Creating a dashboard in Tableau - Formula Evaluation Walkthrough

Sample Data

Sales and Profit data by Region for a company

Cell	Value
A1	Region
B1	Sales
C1	Profit
A2	North
B2	10000
C2	3000
A3	South
B3	15000
C3	4000
A4	East
B4	12000
C4	3500
A5	West
B5	13000
C5	3200

Formula Trace

SUM(Sales) and SUM(Profit) aggregated by Region in Tableau dashboard

Step 1: SUM(Sales) for North

Step 2: SUM(Profit) for North

Step 3: SUM(Sales) for South

Step 4: SUM(Profit) for South

Step 5: SUM(Sales) for East

Step 6: SUM(Profit) for East

Step 7: SUM(Sales) for West

Step 8: SUM(Profit) for West

Step 9: Create dashboard with charts showing SUM(Sales) and SUM(Profit) by Region

Cell Reference Map

    A       B       C  
1 |Region | Sales | Profit|
2 | North | 10000 |  3000 |
3 | South | 15000 |  4000 |
4 | East  | 12000 |  3500 |
5 | West  | 13000 |  3200 |

The dashboard uses Sales (column B) and Profit (column C) values grouped by Region (column A)

Result

Dashboard View:
+-----------------------------+
| Region | Sales  | Profit     |
|-----------------------------|
| North  | ██████ | ███        |
| South  | ██████████ | ████    |
| East   | ███████ | ████       |
| West   | ████████ | ███       |
+-----------------------------+

Filters: Region selector on top
Charts: Bar charts for Sales and Profit side by side

The dashboard shows bars representing sales and profit for each region. Bars are sized by the sum values. A filter allows selecting regions to update charts.

Sheet Trace Quiz - 3 Questions

What does the SUM(Sales) for South evaluate to?

A 15000

B 13000

C 12000

D 10000

Key Result

SUM aggregation of measures grouped by dimension to create visual charts in a dashboard