Antichaos
Tableau, Data Analyse & Visualisatie
A powerful way of creating flexible, user-friendly dashboards is by letting your users decide how they want to view the data. Instead of forcing them to view at a certain chart type, you can give them the option to chose between different visualizations- bar charts, line charts, etc, or variations on a chart, based on their need, or preference.
When people think of Tableau, they usually picture dashboards, visualizations, and drag-and-drop analytics. In this traditional setup, users explore data by interacting with dashboards: charts, filters, tooltips, etc. But what if you don’t need the visuals at all—just the data behind them, with all the same calculations, filters, and logic already applied?
That’s where the VizQL Data Service (VDS) comes in.
Rather than returning charts and visuals, it taps into Tableau’s VizQL engine to give you just the data behind any published view.. Instead of clicking through a dashboard, you can get the same data directly—like a spreadsheet or text file—by sending a simple request from another app or script.
In this post, we’ll explore what the VizQL Data Service is, what you can do with it, and how it fits into the broader Tableau ecosystem. A hands-on example is coming soon in a follow-up article!
[Read more…] about The Tableau VizQL Data Service: What It Is, What It Can Do, and When to Use ItWhen working with text data in Tableau, you’ll often need to clean or reshape strings to better fit your analysis or visual presentation.
Abbreviating text is a common challenge when designing dashboards, reports, or any interface where space is limited. Whether you’re working with long product names, category labels, or freeform text fields, overly long strings can clutter layout and make visualizations harder to read.
[Read more…] about Abbreviate long text in TableauPie charts — they seem to be everywhere. They show up in presentations, reports, and in every stockphoto about business meetings.
They’re colorful, round, and look super friendly… but despite being one of the most popular chart types, they’re also one of the most frustrating to actually read.
[Read more…] about Two Pie Chart AlternativesParameters are a powerful feature in Tableau — they enable dynamic controls, what-if scenarios, and interactive dashboards. But when it comes to usability, they often fall short, especially in how values are displayed to end users.
By default, parameter values are raw numbers, which can be hard to interpret by users. Whether you’re showing date ranges, filter types, or word lengths, poorly labeled parameters can make a dashboard feel clunky and inaccessible. In this post, I’ll show you a simple way to make a slider-parameter clearer, more intuitive, and more user-friendly.
[Read more…] about The Case for Clearer Parameter Labels in Tableau