Product Tour
forums
Use these forums to ask questions and discuss Tableau.
Support for "Waterfall" charts
Occasionally, it helps to present a bar chart as a "waterfall" chart, where each bar after the first one starts not from zero but from the running total of the prior bars. As a result, each bar (apart from the first one) appears to float. See attachment for an example.
It would be great if Tableau offered a table calculation that would display a waterfall chart.
Short of that, I can create the data to do a waterfall, but I need to hide the portion of the bars that are the running total offsets. To do this, it would help to have a color palette with a true white that would disappear into the background. The best I could do with the existing color palettes was the Excel-compatible ivory.
Subscribe to the comments on "Support for "Waterfall" charts"
Comments
I think you forgot to add the attachment, otherwise I would have used it for the example. Instead, I'll assume you're plotting Sales by Quarter.
You can do this using Gantt Bars and a small trick
1. Place Quarter on Columns
2. Place Sales on Rows.
3. Change Sales to the Running Total table calculation
4. Change the mark type to Gantt Bar
5. Create a calculated field MinusSales as -[Sales]
6. Place MinusSales on the Size shelf.
The reason for the calculated field is that the running total includes the current value. If you use Sales on the size shelf, then the Q1 bar would go from Q1 sales (the running total) to twice Q1 sales (the running total plus the current value).
Thanks for the tip. The only minor problem is that the data labels show up at the bottom of the bars. But that's relatively easy to correct.
Are there any tableau examples that I might download and work with? Especially interested in showing variance analysis (change due to price or qty).
thanks