One of the most important tasks in designing a good Tableau dashboard is making it as user friendly as possible. I was made acutely aware of this during our first client project, in which I had to make some last minute alterations to improve the end user experience. My dashboard had several filter actions, and while testing it out I realised how many clicks were required to reset all the filters (too many to count!). Wouldn’t it be nice to do it with one click? Well, it turns out you can create a reset button for your dashboard in just a few minutes.
N.B. – This hack only works for filters that have an “all” value. The filter can allow the user to select a single or multiple values, as long as it shows all values in the default view. Here is an example of this kind of filter:
Creating The Reset Button
1. Create a calculated field, and enter ‘Reset Dashboard’ (include the quotes) in the calculation editor. (You could actually type anything here, as long as there are quotes around it)
2. In a new sheet, drag this calculated field to rows.
3. Right-click the field label (this will be whatever you named the calculation) and select ‘Hide Field Labels For Rows’.
4. Right-click the header (this will be whatever you put inside quotes) and deselect ‘Show Header’.
5. Change the mark type to shape (this will be a hollow circle by default).
6. Right-click on the shape, select ‘Format’, then the ‘Borders’ icon, and make sure Row Divider is set to ‘None’.
7. Change the sheet layout to ‘Entire View’
8. Change the shape to show the user it is a reset button (click here for instructions).
9. Drag the calculated field from the data pane to ‘Label’ on the marks card and change its alignment to Bottom Center.
Here is a demonstration of the above process:
Creating The Dashboard Filter
Here is an example of a dashboard with several filter actions:
Follow these steps to get the reset button to work:
1. Click ‘Tooltip’ on the marks card and deselect ‘Show tooltips’ and ‘Include command buttons’. This will make sure nothing pops up when you click the reset button.
2. Go to the dashboard and insert the reset button sheet onto the dashboard.
3. Hide the sheet title and resize accordingly.
4. Add a dashboard action by clicking ‘Dashboard’, then ‘Actions…’, followed by ‘Add Action’ and ‘Filter’.
5. In the pop up box, make sure the reset button is selected as a source sheet, and the view you want to reset is a target sheet. Also make sure ‘Run action on:’ is set to ‘Select’ and ‘Clearing the selection will:’ is set to ‘Show all values’. In ‘Target Filters’, choose ‘Selected Fields’, and add all the filters you want to reset.
Now you have successfully created a button that resets all filters on your dashboard!
Here is a demonstration of the above process:
That’s it for this blog, hopefully you found it useful!
