Dataskera

Progress Bar

Progress towards a target, one bar per category, with the target marked on the track and the colour changing as the bar crosses the thresholds you set. Where a bullet chart shows one measure against its own qualitative bands, this answers the question a target dashboard is really asked: how far along is each of these, and how far along are we overall.

Data Requirements

Your Tableau worksheet should include:

  • 1 Dimension, optional for the Category encoding. One bar per value. Leave it empty for a single bar.
  • 1 Measure for the Value encoding. How far the bar has got.
  • 1 Measure, optional for the Target encoding. The goal each bar is measured against.

Add Progress Bar to your worksheet

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

Download progressbar.trex

Direct link: https://dataskera.com/downloads/progressbar.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 progressbar.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 a measure onto Value, a dimension onto Category for one bar each, and the goal onto Target.
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/progressbar/progressbar.html

Signing in & access

Progress Bar 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:

  • Layout: horizontal or vertical, the sort, bar thickness and corner radius, the track colour.
  • Overall: an overall row under the categories, and the label it carries.
  • Colour: one colour, a colour per category, or conditional colours with your own thresholds for danger, warning and success.
  • Target and Labels: the target marker and its shape, the category labels, what the value label shows and whether it sits inside or outside the bar, number format and 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.
The overall row is a real roll-up:
It divides the sum of the values by the sum of the targets. Averaging the per-category percentages would let one small category at three hundred percent carry the whole number, and on ordinary data the two answers differ.
The roll-up is not a category:
It takes a neutral colour rather than one from the palette, its label is set in bold, and it is never clickable, because filtering a dashboard on a total is not a thing you can do.
No target, no invention:
A category without a target value is measured against the largest value instead, and the chart says how many were. Past target, the track stretches so every bar stays on one scale, and that is said too.
Negatives are refused:
Progress towards a target cannot be negative. Rows that are get counted and named in the data notes.