How to Create a Set in Tableau

Creating custom groups from your data in Tableau can transform a simple chart into a powerhouse of insight. A Tableau Set is one of the most effective ways to do this, letting you isolate specific subsets of your data for deeper analysis. In this tutorial, you’ll learn exactly how to create and use both fixed and dynamic sets, discover practical ways to apply them to your reports, and unlock more advanced features like combining sets and using them in calculations.

What Exactly is a Tableau Set?

Think of a Tableau Set as a custom field you create to hold a specific group of members from one of your existing dimensions. You define the criteria, and Tableau bundles all the members that meet those criteria into a set. This creates a simple binary comparison for every member in the dimension: they are either IN the set or OUT of the set.

For example, if you have a list of all your customers, you could create a set for "VIP Customers" based on who has spent over $10,000. Any customer who meets that condition is 'IN' the set, and everyone else is 'OUT'. This simple IN/OUT logic is what makes sets so powerful for highlighting data, filtering views, and driving calculations.

Tableau offers two primary types of sets:

• Fixed Sets: The members of a fixed set are, well, fixed. You manually select which members you want to include, and that list never changes unless you go in and edit it yourself. This is great for grouping dimension members that don't have something quantitative in common, like creating a set of "Competitor Companies" or "Focus Regions" for a specific marketing campaign.
• Dynamic Sets: The members of a dynamic set change automatically as the underlying data in your workbook changes. You create a dynamic set by defining rules or conditions. For instance, you could create a set for your "Top 10 Products by Sales." If you refresh your data source next quarter and a new product enters the top 10, the set will automatically update to include it and remove the product that fell off the list.

How to Create a Tableau Set: A Step-by-Step Guide

The best way to understand sets is to build a few yourself. We'll use the Sample - Superstore dataset that comes packaged with Tableau to walk through creating both a fixed and a dynamic set.

Creating a Fixed Set

Let's imagine our goal is to specifically highlight sales for a few office supply sub-categories we are currently promoting: ‘Paper’, ‘Binders’, and ‘Envelopes’. A fixed set is perfect for this because we have already pre-determined which members we want to analyze.

1. Find Your Dimension: Open the Superstore workbook. In the Data pane on the left, find the Sub-Category dimension under the 'Product' table.
2. Create the Set: Right-click on Sub-Category and from the context menu, navigate to Create > Set.... This will open the 'Create Set' dialog box.
3. Manually Select Members: You'll see several tabs at the top (General, Condition, Top). For a fixed set, stay on the General tab. A list of all the sub-categories will be displayed. Simply check the boxes next to ‘Binders’, ‘Envelopes’, and ‘Paper’.
4. Name and Save: At the top of the dialog box, give your set a descriptive name, like "Promoted Office Supplies (Fixed)". Click OK.

You’ll now see your newly created "Promoted Office Supplies (Fixed)" set at the bottom of the Data pane under the 'Sets' icon. To see it work, build a simple bar chart by dragging Sub-Category to Rows and Sales to Columns. Now, drag your new set from the Data pane and drop it onto the Color shelf in the Marks card. Your bar chart will instantly update, using color to show you which bars are 'IN' your set and which ones are 'OUT'.

Creating a Dynamic Set

Fixed sets are useful, but dynamic sets offer far more flexibility. Let’s create another set, but this time we want to find our top 5 most profitable sub-categories. We want this set to update on its own if the data changes in the future, so a dynamic set is the way to go.

1. Initiate the Set Creation: Just like before, right-click the Sub-Category dimension and go to Create > Set....
2. Define the Rule: This time, instead of manually selecting members from the 'General' tab, switch to the Top tab at the top of the dialog box.
3. Configure the Condition:

• Select the radio button next to By field:.
• We want the Top 5.
• The condition should be based on Profit, and the aggregation should be Sum.

This tells Tableau: "Show me the top 5 sub-categories measured by the sum of their profit."

1. Name and Save: Name this set something like "Top 5 Profitable Sub-Categories (Dynamic)" and click OK.

If you use this dynamic set to color your sales bar chart, you will see a different group highlighted. The beauty here is that if you were to refresh your data source with next month's sales and 'Copiers' overtook 'Phones' as the most profitable, this set would automatically adjust without you having to do anything.

3 Practical Ways to Use Tableau Sets in Your Analysis

Creating sets is just the starting point. Their real power emerges when you use them to drive deeper analysis within your dashboards.

1. Combining Sets for Deeper Segmentation

You can combine two sets to create a new set, allowing you to compare their members. Let's see which of our Top 5 Profitable Sub-Categories are also in the Top 5 for sales. First, create another dynamic set called "Top 5 Sales Sub-Categories" using the same steps as before, but this time based on 'Sales' instead of 'Profit'.

Now that you have two sets, follow these steps:

1. In the Data pane, select both the "Top 5 Profitable..." set and the "Top 5 Sales..." set. (Hold Ctrl on Windows or Command on Mac to select multiple items).
2. Right-click on one of the selected sets and choose Create Combined Set....
3. Give your new combined set a name, such as "Top Profit & Top Sales."
4. You’ll see four options for how to combine them. Choose the second option: Shared members in both sets. This option finds the intersection between the two sets.
5. Click OK.

Now you have a brand-new set containing only the sub-categories that are powerhouse performers in both sales volume and profitability. This kind of segmentation is invaluable for identifying products that are not just selling well, but are also driving healthy margins for the business.

2. Using Sets in Calculated Fields

Sets can also be used inside calculated fields to create more sophisticated logic. Under the hood, a set returns a boolean value - a member is either True (IN the set) or False (OUT of the set).

Let’s say you want to create a calculation that classifies sub-categories as 'High Performing' or 'All Other'. A calculated field lets you do this easily.

1. Click the dropdown arrow at the top of the Data pane and select Create Calculated Field....
2. Name the calculation "Performance Tier".
3. Enter the following formula:

IF [Top 5 Profitable Sub-Categories (Dynamic)]
THEN "High Performing"
ELSE "All Other"
END

1. Click OK.

This formula checks if a sub-category is 'IN' the "Top 5 Profitable..." set. If it is, the field returns the string "High Performing", otherwise, it returns "All Other." You can drag this new calculated field to your view to label and group your data in a clear, easy-to-understand way, making your dashboards more intuitive for your audience.

3. Powering Interactive Dashboards with Set Actions

For more advanced users, Set Actions are a game-changer for building interactive dashboards. A Set Action uses a user’s interaction with a viz (like a click or a hover) to dynamically change the members of a set.

For example, you could build a dashboard with a map of the United States on top and a sales chart on the bottom. You could then configure a Set Action so that when a user clicks on a state in the map, that state is added to a "Selected States" set. The sales chart below would then automatically update to show data only for the states the user has clicked on.

This creates a highly engaging and intuitive experience where users can discover insights on their own by simply interacting with the dashboard, rather than being limited to a static report controlled by filters.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Tableau sets are a fantastically versatile tool. They provide a simple yet powerful way to create custom groupings of your data for everything from basic visual highlighting to complex conditional calculations and interactive dashboarding. Mastering sets is a big step toward moving from a passive data viewer to an engaged data analyst.

Building meaningful reports in specialized tools like Tableau often involves a learning curve. For teams that need answers quickly without spending hours wrangling settings and formulas, we built Graphed. It's a platform where you can connect your data sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Salesforce - and then create dashboards and reports simply by describing what you need in plain English. We turn hours of tedious report building into a 30-second conversation, so you can focus on the insights instead of the process.