Category Archives: Pushing the Limits
I love to push the limits with Tableau – to find out what can be done, to learn and grow and push myself. Then I take a step back and ask, “what practical lessons did I learn and what can I teach others?”
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Tableau, you sunk my Battleship!
Posted on May 22, 2017 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, Fun, Pushing the Limits.Ah, games and Tableau – two of my favorite things together! And it isn’t all just about fun and games, it’s about learning and pushing the limits to see what Tableau can do and how to best use the features and capabilities of Tableau to turn an idea into something that works! I’ll have a few blog posts […]
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Design technique for Tableau dashboards: semi-transparent images
Posted on April 13, 2017 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, DataViz, Fun, Pushing the Limits, Storytelling & Commentary, Tips and Tricks.Wow! I’m still stunned to have won the first IronViz feeder contest for 2017! And excited! And humbled. And honored. Wow! Thank you to everyone who has had kind words of encouragement! You can read some broad description of my entry here: The Changing Shape of History: From the Colonies to the United States. In […]
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Navigating Hierarchies in Tableau using Self Updating Actions
Posted on March 1, 2017 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, Data Blending & Joining, Pushing the Limits, Tips and Tricks.The Tableau technique shown here is to use an action to update an entire dashboard, including the filter selection and the view which triggered the action. The trick doesn’t have to be used to navigate hierarchies or hierarchical data, but it happens to work very nicely for that purpose. Let’s say you have a Tableau […]
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Bob Ross Mashup: The Joy of Viz Painting 2
Posted on June 28, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, DataViz, Fun, Pushing the Limits, Storytelling & Commentary.I grew up watching Bob Ross and as I watched him mix colors and beat brushes, I knew that I could be an artist. He had such an optimism, excitement, and passion. And he knew that he could inspire others to have the same. Now, most often, my paint is data and my canvas and brush […]
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Games In Tableau – Pushing the Limits with Practical Results
Posted on October 21, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Fun, Pushing the Limits, Storytelling & Commentary, Tips and Tricks.You may not think of Tableau as a game engine, but I’ve used it to create interactive games (such as tic-tac-toe, Star Trek, and Choose Your Own Adventure) that push the limits of what is possible while learning some very practical lessons. In my #Data15 presentation: #GamesInTableau, I demonstrated numerous practical tips, tricks, and principles of […]
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Star Trek: The Tableau Game
Posted on June 17, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Fun, Pushing the Limits, Storytelling & Commentary.In the 1980s, my dad brought home a Tandy 1000. I still remember him giving instructions to my mom and me about how to use DOS. I loved playing the games (Digger, Janitor Joe [Jump Joe], Flightmare, Hopper, and more), but the real fun began when my dad showed me I could look at, and […]
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Going Off Grid – The secret way to hide something on a Tableau Dashboard
Posted on March 10, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, Pushing the Limits, Tableau Server, Tableau Tip Tuesday, Tips and Tricks.Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to hide something on a Tableau Dashboard? Something you, the designer wanted to see, but not something the end-user of the published dashboard should see. Maybe it’s a set of instructions to remind yourself of how quick filters and parameters should be set prior to publishing. […]
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Blackjack! (Tableau deals)
Posted on August 29, 2014 by Joshua Milligan in All, Dashboards, Data Blending & Joining, Fun, Pushing the Limits.Can’t wait for the Tableau conference next week year? How about playing a game of blackjack against Tableau in the meantime? No, you won’t win real money. But you can sharpen your skills in case a future since the next conference is in Vegas. By the way, this dashboard uses a little known fact that […]
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Creating Tic Tac Tableau Part 2: 5 Million Records – Really?
Posted on July 8, 2014 by Joshua Milligan in All, Pushing the Limits, Tips and Tricks.If you missed them, see the original Tic Tac Toe Dashboard and Part 1 first. Chris Love asked if it was really necessary to have 5 million records. After all, there are only 19,683 possible variations of boards – even less when you consider what would be a valid board. (By the way, check out […]
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Creating Tic Tac Tableau Part 1: Generating the Data
Posted on July 4, 2014 by Joshua Milligan in All, Pushing the Limits.Once I had the idea of creating a dashboard to play Tic Tac Toe against Tableau, I had to come up with a way. I knew I wanted to use actions in a dashboard – and that meant I’d need dimensions to pass as filters. That meant I’d need to have data at the level […]
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Want to understand how Tableau works and how you can use it like a master?
Joshua Milligan is a three-time Tableau Zen Master. His passion is training, mentoring, and helping people gain insights and make decisions based on their data through data visualization using Tableau. He is a principal consultant at Teknion Data Solutions, where he has served clients in numerous industries since 2004.
Joshua served as technical reviewer on several Tableau titles and is the author of the book Learning Tableau.
