Overview
Donut Chart in Tableau Pie charts are one in every of the foremost iconic data visualization styles; within the past, they need been the bedrock of the many a PowerPoint presentation. I’m not visiting come in all of them, but one gap is that whilst they offer an inexpensive sense of proportion, they often lack the larger picture, i.e. the general size of the information or other high-level stat. as an example, if we are staring at sales, it’s great to understand which department is contributing the most important proportion, but what were my overall sales?

The Surprise of a Tableau Donut Chart
This leads us nicely to the donut chart. Fundamentally, this is often built on a chart but incorporates an area within the middle for the high-level takeaway figure. Tableau has no Show Me! for the donut chart, which may make it a bit inaccessible for a few, but here may be a blow-by-blow thanks to unlock this enhanced viz type. Double-click on Rows and write avg(0):
In front of the sector you simply created, double-click and write avg(0):
You should now have two Marks cards:
On the primary Marks card (1), change the mark type from automatic to Pie chart:
On the primary Marks card (1), bring your dimension to Colour (e.g. Segment) and your measure to Angle (e.g. Sales):
Still on the primary Marks card (1), bring the measure (e.g. Sales) and therefore the dimension (e.g. Segment) to the Label card. Click on the Label card and choose Show mark labels:
Right-click on the measure (e.g. Sales) field that you simply just added to the Label card, and choose Quick Table Calculation then Percent of Total:
On the secondary Marks card (2), change the mark type to Pie. Use the scale and Colour cards to regulate the dimensions and colour of the circle:
On the Rows, right-click on the second avg(0) field and choose Dual Axis:
And there you’ve got it! Now, you’ll visualise your data by building upon the chart whilst also providing key takeaway information to your audience.
Uses of Donut Chart in Tableau
Uses of Donut Chart in Tableau Donut charts offer a fast, high-level view of knowledge dimensions that have few members, and together, contribute to a full. Essentially, it’s a chart with a hole. It’s not glamorous, but it’s quick and informative.
Used in Tableau, these charts are quite interesting to appear at. they’ll be leveraged easily for dashboard filtering and menu navigation. There are many great uses for this easy and stylish visualization.
Good uses of this Kind of chart
- Quick high-level view of percentages/shares of total.
- Your dimensions are few: during this example, we are only watching four members of a partition. However, no slivers are so small that they’re hard to see/click.
- Values are large enough to be read in the slightest degree.
- Dashboard filter/highlight action: rather than a fast filter, use a pie or donut to filter your dashboard. You’ll get a prettier filter and better performance than a fast filter.
Times to avoid this sort of chart
- One or more of the partition members is little, making it difficult to work out in the least.
- Avoid a pie or donut after you want to dimensions to dimensions. in this case, tend toward bars or line charts.
Types of Donut Chart
- Creation of Double-Spaces Doughnut charts in Tableau.
To create Double-Spaces Doughnut charts, we’ll start with creating calculated field.
Calculated Fields
With our data set loaded into Tableau, we are visiting create the subsequent Calculated Fields and Bins:
Index
INDEX()
Seat Share
MAX(IF([Type]=”Percentage of Seats”) THEN [Values] END)
Vote Share
MAX(IF([Type]=”Percentage of Votes”) THEN [Values] END)
TC_Position
WINDOW_MAX(MAX([Position]))
TC_Values
WINDOW_MAX(MAX([Values]))
X
SIN([Index]*2*PI()/180)*[TC_Position]
Note: we’d like to convert percentages to Radians by multiplying by PI() then dividing by 180.
Y
COS([Index]*2*PI()/180)*[TC_Position]
Colour
IF [Index]*2/360 <= [TC_Values] THEN WINDOW_MAX(MAX([Party])) ELSE “Gray” END
So now that we’ve got created plenty of Calculated fields, we’ll now put this together into a Worksheet.
