Actions

Applies to: Tableau Cloud, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server

Add context and interactivity to your data using actions. Users interact with your visualisations by selecting or hovering over marks, or selecting a link in a tooltip menu, and the actions you set up can respond with navigation and changes in the view.

For example, in a dashboard showing home sales by neighbourhood, you could use actions to display relevant information for a selected neighbourhood. Selecting a neighborhood in one view can trigger an action that highlights the related houses in a map view, filters a list of the houses sold, then opens an external web page showing census data for the neighbourhood. For related information and examples, see A Rough Guide to Dashboard Actions(Link opens in a new window) on the Tableau Public blog.

Types of actions

There are several types of actions, each with a different purpose:

  • Filter. Use the data from one view to filter data in another.
  • Highlight. Call attention to marks of interest by dimming all others.
  • Go to URL. Create hyperlinks to external resources, such as a web page or file.
  • Go to Sheet. Simplify navigation to other worksheets, dashboards or stories in the same workbook.
  • Change Parameter. Let users change parameter values by directly interacting with marks on a viz.
  • Change Set Values. Let users change the values in a set by directly interacting with marks on a viz.

Order of operations

Actions are executed by Tableau in a specific order:

  1. Parameter
  2. Set
  3. Filter
  4. Go to sheet
  5. Highlight
  6. Go to URL

Within each type, actions are performed in alphabetical order. That is, if there are two filter actions, filter action "A Filter Action" is performed before "This is a Filter".

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