Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Incorporate annotations.
Include navigation elements.

Check: Connect Your Tableau Public Account

If you haven’t already, or if the playground has timed out, log in to your Tableau Public account in the Playground window to the right. If you don’t already have a Tableau Public account, sign up for one now. And be sure to activate your account before starting this interactive unit. You can find more detailed instructions in the Tableau Data Model.

The playground resets if your Tableau Public login session expires or if you refresh the page before completing the unit. We recommend completing this unit in one sitting.

Did you forget that lovely Tracking Star Bakers viz you formatted so beautifully in unit 2? Neither did we! We want to have that information in this dashboard, but it’s looking pretty good. No one wants a cluttered dashboard, and knowing when to stop can be as important as knowing what to add.

You could leave it off. You could add it as a viz in the tooltip. (Which is exactly as cool as it sounds. You can put an entire viz into a tooltip so it only shows for a specific mark when you hover over it. But that’s probably a bit more clutter than we want for this dashboard.) Instead, you create a second dashboard—and even add some inter-dashboard navigation!

Create the Dashboard

Click New Dashboard in the bottom bar.
In the Size section of the left pane, open the dropdown that says Desktop Browser. Match the same dashboard size as our first one.
1. Width: 900
2. Height: 700
At the bottom of the left pane, check the box to Show dashboard title.
Double-click into the title and replace what's there with Explore Star Baker performance for the Great British Bake Off
Start a new line and type Is there a curse that dooms Star Bakers to future bad bakes?
Select the second line and set the font to size 9.
Click OK.
From the Sheets section of the left pane, drag out the sheet Tracking Star Bakers.
Remove the color legend and size legend.
Click the filter to bring up its border, then open the dropdown menu.
Select Edit title… then replace what’s there with Choose a season:
Click OK.
Open the menu again. Select Customize | uncheck Show "All" Value.
Open the menu again and click Single Value (slider).
Open the menu again and click Only Relevant Values.
Open the menu again and click Floating.
Click into the white space at the right side of the dashboard to bring up the container’s border, then click the X to remove the element from the dashboard.
Move the filter control to the white space to the right of the dashboard title.

Reuse Familiar Elements

Since you’re using the baker images in the first dashboard, it might be neat to use them again here. (Remember: The Image Role feature pulls in image files that are hosted elsewhere on the internet, such as these from thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk. Tableau and Salesforce aren’t responsible for these images.)

Click into the viz to bring up its border.
Click the Go to Sheet icon .
Drag Image Link to the far left of the Rows shelf, in front of Baker.
Click back to the Dashboard 2 tab.

Rename the Dashboard Tab and Add a Description

That’s a terrible name. You should rename the dashboard’s tab while we’re thinking of it.

Double-click the Dashboard 2 tab.
Rename it Star Bakers. It’s good to describe sheets well, but now that this viz is in a dashboard, it's a little odd to have a title and information for the dashboard and the viz.
Let’s combine them. Double-click into the title area of the Dashboard (where it says: Is there a curse…).
In the editor, start a new line, and enter the following on separate lines.

The viz below tracks the overall performance of every baker who was Star Baker at least once.
Use the filter to the right to change the season. Hover over marks in the viz for more detailed information.

Set the final line to italics.
Close the dialog.
Right-click in the viz title (where it says: Tracking Star Bakers) and Hide Title.

Use Annotations to Tell a Story

This viz was designed to address the theory that there’s a star baker curse. Let’s go through the seasons and add annotations to specific data points to really tell a story with the data.

Set the filter to season 3.

Step back for a moment and interpret this data. What are we seeing? Brendan, JamesM, and John all got Star Baker and made it through to the finale. But Danny, Ryan, and Victoria all saw their performance go down after their Star Bakerhood.

Let’s start our guided analysis by pointing out the worst-case scenarios. Right-click the end of the line for Ryan and select Annotate | Mark…
Clear what's there and type in: Star Baker didn't do Ryan any favors
Click OK.
Right-click the end of the line for Victoria.
Select Annotate | Mark…
Clear what’s there and type in: Looks like Victoria might've succumbed to the Star Baker curse, too
Click OK, then click to select the annotation. Resize and reposition the annotation so it’s a single line. It doesn’t have to be perfect. No stress.
Onward to the next season! Set the filter to season 4.