We will now build our worksheet by:
- Drag Type onto the main points Mark
- Drag Path (Bin) onto the Columns
- Right click on Path (Bin) and check Show Missing Values
- Drag Path (Bin) onto the Detail Mark
- Drag Party onto the Details Mark
- Drag Party onto Columns
- Change the Mark Type to Line
- Drag Position onto Path
- Right click on Position and choose Dimension
- Drag X onto Columns
- Right click on X, go to Compute Using, select Path (Bin)
- Drag Y onto Rows
- Right click on Y, go to Compute Using, select Path (Bin)
- Drag Colour onto the Colour Mark
- Right click on Colour, go to Compute Using, select Path (Bin)
We will now complete the visualisation by adding the central text.
- Drag Zero onto Rows
- Right-click and select Dual Axis
- Right-click on the axis bar and select Synchronize Axis
- You should have SUM(Zero) as an option on Marks, now
- Remove all objects
- Change the Marks to Text
- Drag Vote Share to Text
- Drag Seat Share to Text
- Right Click on Seat Share and Vote Share and change the Number format to 1 decimal place percentage
- Go to the Y object in Marks and removes the Measure Names; this has been added automatically.
You have now built a worksheet that shows a Double-Spaced Doughnut Chart where the ingroup represents the amount of votes and therefore the outer circle represents the quantity of seats.
Adjusting the Visual We will now do the subsequent to induce the planning that we require:
- Remove all Grid Lines
- Edit the party Colour
- Remove the Tooltips on for the Doughnut
- Hide Headers
- Format your text
- Adjust your sizes
- Stacked Donut Chart
Have you ever wanted to stack 4 pie charts on top of every other to create a visual? Let’s have some fun building out a stacked donut chart or a “Trailblazer” chart as I call it because of its likeness to a NBA team’s logo.
Portland Trailblazers anyone?
In order to create out this chart I used an innovative technique shared by Simon Runc on the Tableau forums.
Using Tableau’s Sample Superstore Data, Simon came up with an innovative use of the INDEX() function and therefore the Size functionality to form three different pie charts that every show a respective percentage of a measure (in this case Sales) to the whole amount of the measure.
For example, the chart highlights in red the share of Consumer Sales as a percentage of all segment sales (i.e., Consumer + Corporate + Home Office). The grey portions represent all other sales, apart from the segment of interest.
The trick to the present approach is using the Index function to make a chart per segment. for instance, Consumer is assigned a worth of 1, Corporate a worth of two and residential Office is assigned 3. When the INDEX() value is placed on size, the three different charts are assigned sizes where one is slightly larger than the following.
With a bit division and axis customization, the three segments are placed on top of every other to supply a stacked chart effect. the outlet is courtesy of the quality methodology for creating a donut chart which involves a dual axis.
- KPI Donut Chart
If you’ve got any experience with floating objects in Tableau, you recognize the pain of taking many time to create a dashboard look perfect in Desktop with floating objects, only to own it get all tousled once you publish it to Server or Public. I rarely recommend using floating objects for just this reason; it’s frustrating and might make your work look sloppy.
Another reason to avoid floating objects is that there are more objects that need to be drawn on the dashboard, which may potentially have a performance impact. When used for the precise purpose of showing a metric’s achieve goal, with one “slice” being this state of the KPI and one “slice” being the rest to goal, I believe a donut chart works well. Here’s how I might create a donut chart in Tableau employing a single worksheet. T
The ultimate product sounds like this:
Step 1: Create a two-slice chart. this instance uses actual sales and sales left to hit the goal.
Step 2: Drag the quantity of Records measure to the Rows shelf and alter the aggregation to a median. Repeat this a second time so right-click on the second pill and choose “Dual Axis”. Finally, remember to synchronize the axes.
Step 3: Double click on the left axis to quote the Edit Axis window. Uncheck Include Zero.
Step 4: Do a touch of formatting: (1) Remove Zero line, (2) Remove Row & Column dividers, (3) Hide the headers
Step 5: Add Region to the Columns shelf so hide the headers.
Step 6: On the primary chart on the Marks card, add Region to the Label shelf, set the alignment to the highest and make the font bigger.
Step 7: On the second chart on the Marks card, add a zipper to goal measure to the Label shelf and customize the font.
Step 8: Sort Region by the children to goal metric in descending order.
Hence we have learned to effectively make use of one of the most popular charts for detailed analysis of data.
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