How to Make Cards in Tableau

Showing a big, important number at the top of a dashboard is one of the most effective ways to communicate performance at a glance. In Tableau, these are often called BANs (Big Ass Numbers) or KPI cards, and they quickly anchor your audience with the most critical metrics before they dive deeper into other charts. This tutorial will walk you through, step-by-step, how to create, format, and enhance these essential cards in Tableau.

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What Exactly is a Tableau Card?

A "card" isn't a built-in chart type in Tableau like a bar chart or a line graph. Instead, it's a versatile and widely-used design pattern where you use a worksheet specifically to display a single, significant metric. Think of it as a digital index card that highlights one piece of information clearly and concisely.

You'll typically see cards used at the top of a dashboard to summarize core business metrics like:

• Total Revenue for the current quarter
• Total Number of New Users this month
• Average Order Value (AOV) year-to-date
• Website Conversion Rate
• Number of Open Support Tickets

Their power lies in their simplicity. Before a viewer even looks at a trend line or a detailed table, a set of well-designed cards can tell them instantly whether things are going well, what the current sales figures are, or how many active users they have. They provide immediate context and a quantitative summary of the business.

Creating Your First Basic KPI Card (Step-by-Step)

Let's build a simple card to show total sales. For this walkthrough, we'll be using the "Sample - Superstore" dataset that comes bundled with every copy of Tableau, so you can easily follow along.

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Step 1: Connect to Your Data Source

Open Tableau Desktop. In the "Connect" pane, under "Saved Data Sources," select Sample - Superstore and open a new worksheet.

Step 2: Add Your Measure to the Text Mark

Creating the "big number" is surprisingly easy. All you need to do is tell Tableau what metric you want to display as text.

In the Data pane on the left, find the Sales measure. Drag Sales and drop it onto the Text box in the Marks card. Just like that, you'll see a number appear in your canvas.

Step 3: Format the Number

The raw number is there, but it's not very readable. Let's format it as currency.

1. Right-click the "SUM(Sales)" pill that's on the Text mark.
2. Select Format.
3. A Format pane will open on the left. Under the "Pane" tab, expand the Numbers dropdown.
4. Choose Currency (Custom). You can then adjust the decimal places (let's set it to 0), prefix ($), and units (change to 'K' for thousands if you prefer a more compact view for very large numbers).

Your number should now look much cleaner, like "$2,300K" or "$2,297,201".

Step 4: Style Your Card's Text

Next, we need to make it look like a feature element. This means making it bigger, centering it, and maybe giving it a label.

1. Click on the Text button in the Marks card. A text editor dialog box will appear.
2. Highlight the <SUM(Sales)> text. Use the formatting options at the top to change the font size to something large, like 24 or 32, and make it bold.
3. You can also add a label. Hit enter to move to a new line and type "Total Sales". Make this label text a smaller font size (e.g., 10 or 12) and a lighter color so it serves as a non-distracting subtitle.
4. Click OK to close the editor.

To center the text perfectly in the worksheet, go to the toolbar and change the horizontal alignment under the "Format" menu to center.

Enhancing Your Card with Comparative Metrics

A number by itself is useful, but a number with context is much more powerful. Let's add a year-over-year (YoY) comparison to our Sales card to show if sales are trending up or down.

Step 1: Create a Calculated Field for Prior Year Sales

First, we need a way to isolate last year's sales. A calculated field is perfect for this.

1. Click the dropdown menu at the top of the Data pane and select Create Calculated Field...
2. Name the field "Prior Year Sales".
3. Enter the following formula. This calculation looks at the maximum date in the dataset (assuming it’s current) and then calculates Sales from the 12 months prior to that.

// Find the latest order date in the entire dataset
{FIXED : MAX([Order Date])}

This Level of Detail (LOD) expression establishes the most recent date in your dataset. Now we can use this as a base for comparison.

