A lot of questions from the HR Department are difficult to answer with standard reports and sometimes even harder to visualize with standard Graphs. Visualizing competences, development of personal skills or the ability to perform certain roles can be pretty hard. You probably know the Radar Chart, a well suited Graph Type for the HR Department. In this blog Merlijn will share his experiences in creating a Radar Chart in Tableau to visualize his Personal Development. After reading this blog you will be able to use a flexible interactive Radar Chart in your Tableau Dashboards!

Enneagram - Radar Chart - extensions for Tableau Show me more

Visualizing my personal development in Tableau

I once tried to make a Radar Chart in Tableau to visualize the results of a personality test (the enneagram). I used the enneagram before in a personal development program, and wondered if there were any changes in my personal scores over time. Why not try and visualize this Radar Chart in Tableau? The blue line visualizes my score before I started the development program and the grey line represents my skills after I completed the development program.  As you can see in the Radar Chart, the development program influenced my enneagram. I probably gained more consciousness of differences in roles during the program and was able to anser the questions more sophisticated.

Create the Radar Chart in out-of-the-box Tableau

First, I’ve read the Tableau Knowledgebase article on building Radar Charts in Tableau Desktop. It took me all day and a lot of clicks to create my first, still incomplete, prototype. My frustration grew. The further I got, the more I started to realize I was working towards an inflexible solution with a fixed Radar chart and a fixed – predefined – number of ‘arms’. The Radar Chart would be the most effective visualization type to visualize and benchmark personality test results but it seemed that Tableau was not suitable for creating flexible Radar Charts that interact easily with filters and parameters, so eventually I gave up. The best visualization I could make on my personality development program was the Bar Chart, as shown. I kept wondering, will there ever be a user-friendly way to create Radar Charts in Tableau?
No Radar Chart but a Bar Chart in Tableau-
Radar Chart in Tableau - Simple and easy with the Show me More Dashboard Extension in Tableau

Tableau Dashboard Extensions

With the Tableau Extensions API one can interact with datasources and add new visualization types to your dashboards while still maintaining high rates of interactivity. With Tableau Extensions the ability arises to use web applications and data interactions from your Tableau Dashboards! The developers of Infotopics | Apps for Tableau created a new Extension to add more graph types to Tableau! We all know the “Show me” button in Tableau Desktop, this Tableau Extension Shows you More!

Show me More – Radar Chart in Tableau

With the “Show me More” extension, adding a Radar Chart to a Tableau Dashboard is as simple as adding a Bar Chart. Beside the Radar Chart, you can also add a Sankey Diagram and several other graph types to your Tableau dashboards!

Radar Chart – Use Cases

I think everyone is familiar with a Radar Chart but not everybody knows when it’s best to use it. With this Graph type you can answer questions based on roles, responsibilities, skills and personal development. In one Radar Chart you can visualize:

  • Who to trust responsibilities based on his/her natural role;
  • Who to address responsibilities to grow in a role;
  • What roles are missing in your team;
  • What roles are overrepresented in our team.
The Show me More extension in action. A beautiful Radar Chart in Tableau

Every Tableau user is familiar with the “Show me” button. As stated before, the Radar Chart is not incorporated as a visualization type within “Show me”. The use of Tableau Extensions enabled us to create a “Show me More” extension that incorporates new visualization types in Tableau that are not present in the standard “Show me” palet. With this Show me More extension in Tableau you only need a few clicks to embed a Radar Chart or Sankey Diagram in your Tableau Dashboard. It almost feels like cheating! It really is that easy. Are you interested in this solution or have some great ideas of your own? Make sure to Contact us!

Show me More extension for Tableau - The Radar Chart

We love to make solutions and help Tableau users to do things more efficiently. If you have feedback, ideas, questions or need support, please make sure to share it with us! Also, don’t forget to follow us on social media for our latest news and updates.