How to Add Multiple Dashboards in Tableau

A single Tableau dashboard is great for summarizing data, but sometimes one view isn't enough to tell the whole story. Including multiple dashboards in a single workbook allows you to build a comprehensive narrative, guiding users from a high-level overview to granular details without ever leaving the file. This tutorial walks you through how to create and manage multiple dashboards in Tableau, turning a simple report into an interactive analytical experience.

Why Bother with Multiple Dashboards?

Before jumping into the "how," let's cover the "why." Juggling several dashboards might seem like extra work, but the strategic benefits are significant. It's about designing a more effective and intuitive user experience for anyone interacting with your data.

• Logical Data Hierarchy: You can structure your dashboards to flow from a broad summary to specific insights. Start with a main "Executive Summary" dashboard showing top-level KPIs. From there, users can click to dive into more detailed dashboards for "Marketing Performance," "Sales Pipeline," or "Operational Efficiency." This layered approach prevents overwhelming users with too much information at once.
• Tailored Experiences for Different Audiences: Not everyone needs to see the same information. A sales leader might need a dashboard focused on individual rep performance and deal stages, while the marketing team needs to see a campaign breakdown for ROI and ad spend. Multiple dashboards within one workbook let you serve both audiences from a single, unified data source, maintaining consistency while providing tailored views.
• Tell a Cohesive Data Story: A single dashboard shows a snapshot. A series of linked dashboards tells a story. You can guide a user's analytical journey, using one dashboard to raise a question (e.g., "Why did sales spike last month?") and the next to answer it (e.g., "Because Campaign X drove a 40% increase in leads.").
• Improved Performance: Trying to cram 20 visualizations onto a single dashboard is a recipe for slow loading times. By splitting complex analyses across multiple, focused dashboards, you improve performance and make the workbook much faster and more pleasant to interact with.

Getting Started: Your First Tableau Dashboard

If you're new to this, let's quickly review how to create a single dashboard. Every multi-dashboard workbook begins with the first one. A dashboard is essentially a canvas where you arrange multiple worksheets (your charts, graphs, tables, and maps).

1. Create Your Worksheets: First, you need some building blocks. Connect to your data source and create individual worksheets for each visualization you want to display. For example, you might create a bar chart for "Sales by Region," a line chart for "Monthly Revenue Trend," and a table for "Top 10 Products."
2. Open a New Dashboard: At the bottom of your Tableau window, next to the worksheet tabs, you'll see a small icon of a window with a plus sign. This is the "New Dashboard" button. Click it to create a blank dashboard canvas.
3. Set the Dashboard Size: In the left-hand Dashboard pane, you can set the size. You can choose a fixed size (like for a specific screen resolution or a presentation slide) or use "Automatic" to have the dashboard dynamically resize to fit the viewer's screen. A fixed size generally gives you more control over the final layout.
4. Drag and Drop Your Worksheets: You'll see a list of all your created worksheets on the left. Simply drag and drop them onto the canvas. As you drag sheets, Tableau will show you gray shaded areas indicating where the worksheet will be placed, allowing you to tile them horizontally or vertically.
5. Add Objects and Formatting: Beyond your worksheets, you can add text boxes for titles and explanations, images (like a company logo), and web pages. Use the layout options to adjust padding, add borders, and fine-tune the appearance to create a professional-looking report.

Once you've built your first dashboard, you're ready to expand.

Adding and Naming Your Next Dashboards

Adding more dashboards is surprisingly straightforward. The real art is in making them work together cohesively. Here’s the technical process for creating more dashboards.

1. Click the "New Dashboard" Icon Again: At the bottom of your workbook, next to the tab for your first dashboard (likely named "Dashboard 1"), click the same "New Dashboard" icon you used before. A new, blank dashboard tab will appear.
2. Rename for Clarity: By default, your dashboards will be named "Dashboard 1," "Dashboard 2," and so on. This quickly gets confusing. To rename a dashboard, right-click on its tab at the bottom of the screen and select "Rename." Give it a clear, descriptive name that explains its purpose, like "Executive Overview" or "Marketing Channel Drilldown."
3. Build Your Second Dashboard: Just like with the first, drag the relevant worksheets from the left-hand pane onto the new canvas. This dashboard might focus on a specific subset of your data. For example, if your first dashboard showed total website traffic, your second dashboard could show a detailed breakdown of traffic sources from social media, organic search, and paid ads.
4. Repeat as Needed: You can repeat this process as many times as necessary, building out a separate dashboard for each topic, audience, or level of detail you need.

