Have you ever looked at a dashboard or workflow that you haven't touched in six months and you are like, "What was I thinking?" Perhaps you were learning Tableau for the first time and you are not sure what your intent was with a certain view or calculation.
Therein lies the importance of documentation when you are creating dashboards the first time! So be kind to your future self and document what you can, directly in the application! (This is phrase I picked up from another teacher Bill Dimartino that I had the privilege of working with.)
You can also organize your calculated fields which will help your future self or other future developers making updates on your dashboard.
Read the article below for these tips!
Tip # 1 - Put a note in your calculated field
Did you know you can use "//" in the top of a calculated field and Tableau will skip over this text to read the calculation? Look at the example below.
Use these "notes" to help explain what the calculated field is doing.
Tip # 2 - Use the Default Comments for Quick view
What if you just want to hover over a calculated field for it to jump start your memory on how it's calculated?
Simply right-click on the Calculation, go to Default Properties and select Comment. There you can put a note about the calculation for quick view!
Tip # 3 Customize Captions
Have you heard of Captions in Tableau? What they do is they automatically summarize what is going on in a worksheet. You can display these in the dashboard. I use these to put a note about the why I created a sheet/chart. I do not put them in my dashboard. I consider these more notes for other developers on my team.
In a worksheet, go to the Worksheet menu and select Show Caption.
Then a Tableau generated Caption will appear at the bottom of your worksheet, right-click on this and select Edit Caption.
Delete the text in the Edit Caption pop-up menu and enter notes for development!
Tip # 4 Organize your Calculated Fields into Custom Folders!
Did you know you can create folders in Tableau? I typically create a lot of date calculated fields so I organize them in a folder called Date Calcs. I also may create a calculated field for Profit Ratio so I put it a folder called Profit Calcs and so on.
First select Group by Folder in the drop-down in the upper right-hand corner of the Data pane. You have to select this first in order to open up the create folder menu.
Then you can right-click on a calculated field, select Folders and then select Create Folder...
After the folder is created, you can drag and drop other calculations to this folder. You can also shift + select multiple calculations and move them to a folder all at once.
Hopefully these tips will help you and your future self!