Sets and parameters add flexibility to dashboards and often power some of the less obvious interactions behind the scenes. They enable dynamic filtering, user-driven analysis, and responsive visual elements without requiring complex redesigns. By allowing users to adjust views, highlight key segments, or control calculations, they play a crucial role in making dashboards more interactive, intuitive and insightful.
What is a Set?
A set is a subset of data that you define based on conditions or manual selection. As opposed to Groups in Tableau, Sets group data dynamically or highlight specific members within a dimension.
There are three main types of sets:
- Constant/Fixed Sets: The members of a fixed set do not change, even if the underlying data changes. A fixed set can be based on a single dimension or multiple dimensions.
- Computed/Dynamic Sets: The members of a dynamic set change when the underlying data changes. Dynamic sets can only be based on a single dimension.
- Combined Sets: We can combined sets together to create a combined set. This allows us to create additional analysis to compare, contrast or even combine the membership of different sets.
Example Use Cases
- Getting the top 5 and bottom 5 items from a field
- Highlighting only a specific items in a field
- Grouping items as an In and Out set
- Matching items based on a calculated field
What is a Parameter?
A parameter is a value that a user can change in a view. This gives the user control over the visualisation. Unlike sets, parameters are not tied directly to your data.
There are different types of parameters:
- Filter parameters: Used to filter data dynamically, for example to select a category of products from a sales dataset.
- Top N/Threshold Parameters: These control ranking or limits. For example, to show the top 10 products by sales.
- Measure Swap Parameters: These allow the measures on a chart to be swapped. For example, to switch between sales and profit metrics on a line chart.
- Dimension Swap Parameters: These allow the dimensions on a chart to be swapped. For example, region and category.
And more…
Example Use Cases
- Want to change a metric/dimension on a chart
- Select a specific item to color across multiple charts
- Allow the user to specify the top N elements they want to see
- Change where a reference line is located
- Switch between viewing charts on a dashboard