Customize Your Tableau Data Story

Applies to: Tableau Cloud, Tableau Desktop

You can use custom language, tailored to your audience, to supplement your Tableau Data Stories with insights specific to your business. Identify the analytics and data from the Data Story that matters most to your audience, and use your own language to create the most impactful story. As with the overall Tableau Data Story, data and variables used in custom content are dynamic, adjusting along with the dashboard.

Add your own insights

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. Find the section you want to write about and click Add Custom Item.

    Edit story dialog box that allows users to choose which sentences appear in a story

  3. Enter your custom text in the field that appears.
  4. Click Save.

Add headers and footers

You can insert custom text at the top and bottom of your Data Story. With headers and footers, you can add your own qualitative analysis to stories, include additional explanations of data trends, or append legal and privacy disclaimers.

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. Click the Show note switch.
  3. Enter your custom note.

    Edit story dialog box with the Show note switch in the On position. The custom note says “This is my custom note.”

  4. Click Save.

Your note now shows at the top or bottom of your Data Story.

Add functions

Using a function in your Data Story is a great way to customize your story and find the insights that are most important to you and your business.

For example, if you want to know the average sum of tourism revenue over a period, select Average as your function and then designate the measure as SUM(Tourism Inbound). This returns the average sum of inbound tourism.

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. Click the menu in the right side of the box and select Add Function.

    Edit story dialog box where one story sentence is selected, so the menu is open. The “Add Function” option is highlighted.

  3. Select a Data Story Function and fill in the required fields.

    An open field for typing the function, and drop-down menus for defining a custom function, dimension, measure, and filter dimension value.

  4. Click Add to Section.
  5. Click Save.

    An example story that has a custom note in the footer. The custom note is highlighted, and the rest of the story is in shadow. The note says “Average Sum per Year 434.09 billion.”

The custom content now shows in your Data Story.

Add conditions

For each custom sentence you write, you can add a condition that determines whether the sentence renders in your Data Story. If the condition is met, the custom sentence appears in your story. If the condition isn't met, the custom sentence doesn't appear.

You can apply multiple conditions to each custom sentence, and the conditions can be combined using the Any or All buttons within the Add a condition dialog box.

Conditional statements are most often used with numerical comparisons, but the function also supports string matching using the equal (=) or not equal (!=) symbols.

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. Enter your custom sentence.
  3. Click the menu on the right side of the box and select Add Condition.
  4. Define the custom function to be used to inform the conditional logic. In this example, the sentence "We have met our quota" shows if the Sum of Tourism Inbound is greater than 5 trillion.
    A text field where you can enter a condition. There is a button to “Add condition” and two formula fields to define when the condition is met.

  5. Click Add to Section.
  6. Click Save.

The custom sentence now appears in your Data Story only if the conditions are met.

Duplicate custom content

You can easily duplicate custom content added to your Data Story, making it easier to build different variations of a sentence. We recommend copying a fully built custom sentence when applying thresholds, building in language variation, and creating different logical variations.

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. Create a custom sentence, complete with functions and conditions, if desired.
  3. In the completed sentence box, Click the menu in the right side of the box and select Duplicate.
    Edit story dialog box where one story sentence is selected, so the menu is open. The “Duplicate” option is highlighted.
  4. Click into your duplicated sentence, update as desired, and click Add to Section.
  5. Click Save.

When you copy a sentence, all functions and conditional statements also copy over. The copied bullet appears directly below the original bullet in the same section.

Note: Copied bullets can only be added to the section that the original bullet is in.

Add custom content in drilldown sections

For stories that have two dimensions, each section after the first section is called a drilldown section. Drilldown sections focus on an individual primary dimension entity (i.e. The Americas in the following example).

Because the drilldown sections have the same content structure, custom content added in the first section (i.e., Europe) are applied to each additional section (i.e., The Americas). You can only create or edit content in the first drilldown section.

  1. In your Data Story, click Edit to open the Edit dialog box.
  2. In the first drilldown section, click Add Custom Item to each entity.
  3. Enter your custom content.
  4. Click Save.

    Edit story dialog box that has a button that says “Add Custom Item to each entity”

Custom content in drilldown sections already has a context variable called Current Category value (dynamic). This creates a dimension value option called Current Category value (dynamic) which always represents the section that the drilldown section is about.

Tip: To create content that only appears in a single specific drilldown section, you can use conditional logic to ensure it only writes where appropriate.

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