In this Level Up installment, we’re using pop-up filter boxes to declutter Tableau dashboards.

The Level Up series is designed to take Tableau beginners from out-of-the-box functionality to the next level of design and analytics, and features tip and tricks to make your dashboards more professional and polished. Click here to see all posts in the series.

I work with a lot of education data, which means that there are a whole lot of different ways to group students – by demographics, by programs, by history, by focus group, and more. My users need to be able to filter on all of these subgroups. Because of this, my dashboards have lots of filter options! Making all these filters visible would be confusing and overwhelming, so I use pop-up filter boxes instead. In this post, I’ll take you through how to create easy pop-ups to organize your filters in Tableau.

Create a Container for the Pop-Up Filter Box

The key to the pop-up box is a vertical, floating container. Drag a vertical container onto your dashboard to create this – make sure that you select “floating”, or hold down shift while dragging to toggle between floating and tiled. Go ahead and add one of the filters you want to use – it doesn’t matter which one. You’ll need to put it in the container in order to keep the container visible and editable

You’ll probably also want to apply some styles to this as well, to make the pop-up stand out from the rest of the dashboard. Toggle to the layout tab of your container. Next, set the border and background to be something that looks good with your design.

(Because we’re using a simple show/hide button, we are limited to only the basic styling options here – there’s a more complicated way to use custom images as a background for your popup, but that’s outside of the scope of this post. I’ll be covering that in a later post, so subscribe to see that when it comes out!)

Add Filters to the Box

Now let’s add some filters! Add your filters in the usual way by selecting a sheet and using the filter selector.

When you add filters, they probably won’t pop right into your new container. (You might get lucky, though!) If they show up somewhere else, drag them over into the container you created, and order them as you like.

Show/Hide the Pop-Up Box

Finally, let’s add the toggle to make this box pop-up. Click on the arrow at the top right of the container. (Make sure you’re on the container, not an individual filter. Pro-tip: Double click the three bars on an individual filter to select its container.)

Select “Add Show/Hide Button”.

Now we can format this button. I usually create a text button here, with a title like “Show Filters”, or with more detail about what filters will be shown if there are multiple filter groups. Make sure you format the button both for the “item shown” and “item hidden” tabs – I like to make them different shades of the same color so that there’s a visible change when the button is clicked.

Sometimes I like to use an image button to add a settings icon (a gear) instead – this is useful if you have a dashboard where you don’t think people will want to filter often, but might occasionally want to dive deeper. That keeps the filters off the dashboard, but adds a subtle option to filter for users who are ready to go further.

(Icons from Google Fonts)

One final tip – watch out for floating order if you have other floating elements in your dashboard. Before publishing, use the drop-down arrow on the filters container and set floating order to “bring to front”. Enjoy your new pop-up filters!

Thank you for reading this guide to pop up filter boxes in Tableau! Make sure to check out the rest of the level up series before you go, and subscribe to get notified of new posts.