Often, you'll need more than a single visualization to communicate the full story of the data. In these cases, Tableau makes it very easy for you to use multiple visualizations together on a dashboard. In Tableau, a dashboard is a collection of views, filters, parameters, images, and other objects that work together to communicate a data story. Dashboards are often interactive and allow end users to explore different facets of the data.
Dashboards serve a wide variety of purposes and can be tailored to suit a wide variety of audiences. Consider the following possible dashboards:
- A summary-level view of profit and sales to allow executives to have a quick glimpse into the current status of the company
- An interactive dashboard, allowing sales managers to drill into sales territories to identify threats or opportunities
- A dashboard allowing doctors to track patient readmissions, diagnoses, and procedures to make better decisions about patient care
- A dashboard allowing executives of a real-estate company to identify trends and make decisions for various apartment complexes
- An interactive dashboard for loan officers to make lending decisions based on portfolios broken down by credit ratings and geographic location
Considerations for different audiences and advanced techniques will be covered in detail in Chapter 7, Telling a Data Story with Dashboards.