Introduction

Tableau is a data visualization software that allows users to connect to various data sources, analyze and visualize data, and create interactive dashboards and reports. It provides a user-friendly interface and a wide range of visualization options to help users effectively communicate their data insights. Tableau is commonly used in business intelligence, data science, and analytics. I personally will say Tableau is a viable design experience tool compared to other visualization tools.

Background Information

Central to this episode of data digest, I will be walking you through a dataset from Leap, Inc. - a firm that specializes in manufacturing cars, planes, vessels, trucks and other transportation machines. The firm has been in operation since 2017 servicing clients across the globe.

Business Requirement

The executives of the firm believe that sales have remained consistent over the years. I will be assuming the position of data consultant to confirm the executive claim and also unveil viable insight into the firm's sales performance by leveraging Tableau.

If you prefer to watch me viz, this video details how to arrive at the final deliverable using Tableau. Otherwise, you can follow the step-by-step tutorial below.

In this tutorial, some of the key features you will learn include but are not limited to the following:

• Tracking the yearly sales performance
• Monthly sales in comparison to last month or the same period last year
• Sales prediction (outlook) years ahead
• How the company should spend its advertisement budget.

To follow along with the tutorial, you can download the dataset with the link: Download Dataset

Final Deliverables

The final visualization you will create in this project will look like this:

Final Visualization of the Sales Overview KPI with Figma and Tableau

It is important to note that this tutorial leveraged two key tools which are:

• Tableau - For the visualization and KPI metrics building.
• Figma - Design of Experience (background, interface and views)

Note: Alternatively, you could use PowerPoint or Canva to enhance your Tableau visuals experience

Understanding the Data

Let’s begin with the dataset. The dataset contains the following features (columns):

Note: It is sales data spanning 3 years. It contains 2823 rows (total number of sales transactions) and 24 key sales features (columns). I will be highlighting ten (10) key features that are important to this project:

1. Total quantity per order
2. Unit Price
3. Order date
4. Status of order (Cancelled, Disputed, In process, On hold, Resolved, Shipped)
5. Quarter of the year when order was made (1 - Qtr 1, 2 - Qtr 2, 3 - Qtr 3, 4 - Qtr 4)
6. Month of the year when order was made (month_ID: 1-12 = January - December respectively)
7. Year order was made (2017, 2018, 2019)
8. Product line
9. Country
10. Deal size

Calculated Features

Total Sales = [Quantity] * [Unit price]

Note: Other calculated features will be created within the project.

For this project, I will be focusing more on the sales features to build the KPI and with less emphasis on the locations and address.

Creating the Design View with Figma

For the project, I will be focusing on building the only the sales overview dashboard only.

Figma view for design experience

This is a design view I have created with Figma of size 1160 by 664 px, which encompasses my background, color scheme, paddings and gives a clear mark of the positions of big number showing the monthly sales and metrics of month on month (M-o-M), year on year (Y-o-Y) and versus target (vs. Target) in the smaller three squares and in the bigger rectangle on the right side to show the line chart (current year versus previous year versus target).

After this, move to the bottom right corner in Figma to save the view in a PNG format on your local computer folder that is easily accessible to you.

It is worth noting that, I will not be going into details about how this was designed in Figma, but you can do the same with PowerPoint or Canva to create a nice visual experience for your visualization in tandem with Tableau.

Tableau Design and Visualization

I will be visualizing and designing in Tableau in alignment with our business requirements and deliverables highlighted above. This visualization will combination of analysis using calculated field and modular entities for visualization.

1. Opening Tableau

For the purpose of this project, I will be leveraging Tableau Public software which is open source to anyone using Tableau.

2. Connect with Data

The data is the Lead Inc Sales Data.csv file, which is a text file and I will be importing into Tableau for the purpose of this project.

3. Data processing

Hide columns that will not be crucial to the analysis and visualization process. Some of this columns includes Phone, Addressline, Address and any other features that will not be necessary for the project. This helps to optimize the processing speed of your models in Tableau. After hiding this features, then move to the worksheet 1 to start the analysis and visualization proper

4. Create Dashboard

Create dashboard and name it [Sales Overview] and customize the size based on the size of the Figma background created above (1160 by 664 px) to be imported.

5. Create a container of same size as the Figma Background and import it into Tableau

Create a container of the same size as the Figma background using the horizontal function at the bottom left corner and import the background into the container. Edit the width and height to be (1160 by 664 px) from the layout tab.

