Two Use Cases for Set Actions in a Tooltip

Sometimes we may have questions about a subset of data in our dashboard view. Sets Actions enable your audience to interact with a view and see the subset of data. Tableau allows you to change Set Values on a dashboard with the use of Sets, similar to changing Parameter values.

My Set Actions dashboard here, has an example of Set Actions in a Tooltip. If you place your mouse over the Technology bar in the bar chart in the lower left-hand corner, you will see the % of Sales for all the Sub-categories highlighted in blue. These Sub-Categories belong to the Technology Category in the Tooltip. The bar colors change, if you place your mouse over the Office Supplies category.

In a new Employee Work Time dashboard I created in Tableau Public here, when you click on the People dashboard (by Org View), you can see Set Actions in the Tooltip if you hover over the Notes button. The image below is filtered for Ron Weasley in Week 41. You see the bars appearing in blue for his completed projects that week compared to other employees.

How did I enable this?

For the Set Actions dashboard, I inserted a sheet that has the Sub-categories in a simple bar chart. Notice I am not filtering by anything; it has a filter of "".

This ensures that the Tooltip won't filter on just the Sub-categories that belong to the corresponding Category. It will display all of the Sub-categories instead. The example below shows what happens if you do not remove the <All fields> from the Tooltip.

I created a Set based on Category (right-click on Category then select Create > Set), and then placed this Set on the Color marks card of the sheet I inserted in the Tooltip.

Then on the dashboard I have a Set Action based on that Category Set. This enables the color change in the Tooltip on Hover.

For the Employee Worktime People (By Org) dashboard I created a set for the Assignee. I also created a separate view for the Tooltip. As you see in the Edit Tooltip pop-up menu below, I have the Tooltip sheet inserted and I have it filtered by Week of Created date and the Assignee Set. This filters the view by the week number and then will highlight the Assignee.

Then on the Dashboard I have a Set Action on the Assignee Set.

Feel free to download these workbooks if you wish to see how they are designed.