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Step 2: Create Calculated Fields for Current Year and Prior Year Sales

Now, let's create two fields: one for Current Year sales and one for Prior Year sales based on our max date.

Current Year Sales:

1. Create a new calculated field named Current Year Sales with the formula:

IF DATETRUNC('year', [Order Date]) = DATETRUNC('year', {FIXED : MAX([Order Date])})
THEN [Sales]
END

Prior Year Sales:

1. Create a new calculated field named Prior Year Sales with the formula:

IF DATETRUNC('year', [Order Date]) = DATETRUNC('year', DATEADD('year', -1, {FIXED : MAX([Order Date])}))
THEN [Sales]
END

Step 3: Add YoY Growth Percentage

With both Current Year sales and Prior Year sales, we can now calculate the year-over-year growth rate.

Create a new calculated field named YoY Sales Growth:

(SUM([Current Year Sales]) - SUM([Prior Year Sales])) / SUM([Prior Year Sales])

Step 4: Add the Growth Field to Your Card

Now, drag your new YoY Sales Growth field onto the text mark, just like you did for Total Sales. Then click the text button again to edit the label.

• Place the growth field next to or below the Current Year Sales.
• Prefix it with an arrow or label like "YoY."
• Click OK.

To format this new number as a percentage, right-click on its pill in the Marks card, select Format, and choose Percentage. You can customize the arrows by going to formatting and using custom number formats such as ▲0.0%,▼0.0%.

Designing a Multi-Card KPI Header

A single card is great, but dashboards often begin with a row of three to four cards to provide a high-level snapshot.

Step-by-Step Guide: Combining Cards on a Dashboard

1. First, create a few more worksheets following the steps above for other metrics like profit, quantity, or number of customers.
2. Create a new dashboard by clicking the New Dashboard icon at the bottom.
3. From the sheets list on the left, drag each of your KPI card worksheets onto the canvas. Place them side by side.
4. To ensure your cards are organized neatly, add a horizontal container to the dashboard first and then drag your card worksheets into that. This keeps them aligned and evenly sized.
5. Click on each worksheet within the container and choose "Fit Entire View" from the toolbar dropdown so that it uses the entire space.
6. Finally, add background colors or borders to make each card pop. You can do this by formatting each individual worksheet or by adding color to a layout container on the dashboard.

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Advanced Tip: Creating Dynamic and Interactive Cards

Using Parameters to Switch Metrics

What if you wanted one card to display multiple metrics? You can achieve this using Parameters.

1. Create a Parameter named "Select Metric". Set the data type to String, and choose a list of allowable values (e.g., "Sales", "Profit", "Quantity").
2. Create a calculated field that uses a case statement to return the selected measure based on your parameter.

// Calculated field name: Selected Metric
CASE [Select Metric] 
    WHEN "Sales" THEN [Sales] 
    WHEN "Profit" THEN [Profit] 
    WHEN "Quantity" THEN [Quantity]
END

Use this new Selected Metric field on your Text mark instead of the static measure and show the parameter control on the dashboard. Your users can now toggle between different KPIs within a single card.

Adding Dynamic Colors

To provide instant visual cues, add dynamic colors based on performance.

1. Create a calculated field called "YoY Color":

IF [YoY Sales Growth] > 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

1. Drag the YoY Color field onto the Color box in the Marks card.
2. Click on the Color button and edit the colors to assign green for positive and red for negative.

Final Thoughts

Creating KPI cards in Tableau is a fundamental skill that transforms raw data points into a compelling narrative. By highlighting critical metrics clearly and adding context through comparisons and visual cues, you can build a dashboard that provides immediate value and drives better decision-making. With tools like Tableau, you can build dynamic, custom reports that take time and technical know-how. We've built Graphed to eliminate the manual work for you. Connect your sources like Google Analytics and ask simple questions using natural language like "Show me my sales profit for the last quarter." We instantly generate a functional dashboard synced with KPI cards and more, all set up to give you back time to analyze and act on the data instead of just gathering it.