Learn how to create interactive data presentations using stories in Tableau, combining dashboards, charts, and custom text for a streamlined experience. This guide highlights how to manage layout, add navigation elements, and adjust display settings for optimal presentation flow.
Key Insights
- Stories in Tableau can incorporate full dashboards, charts, and text across multiple pages, allowing for a sequential, presentation-style display similar to a slideshow.
- Users can customize layout features such as captions, navigation buttons (using numbers, dots, or arrows), and slide order by dragging and positioning components directly within the story interface.
- Noble Desktop demonstrates how to adjust story size settings—switching from fixed to automatic sizing—to maximize screen space and enhance the presentation experience in Tableau's presentation mode.
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All right, so stories. I'm going to click this little plus button and I'm going to create a story. Stories, even though we say they're not that powerful, can include an entire dashboard.
If I wanted to take a dashboard and move it in here, I could. I just drag it into this blank space and there it is and it works with the animation. I want to bring in another dashboard.
I can click blank to create a new blank space and now I have a button that I can use. I'll bring in a pie chart. I'll add another blank one or if you want to do this slick thing where you can drag it and put it at the edge of the button and there you go.
Now when it comes to the layout, you can choose caption boxes. You'll enter your own captions, numbers, dots, or arrows. So let's say I'll choose numbers.
This is now my presentation on your computer. You can click on the presentation mode and then use these buttons to navigate from your computer your presentations. So like I said, it's a glorified PowerPoint presentation and that's pretty much all there is to say about stories.
You do have the ability to control the size, which is down here. They default to a fixed size. You can drag a text box on top of a worksheet or dashboard and add in your own custom text.
So that is something that is another feature that you may not think is available. If I wanted to bring in page two, dashboard two, I can drag dashboard two, put it right after dashboard one. When I do my presentation, let me see, I'm going to change my size.
I want this to, instead of a fixed size, I want this to be automatic and then it kind of fills in the space. Now I can go into presentation mode and I have a little more room. I'll click on page one.
I'll click on page two. And so I'm going to come out of this. So, oh, here's story one.
There we go. For some reason, it jumped around. So I'll go over here and then now I can use the buttons to navigate.