Frances got Star Baker in episode 7 and was at risk in episode 8. But she recovered enough to end up winning. Let’s call that out.

Right-click the mark for Frances for season 4, episode 8 and select Annotate | Mark…
Clear what's there and insert: Frances wobbled a bit after Star Baker, but she shook it off and went on to win
Click OK.
Resize and reposition the annotation at your discretion.
Keep clicking through the season filter. Nothing is particularly compelling for season 5, but pause on season 6. Marie and Mat tanked after making Star Baker, but IanC and Nadiya certainly weren’t cursed!
We can annotate the viz to call all this out. Instead of a Mark annotation, which is tied to a specific mark in the viz, we’ll do an Area annotation. Right-click an empty part of the viz on Marie’s row and select Annotate | Area…
Type in: Although Marie and Mat wound up eliminated after reaching Star Baker, IanC had a massive streak of three in a row and made it to the finale. And Nadiya rode her Star Baker high right to a win!
Click OK.
Resize and reposition the annotation at your discretion.
Scroll through more seasons. If there's anything you’d like to call out, add an annotation for a mark or an area.
For season 10, add an area annotation: While it doesn't look like there's a Star Baker curse, it is true that after being Star Baker, the easiest way to go is down
Resize and reposition the annotation at your discretion.

It might be tempting to just drag out a text box instead. But the beauty of annotations is they’re specific to the state of the viz. A text box on the dashboard would always be there—an annotation only shows up for the correct filter setting.

These two dashboards look great. All that’s left is to link them together and publish!

In the left pane, toggle to Floating.
From the Objects area, drag out a Navigation object underneath the filter.
Open the menu for the navigation element and click Edit Button…
- Navigate to: Baker Performance
- Title: What's up with Technicals?
- Font: (click on the font to open the menu) size 9 and a dark color
- Background: None
- Tooltip: Click to see what the data says
Reposition the navigation element at your discretion (such as centered in the white space under the filter control).
Alt+click the navigation element to navigate to the first dashboard.
Drag out another Navigation object and edit it.
- Navigate to: Star Bakers
- Title: Are Star Bakers cursed?
- Font: size 9 and the same dark color
- Background: None
- Tooltip: Click to see what the data says
Reposition the navigation element at your discretion (such as centered in the white space under the filter control).
Alt+click the navigation element to test that it brings you back to the dashboard you created, Star Bakers.

Publish Your Viz

But what’s an analysis worth if no one sees it? Time to publish to Tableau Public!

From the area above the toolbar, select Publish As. (Alternatively, you can select Publish As from the File menu.)
On the Publish Workbook dialog, enter a name for your viz. Make it something fun, like: My First Dashboard on Tableau Public!
Select Publish.

Onward and Upward

This trail has only scratched the surface of what Tableau can do and the potential analyses in this data set. But now you have a Tableau Public account, a sense of how to create vizzes and modify them, and how to tie them together in a dashboard with interactivity. Nothing is holding you back from exploring on your own!

There’s no wrong way to play with a data set. If you have a sense of the data you can jump right to asking questions and trying to answer them with data. Or you can explore by dragging fields out and seeing what you see.

What other visualizations or data on this topic might be interesting to look at?

Each episode has a theme—are there any trends with popular or highly rated theme weeks?
Do winners tend to do well in technicals?
Has every winner been a star baker?
Do young bakers tend to do well or exit the show early? What about older bakers?
Are there any trends around gender? Are the genders split evenly across seasons? Does one gender have disproportionate representation in finales or as winners?

One of the best ways to grow your skills is to look at what others are doing and try to reverse engineer what they did to get there. Check out the Viz of the Day to get inspired.

What analysis can you cook up?

Check Out the Data + Movies Challenge

There’s more! Tableau is currently running the Data + Movies Challenge. Why not test your newfound skills in this community challenge. Learn more about the challenge here. And if you’re up for it, why not take on the challenge? You can get started with this starter kit and find inspiration from DataFam who have already created vizzes.

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