Year in Review / Top 10 Posts of 2017

Thank you for reading this year. Your support means a great deal to me and keeps me more motivated than you know to keep my commitment of providing a new Tableau tutorial, data visualization strategy, or data visualization every week. I would simply not have my career in data visualization if it were not for community members helping me along the way, and I hope this series has helped in some small way.

What a year it has been. The end of the year is always a time of reflection for me and I consistently have two feelings / thoughts: (1) gratefulness and (2) “How could next year possibly be better?”. This year included fifty new posts, fifteen public presentations in the US, and a Zen Master tour in Japan and Singapore.

This year will once again be hard to top, but I’ve got some huge news to stay tuned for in 2018. In the meantime, please review my 10 most popular posts of the year. There is a lot of insight in here about how people are using Tableau and hopefully some useful reminders that will help you get the most out of Tableau.

Top 10 Tableau tutorials of 2017

The following were my ten most viewed blog posts of 2017. They are sorted based on a 100-point index scale. The top post receives a score of 100; the formula for the number next to each post is: (the number of reads of the post / the number of reads of the most-read post) * 100.

3 Ways to Make Lovely Line Graphs in Tableau 100
This post shares three ideas for making your Tableau line graphs more engaging including formatting tips and two ways to use a dual-axis.

3 Ways to Make Beautiful Bar Charts in Tableau 96
This post shows how to make bar charts more engaging by using Tableau formatting, axis rulers to set a baseline, and a tutorial for making capped bars.

Tableau 201: How to Dynamically Format Numbers 60
This post shares a way to dynamically display an integer, percentage, or currency format based on what measure is being displayed on a view.

Practical Tableau: 3 Creative Ways to Use Dashboard Actions 53
How to use sheets as filters, embed videos in dashboards, and do Google searches from dashboards – all using Tableau dashboard actions.

How to Make a Timeline in Tableau 51
This tutorial shares how to make a timeline in Tableau and how to add an optional reference line to display the current day.

Tableau Legends Per Measure and Conditional Formatting Like Excel 45
This post discusses the legends per measure feature in Tableau and how to conditionally format in Tableau like you can in Excel.

How to Add a Button to a Tableau Dashboard 39
This post shares a simple way to improve your end user’s experience by adding a button to a Tableau dashboard. This button can link anywhere on the web.

How to Make Your New Favorite Tableau Date Comparison Filters 38
This post shows you how to compare two date ranges on one axis in Tableau and toggle the date range comparison between prior period and prior year.

Tableau 201: How to Make Dynamic Dual-Axis Bump Charts 25
This tutorial shows you how to make bump charts in Tableau and a way to allow your end users to choose what is being ranked in the visualization.

Tableau Fundamentals: An Introduction to Level of Detail Expressions 21
This Tableau 201 post provides an introduction to what level of detail is in Tableau and the LOD expressions syntax needed to control it.

Thanks again for reading. Wishing you the best in 2018,
– Ryan

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