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How to Create Actions in Tableau

Cody Schneider••8 min read

Transforming a static dashboard into an interactive analytical tool often comes down to one powerful feature: Actions. This guide will walk you through exactly what Tableau Actions are and how to create the most common types, step by step, to make your dashboards more dynamic and insightful for your audience.

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What Are Tableau Actions, Anyway?

In simple terms, a Tableau Action is a user-initiated command that causes something to happen within your dashboard. When a user clicks, hovers over, or selects a mark on one of your worksheets, an Action can filter, highlight, or navigate to related information on another sheet. It's the engine that powers interactivity, allowing users to ask and answer their own follow-up questions directly within the dashboard you’ve built.

Instead of just presenting data, actions invite users to engage with it. For example, a user could:

  • Click on a state in a map view to filter a bar chart to show sales data for only that state.
  • Hover over a product category to highlight all sales of that product across multiple charts on the dashboard.
  • Click a product’s name in a table to automatically open a Google search for that product in a new tab.
  • Click a "View Details" button to navigate from a high-level summary dashboard to a granular, detailed report.

Actions are what separate a simple data graphic from a true business intelligence tool. They close the gap between observation and exploration.

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The Different Types of Tableau Actions

Tableau offers several types of actions, each with a unique purpose. We’ll focus on the most popular and versatile ones:

  • Filter Actions: The most common type. Use a selection in one sheet to filter data in another. This is the cornerstone of drill-down analysis.
  • Highlight Actions: A visual way to connect related data. Selections in one sheet highlight the corresponding marks in other sheets, making it easy to see relationships at a glance.
  • Go to URL Actions: Links your Tableau dashboard to the outside world. This can be used to open web pages, with the ability to dynamically insert values from your data directly into the URL.
  • Go to Sheet Actions: Allows you to create navigation paths within your workbook. Direct users from a summary dashboard to a detailed worksheet or vice-versa, enhancing a guided analytics experience.
  • Set Actions (Advanced): Change the values within a set based on user interaction. This can be used for more complex conditional formatting, proportional brushing, and asymmetrical drill-downs.

How to Create the Most Common Tableau Actions (Step-by-Step)

Let's create a simple dashboard to demonstrate these actions. Imagine our dashboard has three sheets:

  1. Sales by Region: A bar chart showing total sales for each sales region.
  2. Sales Over Time: A line chart showing monthly sales trends.
  3. Product Details: A text table listing every product, its category, and its total sales.

With these three worksheets on a single dashboard, we can bring them to life with actions.

1. Creating a Filter Action

Our goal is to allow a user to click a region in the Sales by Region bar chart and see the Sales Over Time line chart and the Product Details table update to show data for only that selected region.

  1. With your dashboard open, navigate to the top menu and select Dashboard > Actions....
  2. In the Actions dialog box that appears, click the Add Action > button and select Filter....
  3. A configuration window will open. First, give your action a descriptive name, like "Filter by Selected Region". This helps if you have multiple actions on one dashboard.
  4. Under Source Sheets, uncheck everything except for your Sales by Region worksheet. This sheet is the initiator of the action.
  5. For Run action on, choose Select. This means the action will fire when a user clicks on a bar in the region chart. Hover is too sensitive for filtering, and Menu requires an extra click.
  6. Under Target Sheets, select the sheets you want to be affected. In our case, check Sales Over Time and Product Details. We leave Sales by Region unchecked because we don't want it to filter itself.
  7. For Clearing the selection will, choose Show all values. This ensures that when the user deselects the region (by clicking it again or clicking in the white space), the target charts return to showing all the data.
  8. Click OK to close the configuration, then OK again to close the Actions window.

Now, test it! Click on a region in your bar chart. You should see the line chart and the product table instantly update. You’ve just created your first interactive dashboard element.

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2. Creating a Highlight Action

Next, let's say our Product Details table also has a "Customer Segment" field. We want to be able to hover over a product in that table and see which segments purchased it highlighted in our charts. Highlight actions are perfect for drawing attention to connections without filtering out other data.

