How to Add a Button in Tableau Dashboard

Adding a button to a Tableau dashboard can transform it from a static report into an interactive, app-like experience for your users. Buttons make navigation intuitive, simplify complex filtering, and give your finished product a clean, professional feel. This guide will walk you through the primary methods for creating different types of buttons in Tableau, from simple navigation to dynamic filters.

Why Use Buttons in Your Tableau Dashboards?

While Tableau's built-in filters and controls are powerful, buttons offer a more guided and user-friendly way to interact with data. They're especially helpful for audiences who aren't familiar with BI tools.

• Improved User Experience (UX): Clickable buttons are a familiar concept from websites and applications. Users instinctively know what to do, which reduces the learning curve and encourages them to explore the data.
• Streamlined Navigation: In complex workbooks with multiple dashboards and detail sheets, buttons can act as a navigation menu. A "Home" button or buttons linking to different views keep users from getting lost.
• Simplified Actions: You can configure a single button to trigger a complex chain of events, like applying a specific set of filters, navigating to a different page, and highlighting key categories all at once.
• Enhanced Dashboard Aesthetics: Custom-designed buttons let you align your dashboard with company branding, creating a polished and cohesive final product that looks less like a report and more like a custom-built solution.

Method 1: The Easy Way with Tableau's Button Object

Since version 2018.3, Tableau has a dedicated "Button" object that makes creating navigation links incredibly simple. This is the perfect method for helping users jump between different dashboards or sheets in your workbook.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Navigation Button

Let's imagine you have a main "Sales Summary" dashboard and a "Detailed Sales View" dashboard. You want to add a button on the summary page that takes users to the detailed view.

Step 1: Open Your Dashboard and Drag the Button Object

First, navigate to your "Sales Summary" dashboard in Tableau Desktop. In the Dashboard pane on the left, under the "Objects" section, find the Button object. Drag it onto your dashboard canvas and drop it where you want it to appear.

Step 2: Configure the Button's Action

When you release the Button object, a configuration dialog box will not appear immediately. You'll need to right-click the button object you just added (or use its dropdown arrow) and select "Edit Button...". This is where the magic happens.

1. Navigate to: Here, you'll see a dropdown list of all the other sheets and dashboards in your workbook. Select your destination, which in our example, is the "Detailed Sales View."
2. Button Style: You can choose either an Image Button or a Text Button.
3. Tooltip Text: This is the hover text that appears when a user's mouse rests on the button. It’s a great way to provide extra guidance. For example, you could write: "Click here to see a detailed breakdown of sales by product." This makes your dashboard even more user-friendly.

Step 3: Test Your New Button

Back in the dashboard editing view, clicking your new button won't do anything other than select the object. This is a common point of confusion for new users! Dashboard actions only work in Presentation Mode or once published to Tableau Server/Cloud.

To test it, either click the "Presentation Mode" icon (it looks like a projector screen) at the top of your screen or press F7. Now, click your button. It should instantly navigate you to the "Detailed Sales View" dashboard. Voilà!

Method 2: Using a Worksheet as a Powerful Filter Button

What if you want a button that does more than just navigate? For instance, what if you want a button to "Reset All Filters" or apply a specific filter like "Show West Region Sales"? For this, we'll use a tried-and-true Tableau technique: turning an entire worksheet into a button that triggers a dashboard action.

Step-by-Step Guide for a "Reset Filters" Button

This button is incredibly useful on dashboards with many filters, giving users a way to get back to the default view with a single click.

Step 1: Create a New "Button" Worksheet

Create a new worksheet and give it a clear name, like "Reset Button WS". This worksheet's only purpose is to serve as our clickable button.

Step 2: Create a Label and Shape

• Create a simple calculated field. Call it 'Reset Label' and inside the editor, just type the text you want, like "Reset Filters".
• Drag this new calculated field onto the Text mark.
• In the Marks card, change the dropdown from "Automatic" to "Shape".
• Drag your 'Reset Label' field onto the Shape mark as well.
• Click the Shape mark to choose a button-like design. A filled square often works well. You can even upload your own custom shapes into your Tableau Repository folder for a more stylized look.

Finally, clean up the sheet: hide the title, remove any grid lines or zero lines by right-clicking and formatting the sheet. The goal is to make it look like just a standalone button.

Step 3: Add the Worksheet to Your Dashboard

Now, go back to your main dashboard. Drag your "Reset Button WS" sheet onto the dashboard. Resize its container to be small and button-like. Right-click the sheet on the dashboard and select Fit > Entire View to make sure the shape fills its space.

Step 4: Create the Dashboard Action

This is the final and most important step. We need to tell Tableau what to do when this "button" worksheet is clicked.

1. Navigate to the top menu and click Dashboard > Actions....
2. In the Actions window, click Add Action > Filter....
3. A configuration window will pop up. Fill it out as follows:

Click OK twice to close both windows.

Now, go into Presentation Mode to test it. Apply some filters to your dashboard. Then, click your "Reset Filters" button. All the other sheets should revert to their original, unfiltered state.

Best Practices for Tableau Buttons

• Keep Designs Consistent: If you use multiple buttons, ensure their size, font, and placement are consistent to create a professional look.
• Use Custom Shapes: Spend a few minutes designing or downloading clean, simple icons for your dashboard buttons. Sites like Flaticon are a great resource for free icons. Place them in your Documents/My Tableau Repository/Shapes folder to use them in Tableau.
• Leverage Tooltips: Always add helpful tooltip text. Never assume the user knows what a button, especially an icon-only button, is supposed to do. A simple "click for a new experience" can increase a user’s chances of using your filter.
• Combine Navigation and Filters: You can even create an action that simultaneously filters and navigates. For example, a user clicks on the "West" region on a map, and a navigation action takes them to a "West Region Details" dashboard, automatically passing "West" as a filter. This creates seamless drill-down paths for your users.

Final Thoughts

Creating buttons in Tableau is a simple yet powerful way to elevate your dashboards, turning them from data views into interactive applications. Whether you use the simple "Button" object for navigation or the more flexible worksheet method for filter actions, buttons empower your users to explore data on their own terms and with confidence.

Building these interactive experiences, while powerful, often involves careful setup and a lot of step-by-step configuration within tools like Tableau. As you think about reporting, we designed Graphed to simplify this entire process. Instead of manually creating every button, filter, and dashboard action, you can simply describe the dashboard you need in plain English - "show me my sales pipeline, and add a toggle to filter by sales rep" - and it gets built instantly, connected to your live data.