How to Combine Two Dashboards in Tableau
Working with multiple Tableau dashboards can feel like juggling - each one is important, but getting them to work together can be a real challenge. You've built a sales dashboard and a marketing dashboard, but the real insights come when you can connect the two seamlessly. This article will show you three practical methods for combining your dashboards in Tableau, turning separate reports into a single, cohesive analytical experience.
Why Combine Dashboards in the First Place?
Before diving into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Combining dashboards isn't just about tidying up your workbook, it provides real benefits for anyone interacting with your data.
- Create a Holistic View: It allows you to build a master dashboard that provides a high-level overview (e.g., key company KPIs) while letting users click through to more detailed views (e.g., granular sales performance or marketing campaign analysis).
- Improve User Experience: Instead of making users hunt through different tabs, you can create an intuitive navigation system. This guides them through the data story you want to tell and makes the analysis process feel more like using a web application.
- Reduce Clutter: If one dashboard is getting too crowded with charts and filters, you can split the content into logical sections. You might have one dashboard for geographic analysis and another for product performance, linked by simple navigation buttons.
- Combine Summary and Detail: You can present a dashboard with high-level summaries and then allow users to navigate to a separate dashboard showing the row-level data that backs up the top-line numbers.
Method 1: Using Dashboard Actions for Seamless Navigation
Dashboard Actions are the most powerful and common way to connect dashboards. They allow you to create interactive elements, like buttons or even parts of a chart, that navigate users from one dashboard to another. This method is perfect for creating a central "home" dashboard that links out to more specific "detail" dashboards.
Step-by-Step Guide to Setting up Navigation Actions
Let's imagine you have a "Main KPIs" dashboard and want to link to a "Deep-Dive Sales" dashboard and a "Marketing Funnel" dashboard.
1. Design Your Main Navigation Dashboard
This is your landing page. Keep it clean and simple. You might include a few key performance indicators (KPIs) and clearly marked sections for navigation. The goal is to make it obvious where users should click to access more information.
2. Add Navigation Buttons
Tableau makes this incredibly easy with the Button object. In your main dashboard's design pane, you'll see it under "Objects."
- Drag a Button object onto your canvas where you want the link to the Sales dashboard to be.
- A dialog box will appear. Here, you can configure its appearance. You can style it with text ("View Sales Details"), choose an image for the button, and add a tooltip that appears when a user hovers over it.
- Repeat this process to add another button for your Marketing dashboard.
Pro Tip: Many designers create simple button images in tools like Figma or Canva and import them into Tableau for a more polished look.
3. Configure the "Go to Sheet" Action
Now it's time to bring the button to life with a Dashboard Action.
- With your Main dashboard selected, go to the top menu and click Dashboard > Actions...
- In the Actions dialog box, click Add Action > Go to Sheet...
- A new configuration window will pop up. This is where you connect the button to its destination. Fill it out as follows:
- Click OK to save the action.
Now, repeat this process for the "Marketing Funnel" button, changing the Target Sheet to your Marketing dashboard. When you're done, clicking each button on your main KPI dashboard will navigate you directly to the corresponding detail dashboard.
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4. Don't Forget the "Back" Button!
To create a truly seamless experience, add a "back" button on your Sales and Marketing dashboards that navigates the user back to the "Main KPIs" dashboard. Just repeat the steps above, but this time, your source sheet will be the detail dashboard and your target sheet will be the main dashboard.
Method 2: Weaving Dashboards Together with Tableau Stories
If your goal is to present a linear, guided narrative rather than enable free-form exploration, Tableau Stories are an excellent choice. A Story is a sequence of worksheets or dashboards that you arrange to tell a specific data tale. Instead of connecting dashboards with buttons, you arrange them in a sequence, like slides in a presentation.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Story
1. Finalize Your Dashboards
Before creating a story, ensure your dashboards are complete. Any changes you make to a dashboard later will automatically update within the story, but it's best to have them fully built out first.
2. Create a New Story
At the bottom of your Tableau workbook, next to the "New Dashboard" icon, you'll see an icon for "New Story." Click it to create a new Story canvas.
3. Add Dashboards to Your Story
On the left-hand side of the story workspace, you'll see a list of all the worksheets and dashboards in your workbook. Simply drag your first dashboard (e.g., "Main KPIs") onto the canvas. It will become the first "story point."
To add the next dashboard, click Blank to create a new story point, and then drag your "Deep-Dive Sales" dashboard onto it. Repeat this for the "Marketing Funnel" dashboard. Each one becomes a separate point in your story.
4. Customize the Navigator and Annotations
At the top of the canvas, you'll see a navigator that allows users to move between story points.
- Under "Layout," you can change the style of the navigator (e.g., to Dots, Numbers, or Arrows).
- You can add a title and descriptions for the overall story and add individual captions to each story point. This is perfect for setting the context, highlighting a key insight in a dashboard, and then guiding the user to the next step in the analysis.
Stories are great for presenting findings to stakeholders, as you maintain full control over the flow of information. However, they are less flexible for users who want to explore the data themselves.
Method 3: Manually Consolidating into a Single Super-Dashboard
Sometimes, the simplest solution is the best one. Instead of creating complex navigation, you might just want a single, consolidated dashboard that pulls in the most important elements from other dashboards. This "brute force" approach is useful when you need an at-a-glance view of different business areas on one screen.
Imagine your sales dashboard has a revenue trends chart and a regional map, while your marketing dashboard shows campaign ROI and lead traffic. You could create one "Performance Overview" dashboard that includes all four charts.
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Steps for Manual Consolidation
1. Create a New, Larger Dashboard
Start by creating a new dashboard. In the Dashboard pane on the left, you can set a custom size to give yourself more canvas space to work with. Using a wide layout (e.g., 1600x900) often works well for consolidated views.
2. Drag Worksheets Onto the Canvas
From the list on the left, drag the specific sheets you want to consolidate onto the new canvas. Instead of dragging entire dashboards, select the individual charts directly.
Pro Tip: Use Horizontal and Vertical layout containers (found under "Objects") to group related charts together and keep your layout organized and neat.
3. Reconfigure Filters and Actions
This is the most critical step. Filters you set up on the original dashboards won't automatically apply here. For each filter on the new dashboard, click its dropdown arrow and select Apply to Worksheets > Selected Worksheets.... Then, check the boxes for all the worksheets that you want that filter to affect.
Similarly, if you have actions (like highlights), you may need to recreate them so they work on your new dashboard. This method provides the highest information density but takes time to set up correctly.
Key Practices for Blending Dashboards
- Maintain a Consistent Design: When using navigation, ensure all dashboards share the same color palettes, fonts, and formatting rules. This makes the transition between them feel seamless, not jarring.
- Plan Your User's Journey: Think architecturally. How should a user naturally flow through the information? From summary to detail? Or from cause to effect? Map this out before you start building.
- Monitor Performance: Dashboards loaded with too many worksheets, complex calculated fields, or large datasets can get slow. If you're building a super-dashboard, be mindful of its performance impact and optimize wherever possible.
Final Thoughts
Each of these methods provides a different way to transform standalone dashboards into a unified and insightful analytical experience. Using navigation actions is generally the most flexible approach for interactive exploration, stories are perfect for guided presentations, and consolidating views is ideal for at-a-glance reports. Experiment with all three to see which one best fits your data and your audience's needs.
While mastering tools like Tableau is incredibly valuable, we built Graphed because we believe anyone on your team should be able to instantly get answers from your core marketing and sales data without getting stuck. You can skip the tedious part of building dashboards and simply create what you need by describing it in plain English, allowing your entire team to make faster, more data-driven decisions.
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