Tableau - display latest entry from different dates

Question

I have table - NBA teams that display their Win% each game.

So the table looks like below

         Nov11   Nov12   Nov13
 Bulls    43%     50%      
 Celtics  60%              45%
 Suns     55%

So I would like a table in tableau which will display one column, with the latest win%

        Win%
 Bulls   50%
 Celtics 45%
 Suns    55%

The latest date each team played is not necessarily the same, so I couldn't use a date filter. I tried some max(date) calculation, but it's not working as I envisioned.

Any advise? thanks. Gemmo

Inox Inox · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-28T16:35:32

Is your database structured exactly like that (each month is a column)? If so, you'll need some brute force there, many ELSEIFs until you reach a non-null value, like:

IF NOT ISNULL([Nov 13])
THEN [Nov 13]
ELSEIF NOT ISNULL([Nov 12])
THEN [Nov 12]
ELSEIF NOT ISNULL([Nov 11])
THEN [Nov 11]
...
END

Now if your database is structured in a more convenient way like:

Team     Date     Win%
Bulls    Nov11    43%
Bulls    Nov12    50%
Celtics  Nov11    60%
...

You can use some table calculations. You should read about it, as it is a very powerful tool. In your case you want:

LOOKUP([Win%],LAST())

And you want this table calculation to partition on Team, ordered by MAX(Date), Ascending. The MAX(Date) is just an aggregation that tableau requires.

This will give the value of last entry of [Win%] per team, ordered by Date, exactly what you want

Tableau - display latest entry from different dates

1 Answers