Hi! Today, I thought it would be fun to poke around at some data, analyze it, and hopefully come up with some insights.

Project Overview

I’m looking at a dataset that contains sales data around various products, as well as profit, discount information, and the cost of distribution. On the right, I have my "cheat sheet"—I’m going to create two calculated fields and six worksheets, and then use two dashboards to compare the "before and after" numbers to derive some insights.

Step 1: Analyzing Product Count

To get started, I’m going to drag Product over to the Rows shelf. I’d like to see how many of these products I’m selling, so I’m going to use the Tableau-generated field called Sheet 1 (Count) from the Data pane and drag that over to Columns.

I’d like to see this in descending order to identify my top-selling products. I’ll click on the arrow for the Product field to open the context menu, choose Sort, and then sort by the Field using that count field. Tableau has already filled that out for me, so I can just accept it and click the X on the sort dialog.

Correction: I actually sorted that the wrong way—let me change it to Sort Descending. Ah, that’s better!

Step 2: Formatting the View

I’d also like to change the color of the bars to help differentiate the several worksheets I’m building. On the Marks card, I’ll click on the Color tile and select purple.

Next, I’ll rename the sheet. In the bottom-left tabbed area, I’ll right-click on the sheet name and select Rename. I’m going to call this first one Count. You’ll notice the title of the chart changes automatically because, by default, it uses the Sheet Name field. It looks like my top count of sales is Machine 5, followed by Machine 3. Machine 2 and 6 are currently tied with three sales each.

Step 3: Analyzing Sales Volume

Let’s keep going with another worksheet. This one I want to rename Sales. I’m going to put Product on Rows again, and as you might have guessed, I’ll drag Sales over to Columns.

I’ll change the color of these bars using the Marks card Color tile to light blue. Then, I’m going to perform a descending sort using the field again. Tableau assumes I want to sort by Sales, which is perfect. It looks like Machine 5 is also the top sales leader for the amount of money it's bringing in, followed by Machine 2 and Machine 3.