  1. Go back to Dashboard > Actions... and click Add Action > Highlight....
  2. Name this action something like "Highlight by Product Category".
  3. For the Source Sheets, select the Product Details worksheet.
  4. For Run action on, choose Hover. This creates a really fluid 'brushing' effect where users can just move their mouse over the table to see connections.
  5. For Target Sheets, select the other visuals you want to highlight, like Sales by Region and Sales Over Time. Make sure these sheets have "Category" on the Detail shelf in the Marks card so they contain the category information needed to highlight.
  6. Under Target Highlighting, you can use "All Fields" or specify the exact field, in this case, "Category." "All Fields" generally works well if the sheets share common dimensions.
  7. Click OK twice to save your action.

Now when you hover your mouse over different rows in the product table, you'll see corresponding segments of the bars and lines on your other charts light up, instantly showing you that category's contribution to the whole.

3. Creating a Go to URL Action

What if a user wants more information about a specific product listed in your Product Details table? You can create an action that searches for the product on an external site like your company website or even just Google.

  1. Go to Dashboard > Actions... and click Add Action > Go to URL....
  2. Name it something like "Search Product Online".
  3. For the Source Sheets, select the Product Details worksheet.
  4. This time, let's use Menu for Run action on. This adds the link to the tooltip menu, preventing users from opening new tabs accidentally. They have to explicitly click a product, hover for the tooltip, and then click the hyperlink text.
  5. In the URL input box, you'll build your dynamic link. To create a Google search, type: http://www.google.com/search?q=.
  6. Now for the dynamic part. Click the little arrow icon > to the right of the URL box. A dropdown of all available fields from your source sheet will appear. Select the "Product Name" field.
  7. Your final URL should look like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=<Product Name>. Tableau will replace <Product Name> with the actual name of the product the user clicks on.
  8. Click OK twice. Test it by clicking on a product in your table. The tooltip should appear, and within it, you'll see your blue hyperlinked action name, "Search Product Online." Clicking that will open a new browser tab with your search results!

4. Creating a Go to Sheet Action

Finally, "Go to Sheet" actions are essential for building a logical path through a complex workbook. You can create a main "Executive Summary" dashboard, and then allow users to click a chart to jump to a different, more detailed dashboard for deeper analysis.

  1. Imagine you have two dashboards: "Sales Overview" and "Regional Deep Dive".
  2. On the "Sales Overview" dashboard, you have our Sales by Region map.
  3. Open the "Sales Overview" dashboard and navigate to Dashboard > Actions... > Add Action > Go to Sheet....
  4. Name the action "Navigate to Regional Details".
  5. Select your map worksheet as the Source Sheet.
  6. Choose Select as the trigger.
  7. In the Target Sheet dropdown, choose the "Regional Deep Dive" dashboard you want to navigate to.
  8. Click OK to close the windows.

Now, when a user clicks a region on your map in the summary dashboard, Tableau will instantly transport them to the detailed dashboard, automatically filtering it for the region they selected on the previous screen. This is a fantastic way to manage dashboard complexity and offer different levels of detail on demand.

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Final Thoughts

Learning to use Tableau Actions is a major step in advancing your dashboard design skills. By combining filter, highlight, URL, and navigation actions, you can build powerful, intuitive tools that empower your team to move beyond just viewing data and start having a conversation with it.

While mastering tools like Tableau is incredibly powerful, it often requires a considerable time investment upfront. At Graphed, we want to help you get to the insights faster. We built an AI data analyst that allows you to connect all your marketing and sales data sources (like Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads) and use simple, natural language to create the exact dashboards you need in seconds. Instead of navigating menus to build actions, you can just ask, "Show me a chart of sales by region, and when I click a region, filter a trends chart." Our platform handles the setup and keeps your dashboards backed by live, real-time data, giving you back time to focus on strategy instead of report-building. If you’re ready to speed up your reporting, you can try Graphed today.

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