Context filters in Tableau - Real Business Scenario

Scenario Mode

👤 Your Role: You are a sales analyst at a retail company.

📋 Request: Your manager wants to analyze sales performance for the top 3 product categories by sales revenue in the last year. They want to see monthly sales trends only for these top categories.

📊 Data: You have sales data including Order Date, Product Category, Sales Revenue, and Quantity Sold for the past two years.

🎯 Deliverable: Create a Tableau dashboard showing monthly sales trends for the top 3 product categories by sales revenue in the last year using context filters.

Sample Data

Order Date	Product Category	Sales Revenue	Quantity Sold
2023-01-15	Electronics	1200	5
2023-01-20	Furniture	800	3
2023-02-10	Office Supplies	400	10
2023-02-15	Electronics	1500	7
2023-03-05	Furniture	900	4
2023-03-10	Office Supplies	450	12
2023-04-12	Electronics	1300	6
2023-04-18	Furniture	850	3
2023-05-20	Office Supplies	500	15
2023-05-25	Electronics	1400	7
2023-06-15	Furniture	950	5
2023-06-20	Office Supplies	480	14

1

Step 1: Connect your sales data source to Tableau and load the data.

No formula needed; just connect and import the data.

Expected Result

Sales data with Order Date, Product Category, Sales Revenue, and Quantity Sold is loaded into Tableau.

2

Step 2: Create a calculated field to extract the year from Order Date to filter last year's data.

YEAR([Order Date])

Expected Result

A new field 'Year' is available to filter data for the last year (2023).

3

Step 3: Apply a filter on 'Year' to include only 2023 data.

Filter: Year = 2023

Expected Result

Data is filtered to only include sales from the year 2023.

4

Step 4: Create a context filter on Product Category to keep only the top 3 categories by total sales revenue in 2023.

Right-click Product Category filter > Add to Context > Set filter to Top 3 by SUM([Sales Revenue])

Expected Result

Context filter applied; only top 3 product categories by sales revenue in 2023 are included in further analysis.

5

Step 5: Create a line chart with Order Date (month) on Columns and SUM(Sales Revenue) on Rows, colored by Product Category.

Columns: MONTH([Order Date]) Rows: SUM([Sales Revenue]) Color: Product Category

Expected Result

Line chart shows monthly sales trends for the top 3 product categories in 2023.

6

Step 6: Build a dashboard and add the line chart. Add filters for Year and Product Category with context filter applied.

Drag worksheet to dashboard; add Year and Product Category filters; ensure Product Category filter is context filter.

Expected Result

Dashboard displays monthly sales trends for top 3 categories with filters working correctly.

Final Result

Monthly Sales Trends Dashboard

+------------------------------------------------+
| Month | Electronics | Furniture | Office Supplies |
|------------------------------------------------|
| Jan   | 1200       | 800       | 0              |
| Feb   | 1500       | 0         | 400            |
| Mar   | 0          | 900       | 450            |
| Apr   | 1300       | 850       | 0              |
| May   | 1400       | 0         | 500            |
| Jun   | 0          | 950       | 480            |
+------------------------------------------------+

(Line chart with lines for each category showing trends over months)

✓Electronics, Furniture, and Office Supplies are the top 3 product categories by sales revenue in 2023.

✓Electronics shows strong sales in January, February, April, and May.

✓Furniture sales peak in March and June.

✓Office Supplies have steady sales in February, March, May, and June.

Bonus Challenge

Add a parameter to let users select how many top product categories to analyze (e.g., top 2, top 3, top 5) and update the context filter dynamically.

Show Hint

Create a parameter for number of top categories, then use a calculated field with RANK() function on SUM([Sales Revenue]) to filter categories based on the parameter value.