Effective usage of Show Me in Tableau
The usage and adoption of the Show Me pane in Tableau has contrasting opinions in the Tableau community.
There are many experienced users who completely shun the usage of the Show Me pane and consider it as a stepdown while on the other hand there are many newcomers who would consider it as a boon when they need to quickly build visuals in Tableau that was assigned to them as part of a task.
From a personal point of view when I started in Tableau I almost never used the Show Me pane for building charts and plots. I just wanted to understand the actual process of building the charts rather than just quickly build the views. The key point here is to understand the “why” as well as the “how” of the chart building process.
Where is the Show Me pane located in Tableau?
After connecting to the data and bringing in the required tables and navigating to the default Sheet 1 tab we can see the Show Me button in the Top Right corner of the Tableau Workspace.
Open the Show Me pane by clicking Show Me on the toolbar
What is the Show Me feature and how to use it?
This feature can be used to automatically build visuals in Tableau based on the below conditions
1. Fields/ pills that are already present in the view
2. Fields/ pills that are selected in the Data pane
NOTE: Multiple fields can be selected by holding the Ctrl key in Windows (Cmd key in Mac).
Currently in Tableau we can build a total of 24 types of visuals using the Show Me pane.
The chart option that is highlighted in red color in the Show Me pane is the recommended option based on the fields available or selected i.e. it suggests the best visualization type for the selected data.
All the charts/ plots that are available for the current selection of fields are displayed as non-grayed boxes in Show Me.
The charts/plots that are not available for the current selection of fields are displayed as grayed boxes in Show Me.
As we hover over each view type, the description at the bottom shows the minimum field requirements. In this example, Bullet Graphs is selected for which we would require a minimum of 0 or more Dimensions and 2 Measures.
We can however override the recommended option by choosing a different non-grayed chart. The selected chart is highlighted in black (as shown in the above figure).
Given below is the default Bullet Graph that is built using the Show Me pane.
How to better understand Show Me?
Given below are the sections (marked in blue) in the Tableau Workspace that we need to watch-out for when making use of Show Me to get a better understanding of how the visuals are built in Tableau:
- Rows Shelf: We can drag fields from the Data pane to create the rows of the table (structure for the visualizations).
- Columns Shelf: We can drag fields from the Data pane to create the columns of the table (structure for the visualizations).
- Marks card: We can add context to the visualization by encoding marks with color, size, shape, text, and detail of the Marks card.
- Row Axis or Row Header: Will lead to the same outcome as to when a field placed on the Rows shelf
- Column Axis or Column Header: Will lead to the same outcome as to when a field placed on the Columns shelf
Recommended usage of Show Me
For anyone just starting their Tableau journey Show Me can help in better understanding the basic structure of charts/ plots.
We need to first create the required chart using the Show Me pane.
Next we need to understand how Tableau automatically assigns the fields to the various parts of a view e.g: Rows shelf etc.
Recreating a chart after building it using the Show Me Pane
This process is to be followed in order to get a better understanding of the structure of the charts and plots and in eventually understanding the actual process of building them in Tableau rather than blindly using the Show Me pane.
We will try to understand the process of building a Box and Whisker plot in Tableau by first creating it using the Show Me pane and next recreating it manually.
Consider that we have a requirement to analyze the distribution of the Sub-Category Sales across multiple Regions.
Step 1: Select the below mentioned fields in the Data pane
Region, Sub-Category and Sales.
Step 2: In the Show Me pane click on the Box and Whisker plot.
Step 3: The required Box and Whisker plot is visible in the view.
Step 4: We need to understand the position of the fields and other settings in the Box and Whisker plot that was automatically created by the Show Me pane.
Region dimension is placed on the Rows shelf.
Sales measure is placed on the Columns shelf.
Circle Mark type is selected in the Marks card.
Sub-Category is placed on Detail of Marks card.
Step 5: Manually recreate the Box and Whisker plot as per the view built in Step 4.
Drag and drop Region on the Columns shelf.
Drag and drop Sales on the Rows shelf.
Drag and drop Sub-Category on Detail on the Marks card.
On the Marks card, click the Mark Type drop-down and select Circle from the list.
On the Marks card, click Size, and then move the slider to the left for reducing the size of circles.
Right-click Sales Axis, click on Add Reference Line
Select Box Plot.
If required change the Fill color.
Now we have recreated the Box Plot manually that closely matches the view that was build using the Show Me Pane (except for the Fill Color setting).
The example covered in this article is just for one chart type and we can follow the similar process to recreate the other charts in Tableau.
In conclusion the Show Me feature is a helpful aid to better understand the visuals that are built in Tableau.
I hope this article is useful for all Tableau users especially anyone who is new to Tableau!!!
References:
Use Show Me to Start a View
https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/buildauto_showme.htm#
How not to use Show Me in Tableau! by Tim Ngwena
https://youtu.be/nal52Cdnm0o?si=7KGBh9z-3lQB-HV0
