Tips—Multiple Tableau Dashboard Data Sources

The setup
You have connected to more than one data source in your Tableau workbook, for example, your sales database in Oracle and a customer call database in SQL Server.   Tableau seamlessly allows you to connect to multiple data sources in one workbook.   Views developed from both data sources can be placed in a single dashboard.

However, if you try to use global filters or quick filters to synchronize the two data sources, you will find that it isn’t possible; only one data source can be linked to either.   In fact, the term “Global” filter in Tableau can be confounding, since it is only global to views using the current data source.   Global filters will not work with other data sources even if the data items have the same name!

The solution
As of Tableau 5.0 (released in 2009), a new feature

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Great prizes- enter the Tableau Visualization Contest!

Win a great trip to San Francisco to attend the Web 2.0 conference and be featured on the Tableau Public home page and Read Write Web! Enter the Tableau Visualization Contest (now past and the page is no longer posted.)   No matter what happens, you will have your own copy of tableau public to … Read more

Some of our favorite articles from Stephen Few…

Stephen Few has has been an inspiration to us through the years. He has patiently prodded software companies to improve their tools for visual presentation of information, motivated by the sincere hope to improve the world we all live in.

At Freakalytics, we incorporate his content

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