Then add the background image into the created container, ensure to fit and center image for the image to take the shape of the container. Then go back to your sheet.

The final view of the background in the dashboard will look like this..

6. Creation of Table Analysis

• Drag Order Date to the row, it will display as year and we will like to analyze by month across 2017 to 2019

• Then change the Month format to month, year and select discrete as it will be in continuous form based on default setting for Tableau

• Create calculated field for sales feature

Calculated fields allow you to create new data from data that already exists in your data source. When you create a calculated field, you are essentially creating a new field (or column) in your data source, the values or members of which are determined by a calculation that you control.

• This pops up a box where you can use to create your calculated field based on the available measures.

• Drop the newly created sales calculated field beside the month column to have a table of sales by month, year

• Adding the sales feature into a folder by clicking groupby and then folder

• Then create a folder by right clicking on sales feature and then folder to create and name the folder as Sales Metrics

• Then the created folder appears on the top left corner of the tableau sheet.

• Create a measure called current month using the DATETRUNC function which helped to convert the year to month from order date. you can get this my double clicking on the month feature in the row field.

Note: DATETRUNC : This function truncates the specified date to the accuracy specified in the date_part.

• Then copy and use this to create truncated date with only month and year of the current month using max([Order Date]) in the copied formulae above to create the calculated field for current month

• Applying the created formulae to the entire dataset irrespective of the operation on the data previously. This is done by adding a curly ‘{ }’ bracket to both ends of the formulae

• Then re-add the current month feature and change from year to month and tick discrete to get the feature as month, year.

• Creating calculated field for current month sales

• Add the created field of current month sales to the row field and convert to discrete. This will only display for the month of May, 2019 due to the created field for current month created above

• Create a new sheet and drop the current month sales into the sheet for styling.

• 1. Add the current month to the text

• 2. Then design the text from the mark by using the drop down feature.

1. 3. Addition of the Nigerian currency sign (Naira)

1. 4. Then remove the decimal point in the current month sales by reducing the decimal point from 2 to 0

1. 5. Center align the both text and expand to entire view

2. 6. Rename the sheet also to be Current Sales

• Adding the current sales into the background created in our dashboard.

  1. 1. Create an horizontal container that is floating

  2. 2. Then drop a blank within the horizontal container while holding down shift function on your keyboard

  3. 3. Add another vertical container to the portion where the current month sales will sit and drag the current month sales sheet in.

  4. 4. Right click and remove the title of the sheet

  5. 5. Right click and format shading and remove background by clicking “none”

You will have this view after implementing all this bullet points above

• Calculation of Month-on-Month (M-o-M) Sales

  1. 1. Create a calculated field to get the previous month using the formulae below. This is simply like subtracting 1 month from the current month.

1. 2. Duplicate current month sales and rename and edit to previous month sales to create the sales values. The interpretation is simply sum the sales amount if the month of the order date is equal to the previous month.

1. 3. Drop the created field for previous month sales and change to discrete from continuous

1. 4. The create a calculated field for MoM (Month on Month Sales) using the formulae below

1. 5. Drag the calculated field into a new sheet and rename the sheet as MoM and change to percentage and 1 - decimal place.

1. 6. Addition of the arrow by creating a calculated field named MoM arrow using the formulae and the unicode notations and drag the field into text to see the display.

2. 7. In order to add the colour features to our arrow we will need to split the MoM arrow into MoM arrow up and MoM arrow down . You can do this by duplicating and renaming MoM arrow

2. 8. Then drag MoM arrow down onto the text mark also for both to be represented

1. 9. Then edit from the text mark how you want it to look and add colour to both arrow class. Increase the font size and change the colour for upward to green and downward to red.

2. 10. Align center and fit to entire view on the sheet.

• Add the MoM KPI to the dashboard view

  1. 1. Drop an horizontal container on the the position of the three (3) KPI below the the current month sales vertical container

  2. 2. Drop the MoM sheet into the the horizontal container created

  3. 3. Remove the title of the MoM sheet

  4. 4. Right click and format shading by removing the background (click none in the background)

This will give us a view that looks like this.

In conclusion, you just have to duplicate the features and create the calculated field for YoY (Year-on-Year) and .vs target features in a bid to complete the proposed dashboard above. Keep tab of our data digest for the completion of this project.

This is an introductory session into leveraging Tableau to create sales KPI dashboard by building from the ground using modular entities and calculation and containers in tandem with tools like Figma to create a sensational design experience.

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