can stop here if that is all you need, but we are going to take it one step further by creating a navigation button just for some added flair.
In a new sheet, you can create a calculated field that is simply the label you want for you navigation button (note you can use min(number of records) or any other variation).
Place that calculation onto label and choose shape as the mark type:
You can edit the label positioning to where you would like it:
Lastly, add this sheet to you GIF dashboard, and put a dashboard action on that will take us to the actual dashboard:
And that’s it! Embedding GIFs like so into your Tableau dashboards can be a really handy way to ensure people know a) that they can interact with the dashboard and b) how to interact effectively to get the most use out of it.
tableau it! 