Tooltip customization in Tableau - Dashboard Guide

Dashboard Mode - Tooltip customization

Goal

Understand how to customize tooltips in Tableau to show extra useful information when hovering over data points.

Sample Data

Region	Product	Sales	Profit	Quantity
East	Chair	300	90	15
West	Desk	450	135	10
East	Table	200	60	8
South	Chair	150	45	7
North	Desk	400	120	12
South	Table	350	105	9

Dashboard Components

• KPI Card: Total Sales calculated as SUM([Sales]). Result: 1850
• Bar Chart: Sales by Region. Bars show SUM([Sales]) grouped by [Region].
• Tooltip Customization: When hovering over a bar, tooltip shows:
  • Region name
  • Total Sales for that region (SUM([Sales]))
  • Total Profit for that region (SUM([Profit]))
  • Average Quantity sold (AVG([Quantity]))
  Example tooltip text:
  Region: East
Total Sales: $500
Total Profit: $150
Avg Quantity: 11.5

Dashboard Layout

+-----------------------+
|      Total Sales      |
|        (KPI)          |
+-----------------------+
|                       |
|   Sales by Region     |
|      (Bar Chart)      |
|                       |
+-----------------------+

Interactivity

The tooltip updates dynamically when you hover over each bar in the Sales by Region chart. It shows the correct totals and averages for the hovered region only.

No filters are applied in this simple example, but adding a Region filter would update the bar chart and tooltip values accordingly.

Self Check

If you add a filter to show only the East region, which components update?

• The Sales by Region bar chart will show only the East bar.
• The Total Sales KPI card will update to show total sales for East only (300 + 200 = 500).
• The tooltip on the East bar will show totals and averages for East region only.

Key Result

A Tableau dashboard showing total sales KPI and sales by region bar chart with customized tooltips displaying sales, profit, and average quantity per region.