Everyone creating a Dashboard in Tableau probably knows this struggle: You pulled a few sheets into your dashboard, took the time to carefully resize everything, put everything into place. Then you drag in another sheet and - oh no! - suddenly your beautiful dashboard design is destroyed! And the most frustrating part is you don’t know why and might spend another half an hour to try to restore everything.
But it does not have to be like this! Here is a small guide how to set yourself up for success by carefully designing your dashboard layout.
The secret is in the hierarchy
You can drag and drop in dashboard containers in your Dashboard view to have control over the types of containers. Also, you can see your item hierarchy in the layout view, which will tell you which containers you have, how they are nested, and which items are placed exactly where.
There are three types of containers
Horizontal: Items are placed side-by-side
Vertical: Items are on top of each other
Tiled: Tableau’s default layout mode
While tiled containers are quite useful for making quick and simple dashboards, they will cause issues when trying to create more elaborate dashboards. They automatically resize, since it is not possible to set an exact hight or width and might mess up your dashboard layout when you drag and drop to many items into your dashboard. Therefore, avoiding tiled containers is best practice!
When you drag and drop your sheets into your dashboard, Tableau will automatically create containers, depending on where you place your items. The most outer container created is automatically a tiled container, as you will see in your tableau container hierarchy. A way to avoid this is drag and drop your desired containers into the dashboard, before placing your items.
A step-by-step guide on successful containering
Step 0: Sketch
Make a sketch of your dashboard on paper or Excalidraw, so you know how your layout should look like. Then, think of where you need horizontal or vertical containers.
Step 1: Choose a size
Choose a dashboard size. If you set it to automatic you will run into problems, so it’s good to set a fixed size.
Step 2: Create the outermost container
This is very important! Always start with an outermost floating container. Why? It will be easier to add more containers to the top of the hierarchy if you need to make changes. This will also stop Tableau from creating an outer tiled container.
Step 3: Build your dashboard from the outside in
Drag your first containers and sheets into the floating container. Be careful - sometimes tableau creates a tiled one - so closely watch the item hierarchy every time you drag and drop another item. Best practice is to name all your containers to maintain the best overview. Work from your way from the outermost layer, so the top of the hierarchy, to the innermost layer.
Step 4: The finishing touches
Set your paddings, background colours and set the hights and widths of your containers, if you have not already done this in Step 3. A good padding will make your dashboard look more polished and more pleasing to the eye.
Tips and tricks:
Avoid floating items if possible - except the first floating container of course - since they might relocate when someone views your dashboard with a different resolution.
How to make a divider line: Drag in a blank space, set a background colour of your choosing and set width or hight to 1 - viola, you have a line!
When dragging an object into your master floating container, hold Shift to keep it from snapping into a tiled position you didn't want. If you see "Tiled" appearing in your hierarchy tree, Ctrl+Z is your best friend!
For more information you can find a step-by-step guide by Andy Kriebel on Tableau Public.