CODEWITHSUNDEEP
tableau-api
Jake
Jake

Reputation: 2109

Counting multiple values from one column in Tableau

I have a field from the data I am reading in that can contain multiple values. They are essentially tags.

For example, there could be a column called "persons responsible". This could read "Joe; Bob; Sue" or "Sue" for a given row.

Is it possible from within Tableau to read these in as separate categories? So that for this sample data:

Project     | Persons
---------------------------
Zeta        | Bob; Sue; Joe
Enne        | Sue
Doble Ve    | Bob

There could be a count of Bob (2), Sue (2), Joe (1)?

I am working on getting better data inputs, but I was wondering if there was a temporary solution at this level.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3303

Answers (2)

Ryan
Ryan

Reputation: 454

If the number of elements is small, you write and union several queries with each one having the project and nth element.

Ideally, you'd reshape your data to look like this either in the database or with the above mentioned union technique. Then you could count() or countd() the elements by project.

Project     | Persons
---------------------------
Zeta        | Bob
Zeta        | Sue
Zeta        | Joe
Enne        | Sue
Doble Ve    | Bob

Upvotes: 0

Alex Blakemore
Alex Blakemore

Reputation: 11896

I would definitely work towards normalizing your schema.

In the meantime, there is a workaround that is almost reasonable if there is a small set of possible values for the tags (persons in your example).

If Bob, Sue and Joe are the only people in the system, you can use the contains() function to define a boolean calculated field for each person -- e.g. Bob_Is_Responsible = contains(Persons, 'Bob"), and similar fields for Sue and Joe. Then you could use those as building blocks, possibly with sets, to break the data up in different ways.

Of course, this approach gets cumbersome fast if the number of tags grows, or if it is unconstrained. But you asked for a temporary solution ...

Upvotes: 3

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