Dataskera

Circle Packing

Circle Packing nests a portfolio as circles inside circles: the level shelves define the nesting, a measure defines the area, a click dives in. It answers what is inside this without leaving the dashboard: products in categories, budgets in departments, customers in segments.

Data Requirements

Your Tableau worksheet should include:

  • 1 to 4 Dimensions for the Levels encoding. Shelf order defines the nesting, outermost first.
  • 1 Measure for the Size encoding. The area of each leaf. Must be positive to be drawn.

Add Circle Packing to your worksheet

First, download the manifest file. It tells Tableau where to load the extension from.

Download circlepacking.trex

Direct link: https://dataskera.com/downloads/circlepacking.trex

Then, in Tableau:

  1. On the Marks card, open the Mark type dropdown, and under Viz Extensions choose Add Extension.
  2. In the Add an Extension dialog, choose Access Local Viz Extensions, then open the circlepacking.trex file you just downloaded.
  3. When Tableau asks, allow the extension to access the data in the workbook.
  4. The welcome screen appears. Sign in with your Dataskera account, or on Tableau Desktop choose Use on Desktop without an account. See Signing in & access below.
  5. Build the chart: drag one to four dimensions onto Levels, outermost first, and a positive measure onto Size.
Tableau Server or Cloud:
A site admin must allow the extension by adding its URL to the site's safe list, and the view needs the Download Summary Data permission. Extension URL: https://vizextension.dataskera.com/circlepacking/circlepacking.html

Signing in & access

Circle Packing is free. Whether you need to sign in depends only on what you are doing. Viewing a dashboard never asks for an account, and authoring is free too.

Viewing a dashboard
No account

People who only view a dashboard are never asked to sign in and are never blocked.

Editing on Tableau Desktop
Optional

Sign in, or continue without an account in a single click.

Editing on Server or Cloud
Free account

Sign in with your Dataskera account to author on the web.

No account yet? Create one free in under a minute. No credit card required.

Format panel

Open the Format panel from the extension menu to customize the chart. It is for the dashboard author and is not shown to viewers. It has four tabs:

  • Packing: the spacing between circles, absolute values for signed measures, number format.
  • Labels: how deep the labels go, whether they show the name, the value or both, and their font.
  • Color: a palette, a precise colour per category, and the overall opacity.
  • Legend: show or hide it, its position around the chart, an optional show/hide toggle for viewers, the colour swatch, and the content of each entry.
  • Tooltip: show or hide it, its colours, decimals, and a template you write yourself from the placeholders the chart provides.
Click to dive:
Click a parent circle to zoom into it, the background to go up one level, double-click to reset. The breadcrumb across the top shows the path and every segment is clickable. The zoom is a reading position and is never saved.
An area cannot be negative:
Zero and negative leaves are excluded and counted in a notice. The absolute-values toggle exists for signed measures and is off by default, because silently folding a loss into a gain misleads; turning it on is a choice the author makes knowingly.
Labels that earn their place:
A label is drawn when its circle can hold it at a readable size, down to the depth you chose; below that, the tooltip carries the full path, the value and the shares of parent and total.