How I Overcame the Challenge

But first...I was thinking that I could use a filter.  But that didn't work. Why?  #becausedata.  I have two columns that represent two questions...
1. Do you want to be a mentor?
2.Do you want to be mentored?

I also have two questions relating the focus/skill areas for each of the mentor and mentee sections.  

I have to tell you, it took a couple of explanations for it to sink in as to why I couldn't use a filter and why a parameter made sense.  I rang up Matt Francis and had him explain it to me so I could ask questions.  This was super helpful.  This was a key concept I realized...

• I needed to set up my collection with two questions for mentor/mentee ID and focus area (because someone could be both a mentor and a mentee). Because I had two questions for each, I couldn't do a filter (that would have only worked if I had one question (Are you a mentor or a mentee?)

So, now that we'e moved past the part where filters aren't a viable option, I created a parameter. 

Awesome! I created this part of a parameter, look at me go! The next step was to do a calculation, oh...look at me stop. What kind of calculation do I need anyway?  My brain is saying, if someone selected mentor, then mentor (and likewise for mentee). Is that right?  Nope.  Instead, we just created a calculated field that was just the parameter. Why the heck do I even need that? It seems like such as waste.  If I create a parameter and show that control, isn't that doing the same thing?

Oh bless your heart, as my grandmother would say (and my peeps in the south can appreciate what that means).  No dear, that's not the same.  And here's another tweetable moment.  

• Parameters are just the interface.  We can create lists or numbers but they don't work without an engine, which is the calculation.  

So, I asked Matt, why have the calculated field be the parameter (as opposed to the data items)? Because this is an easier way to get our selection.  Theoretically, I could have done a calculated field with the data items, but that would have been a lot messier.  No thank you! I'll take the easy road in this case. 

So we've got the parameter all set up for the mentor/mentee.  One other note: I pivoted my mentor/mentee data into one.  Now, I know I said if it had been one column, I could have filtered.  But here's the challenge I ran into...I couldn't pivot the focus area columns. Tableau wanted to add the data to the pivot I already created and that's not gonna work for me.

Okay, so now that we've got the mentoring parameter situation under control, we need to go it all over again for the focus area.  Cool! I build a sweet little parameter. 

Now it's time for the calculation.  Uhhh....errr...I do the same thing as before? (Hopefully you read that with some inflection upwards at the end). No, this time, we need two calculations! What the what? Why can't it be the one like in the mentor/mentee paramter?

Bless my heart...

So here's why we need two calculations (or we could have done one nested calculation, but let's not get too crazy here). 

1. We need to know if we're searching through the mentor or the mentee list.
2. We need to know what focus area we need to search for. 

That translates to this calculation:

The first is called Search Focus Area.
IF [Mentee/Mentor Switch]= "Mentor" THEN [Identify the focus area (for mentoring others)]
ELSEIF [Mentee/Mentor Switch] = "Mentee" THEN [Identify the focus area (to receive mentoring)]
END

We also needed a calculation to control the parameter, which in this case uses a contains statement. 

CONTAINS([Search Focus Area Switch Result],[Search Focus Area])

Why contains?  You're never gonna believe it. 

#becausedata

Google Forms brought over all of those data items I had as checkboxes as data separated by commas.  So the contains lets us search for server in a string that might contain server, design, and color.  

So the calculation in narrative form would be something like this...
When someone selects server, look through mentoring rows for server if they are looking for a mentor (and vice versa for a mentee). 

We threw up the calculated fields on the filter shelf, showed the parameter controls, and what do you know, two working parameter controls. 

And that my friends, is a discussion on parameters from a non-programmer.  I feel a bit better/more confident about using parameters. So now I'll look to reinforce this work with another viz soon.  Comment below and let me know if this was helpful! 

In my recent Mentor Match viz, I wanted to add email functionality when you clicked on someone's name. There were two reasons for this.

• ​I didn't want all of the email addresses to be shown all at once.
• ​I wanted it to be easy to facilitate a possible connection between mentor & mentee.

​How did I accomplish this?

I thought a url action in Tableau was the way to go. But what was the url? That's when I turned to my trusty friend, Google. I found these instructions in Tableau's knowledge base.

So that's what I did.

When you select a person in the viz, this is what it looks like.

I encountered some issues. Whomp whomp. When I was on my laptop, it didn't work for me. But I had Matt Francis test it and it worked for him. So I figured it was me. And then I got a couple of tweets about it not working.

My first thought was, what did I do wrong?
My second thought was, but I had someone test it. So why is this happening??

My second thought was more productive. I didn't do anything wrong. Going into problem solving mode, me & a couple of Twitter folks figured out that there's an issue with the email functionality on Windows machines, but not on Apple (the screenshot above is from my iPhone). I built this in v10 beta, so I'm going to report it in case it's related to v10.

So I think there are a few takeaways from this.

• ​Email is great functionality to add to a viz.
• Anytime you're new to using functionality, trust in yourself, especially if you've had it reviewed/tested.
• No viz will be 100% perfect 100% of the time.
• Community members are more supportive than not, so no one is going to tell you you're an idiot. So try the new thing and put it out there.