BYU Student Author: @MitchFrei
Reviewers: @IWillyerd, @Donovon
Estimated Time to Solve: 20 Minutes
We provide the solution to this challenge using:
- Tableau
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Overview
Virtuoso Virtual is a rapidly growing company determined to make a name for itself in the virtual reality gaming industry. You have been hired as a financial analyst to oversee the Cost department. You help manage supplier relationships, ensure that expenses are on budget, and recommend solutions to drive down Cost of Goods Sold to increase margins. The employee who was previously in your position built a Tableau dashboard to track quarterly expenses but quit unexpectedly before he could finish. Your boss wants you finish the dashboard by making it interactive and user-friendly. This is a great way to prove yourself to your boss and develop some useful data analysis skills!
Instructions
Your boss’s instructions are as follows: “I want this dashboard to be interactive when I hover over and click on certain items. Specifically…
- When I hover over a supplier in the Supplier section, I want the Quarterly Comparison and Weekly Expenses sections to filter on that Supplier.
- When I hover over a week in the Weekly Expenses section, I want the Quarterly Comparison and Supplier sections to filter on that week.
- When I click on a Supplier, I want it to take me to the Item Drilldown dashboard. When it takes me to the Item Drilldown dashboard, the Items, Avg Shipping Costs, and Unpaid Orders sections should be filtered for that supplier as well.
- Once I’m on the Item Drilldown dashboard, it would be nice to be able to hover over an item in any section and have it highlight that item in the other sections.
- I’ll also need a button in the top right corner of the Item Drilldown dashboard that takes me back to the Expense Dashboard.
- Oh, and one last thing on the Item Drilldown dash – I’d like the titles of the sections to display the supplier name that it’s filtered on… For example, the title for the Items section would say, “Items from Mighty Metal” if I had clicked on Mighty Metal in the Expense Dashboard. Do this for the three sections on the Item Drilldown dashboard (don’t worry about adding dynamic titles on the Expense Dashboard). Good luck!”
Extra Challenge
What other visualizations can you create to provide actionable insights to the Cost team? Can you make these interactive as well? Get creative!
Data Files
Suggestions and Hints
- Dashboard Actions - You will need to utilize Dashboard Actions to create this kind of interactivity. Click on Dashboard → Actions… → Add Action → then either Filter, Highlight, or Go to Sheet. Source sheets are the sheets that you interact with (hover or select (click)) and target sheets are what is altered based on that action. Keep “All fields” selected in the Filter section. Make sure to select “Clearing the selection will show all values.”
- Navigation Objects - To create a button that goes to a sheet, you will need a Navigation Object. At the bottom of the Dashboard pane on the left-hand side you’ll see “Objects.” Drag a Navigation object to the top right corner of the dashboard and adjust the size, title, color to match the style of the dashboard. Alt+click to test the navigation.
- Dynamic Titles - To create dynamic titles, you can add fields to the title that will automatically adjust with the filter selections. Right click on the title, select “Edit Title,” and after “” type “ from ” then select “Supplier” from the Insert dropdown menu.
Solution