Connecting Your Dashboards for Seamless Navigation

Having multiple dashboards is useful, but linking them together with interactive navigation is what creates a truly powerful and professional user experience. This lets users explore data naturally by clicking on areas of interest to reveal more detail.

The Magic of Navigation Actions

A "Dashboard Action" is a rule you create that lets an interaction on one sheet (like clicking a data point) trigger a change on another sheet or dashboard. We'll focus on the "Go to Sheet" action to build navigation.

Imagine your first dashboard is a map showing sales by country. The goal is to allow a user to click on a country and be taken to a second dashboard that shows detailed sales metrics for only that selected country. Ready? Let's build it.

1. Identify Your Source and Target: The "source" is where the user will click (the map on your "Global Sales" dashboard). The "target" is where they will land (your "Country Detail" dashboard).
2. Access the Actions Menu: Go to your source dashboard ("Global Sales"). In the top menu bar, click Dashboard > Actions....
3. Add a New Action: An "Actions" window will pop up. Click the Add Action > Go to Sheet... button. This creates the navigation link.
4. Configure the Action: A configuration window will appear. This is where you set the rules for the navigation.
5. Test It Out: Click OK twice to save and close the action windows. Now, go to your "Global Sales" dashboard and click on a country on your map. You should be instantly transported to the "Country Detail" dashboard. You’ve now created an interactive analysis path!

Best Practices for Multi-Dashboard Workbooks

Creating functional navigation is just the start. To make your workbook truly A+, keep these design and user experience principles in mind.

• Maintain a Consistent Design: Your dashboards should feel like they belong together. Use a consistent color palette, font styles and sizes, and branding (like a logo in the corner) across all dashboards. The positioning of titles and filters should also be predictable, so the user doesn't have to re-learn the layout every time they navigate to a new screen.
• Provide Clear Cues for Navigation: Don't make users guess what is clickable. Add text like "Click a region for more details" near your navigation chart. You can also create dedicated worksheets that look like buttons with clear labels like "Back to Summary" or "View Campaign Details."
• Guide the User, Don't Trap Them: Always provide an easy way to go back. If a user drills down from a summary dashboard to a detail dashboard, make sure the detail dashboard has a clear "Back" button (using another navigation action) that returns them to the summary page. This makes exploration feel safe and prevents users from getting lost.
• Optimize Filters Across Dashboards: When a user navigates from Dashboard A to Dashboard B, you can pass filter selections along with them. For example, if a user filters Dashboard A to only show data for "Q3 2023" and then clicks to navigate to Dashboard B, you can set up your action so that Dashboard B is automatically filtered for Q3 2023 as well. This creates a logical and seamless analytical flow. This is handled within the "filter" type of Dashboard Action.
• Organize Your Tabs: Keep the dashboard tabs at the bottom organized logically. Place the primary overview dashboard as the first tab on the left. You can even color-code the tabs by right-clicking them to visually group related dashboards together. Clean and clear naming is essential here.

Final Thoughts

Creating multiple dashboards in Tableau lets you move beyond simple, one-off reports and build powerful, guided analytics applications. By structuring your analysis into logical layers and connecting them with intuitive navigation, you can answer complex business questions in a way that is clear, efficient, and compelling for any audience.

Of course, mastering actions and layouts in tools like Tableau takes time. Some days, you just need a clear answer without fiddling with panes and menus. For those moments, we built Graphed. Instead of creating worksheets and building navigation actions, you can just ask a question in plain English, like "Show me a dashboard of US traffic vs Canada traffic from last quarter," and get a live, interactive dashboard instantly. It gets you straight to the insight, so you can spend your time making decisions instead of building reports.