1. Groups for regions
In this demo, we are going to create groups to represent regions within Chicago. To begin with, I have a map set up with Longitude in the Columns shelf and Latitude in Rows shelf. We’re using From Station Name to name points on the map. In this map, I’ve added several layers which will be helpful in drawing out the regions, which is why it may look different from the other maps we’ve used.
This is the View Toolbar of the map. It has options for zooming and resetting the map. And within this last option, we can find tools to create groups. Specifically, these last three are selection tools, meaning we can select data points within a rectangle, OR circle, OR even drawn area, using lasso selection. This is what we’ll be using.
If we zoom in, we can see the border of the city center of Chicago here. Remember, you can hold down shift to pan around the map. I’m going to take the lasso selection tool to try to select all the points within it. I’m holding down as I select. If I don’t like what I’ve done, I can click outside of it and try again. Once we have a selection we’re happy with, we navigate to this paperclip icon, which represents groups in tableau.
Here we have to pick a field we want our group to be based on, and in our case we want “From Station Name”. A new field is now on the datapane with that paperclip icon. I right click it and select edit group. Here I can edit the title of this new field to be Regions. I’ll also rename my selected group to be called “City Center”.
I can come back to the datapoints and find some others I missed. If I select them along with a city center point, I can add them easily into the city center group. To ungroup a point, I can select it and press the paperclip with the X. Now that point is part of the Other group.
Now, I’m going to select points for a Southern region. And, it takes me more than one selection. I can change the name here through “Edit Alias”.
And I can also change the name in the Edit Group popup. I’ll rename the other group, which is made up of all the other points I haven’t grouped yet, to North.
This grey doesn’t fit in with the orange and the red, so I’ll change the color scheme in the Color card.
I can easily edit my selections in the Edit Group popup. I can combine groups by dragging them together - I won’t save this since it doesn’t make sense in our case.
And, another way to edit selections, for example, is if there’s a station I want to move to another region, I can search the station name using the Find feature and change its grouping in this “add to” drop down. I picked a random station so now we see it as an outlier on the map. Ok, your turn to try it out!
2. Let's practice!