Nested Sorting in Dimension Hierarchies (Tableau)
I Am Working on a Vizualisation in Tableau That Has Dimension Hierarchy (Product Category, Product Sub-Category, Product Type Etc.) Sorted Descending by Number...
I am working on a vizualisation in Tableau that has dimension hierarchy (Product category, product sub-category, product type etc.) sorted descending by number of orders. I want my viz to show by default only first product level (product category) sorted the same way, but give an option to drill down (using "+" on the dimension) to detailed product levels and using nested sorting (again, descending by number of orders).
I tried using nested sorting option for each product level, but when I drill up and down again, the sorting is wrong again, as if it clears out. I cannot find an option to keep them fixed unless I keep all product levels visible in the viz (without drill-down option).
Does anyone know how can I do it? I tried also different ways of indexing and ranking calculations, but nothing seem to work. I know there is one option to combine hierarchy dimensions and using sorting option on them, but it keeps the viz really untidy.
Thanks in advance!
1 Answer
Tableau will always sort based on the left most column. With the newer nested sorting you can more easily do a secondary sorting. However, when you expand up/down hierarchies like you are noting the formatting might not be retained.
The "classic" way to do this is to create a Rank by number of orders (sounds like you were close on this one). rank(COUNT([Order ID]),'desc'). Make this a discrete measure and put it to the left of all the other dimensions.
To clean it up, you can uncheck "Show Header" on the rank pill.
And if you expand/collapse the hierarchy, it keeps the sorting... Final product:
EDIT: Here is another way to try to accomplish this. It seems to work for 3 levels but starts to break down after that. (It also didn't seem to work well on grouped dimensions.)
- Expand the hierarchy to all three levels.
- On each dimension, enforce a sort order of Count of Order ID Descending.
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