How to display continuous week or day level data for multiple years in Tableau Software – Skill Pill Video

Our data can be analyzed in many ways. Depending on the answers we are looking for, data correlation can be done so that the extracted information provides support in making the best decisions at the organizational level. But there are situations in which it is possible not to know from the beginning what information we are looking for, trends or patterns, and here data visualizing and exploring tools step in. Tableau Software is one of the most powerful such tools, which offers users the opportunity to understand their data, to explore it and to make strategic decisions based on data. In today’s post we will discuss about displaying continuous week or day level data for multiple years.

Probably one of the most common questions we have about our company’s evolution is the way in which its performance is compared to that of a previous period. This previous period may refer to previous years, months, or days. When it comes to visualizing our evolution, we will always start by analyzing the evolution over several years. This analysis gives us an overview of how our goals have been achieved or not and can be useful in identifying situations that have influenced upward or downward trends.

Display continuous week or day level data for multiple years

Displaying continuous week or day level data for multiple years is useful when we want to observe what was the evolution of sales or profit in a period that includes several years. This type of chart also helps end users understand how their business has operated over similar periods of time. For analyzes in which data are displayed at day or week level, measures are usually analyzed that best highlight the objectives of an organization, such as: financial data, sales, profit, number of units sold or number of registered orders.

Displaying continuous week or day level data for multiple years can be extremely useful in interpreting how our organization’s strategies have worked over a period. At the same time, this type of analysis offers a clear picture of the performance achieved depending on the measures analyzed.

Next, we will build a visualization in which we will display continuous week or day level data for multiple years. In this way we will observe what were the data from a previous period and a current period in a series of time.

Step 1: Connect to data

→ In Tableau Desktop, connect to Superstore sample data provided by Tableau.

Step 2: Create the visualization

→ Add Sales to Rows

→ Add discrete Year of Order Date on Color

→ Create a calculated field named Order Date with the same year with the formula:
DATE(
DATEADD(‘year’,
DATEDIFF(‘year’,[Order Date],TODAY()),
[Order Date])
)

→ Add the Order Date with the same year on Columns and select Day Continuous Date

→ Drag Order Date to Filter, choose Years Discrete Date and keep only 2020 and 2019

→ Drag Order Date to Filter, choose Months Discrete Date and keep only December

→ Show Mark Labels

By Sergiu Rotaru

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