Informative shapes, dynamic annotations & the beauty of wow

I've started my first placement after finishing at the Data School, and there are two key things I've experienced so far; firstly, I am so not used to being referred to as the 'Tableau Expert' - I still feel like there's way too much for me to learn, practice and get better at to even understand how it feels to be an 'expert' - in any field! Plus, from what I've gathered from what I've learnt and the amazing people in the community have shared; you never stop learning. Ever! And I think this is one of the best things in life in general.

But this leads me nicely into my second key thing (and not too soon, it was about to get real deep up here) which is the wow factor - Being on site and sitting near the rest of the team I've joined means they can throw questions at me as and when they need some support. And this is where I get to have some fun.

So one such query was regarding 'how do I best show...', and being able to cycle through some ideas, show some funky tricks and drawing out the 'wow!' was super rewarding. For instance, being able to use a shape in a dashboard to convey some information, or using an annotation instead of a label, or what highlight actions are. But that might be for a separate post - Actions can be a three step process.

The main one I wanted to talk about is more 'this is cool, Tableau is so smart' - And I referred to it as a 'dynamic annotation'

Why?

As you can see above; it's an annotation on the sum of sales, which is .. er.. dynamic. I didn't actually know that Tableau did this, but it was one of those 'of course that works' moments.

If you can't see from the .gif, what I've done is added a point annotation to my bar chart, and then the 'cool' part of this was that when you move the arrow around, the label (as it's a <Sum (Sales)> greyed out measure) actually changes depending on where the arrow was pointing.

So, it turns out that there are three different types of annotation;

• A mark annotation; which fixes itself to a mark on the view (which is greyed out in some cases, such as a line chart). This annotates the individual mark and only the text box itself is what is moveable (see below)

Note the 'yellow' indicates that this point is only moveable along it's own arrow, and the green means the highlighted red box is moveable. 

• A point annotation; where both the box and the point are moveable, but the beauty (as you can perhaps just about see above) is that due to the <SUM(Sales)> part, it's able to recalculate itself depending on where on the measure axis it is - imagine an invisible point at the end of each arrowhead. (see below)

Note; all green, all moveable; but also note the lack of dimensions within the annotation itself; as I said, where a mark annotated a specific point, a point indicates an area which is calculated via the measures. In this case, the two measure green pilled scatter plot has two measures.

• An area annotation; this is basically where you can visually draw the user to highlight an area on the chart - which also can act as a really nice caption. I tend to add a transparent colour here; and Tableau is so smart, it even only offers the lighter pastel colour palette. (see below)

Note; this is pretty straightforward, the yellow parts are moveable but fixed to an area and the green points are fully moveable and customisable.

The only time I've really used annotations is on my football blog where I used it to, well right click and annotate - I never really moved the arrow from the mark, as I was using a scatter plot. But I thought this point effect was very cool, and as I began to write this post, I found myself questioning why - which is when I noticed the coloured toggle shapes and the nature of the annotations.

I can't wait to discover more little nuances which I didn't know before in the coming months!