Drilldown Bar Chart in Tableau

This post will explain about how to make a drilldown bar chart. In a drilldown bar chart, any click to a particular bar will provide more granular details. For eg, in the Superstore dataset, we have categories and sub-categories for all orders/products. So, in a bar chart showing sales for every category, the category that is selected will drilldown and show the sales for every sub-category.

Step 1: Create a Set for the Category dimension. Let’s not add anything into the set for now. We will be creating a dashboard action later to add values into the set.

Step 2: Create a calculated field (Category Drilldown). It returns the sub-categories for the selected category and returns nothing if no category is selected.

Step 3: Create a simple bar chart for category vs sum of sales. Add the category drilldown to the Rows shelf. Do the required formatting to make the chart look tidy.

Step 4: Add the sheet to the dashboard.

Step 5: Create a dashboard action to change set values. We will apply this action when a category is selected. It will add the selected category to the Category Set that we created in Step 1. Next, the Category Drilldown (created in step 2) will get populated with the relevant sub-categories and the dashboard will present a drilled down view.

Drilldown for the Technology category
Drilldown for the Furniture category

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