How to Add Title to Dashboard in Tableau

A great dashboard starts with a great title. It's the first thing your audience sees, setting the stage for the data story you're about to tell. This guide walks you through every step of adding, customizing, and mastering dashboard titles in Tableau, from the basics to dynamic, interactive techniques.

Why a Great Dashboard Title Is More Than Just Text

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." An effective title isn't just about labeling your work, it's about providing instant clarity and context. A well-crafted title tells a user three things at a glance:

• What is this? It defines the purpose of the dashboard (e.g., "Monthly Marketing Performance").
• Who is this for? It can specify the audience or department (e.g., "Executive Sales Pipeline Review").
• What period does this cover? It grounds the data in time (e.g., "Q3 2024 E-commerce Funnel Analysis").

A good title removes ambiguity and helps users engage with the data immediately, without having to hunt for clues. It's the simplest and most effective way to improve your dashboard's user experience.

How to Add a Basic Dashboard Title in Tableau

Tableau makes adding a basic title incredibly straightforward. If you've just created a new dashboard, you can have a title in place in about five seconds.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Open your workbook and create a new dashboard by clicking the "New Dashboard" icon at the bottom of the screen (it looks like a grid of four squares).
2. Once your blank dashboard appears, look to the "Dashboard" pane on the left side of the screen.
3. Under the "Objects" section at the bottom, you will see a small checkbox labeled "Show dashboard title."
4. Click this checkbox.

That's it! A title bar will appear at the top of your dashboard canvas, likely saying "Dashboard 1" or whatever number you're on. To change this text, simply double-click on the title area itself. This will open the "Edit Title" dialog box, where you can type in whatever you want.

Let's change our default title to something more descriptive, like "Quarterly Sales Performance." Type that into the text box and click "OK." You now have a clear, informative static title.

Customizing Your Dashboard Title: From Static to Dynamic

A static title is good, but a dynamic, interactive title is great. This is where you can make your dashboard much more powerful and intuitive for users. Tableau allows you to insert dynamic values from your data - like filters, parameters, and fields - directly into the title.

1. Basic Formatting Options

When you double-click the title to open the "Edit Title" window, you're not just limited to changing the text. This dialog box is a mini rich-text editor, allowing you to control the look and feel of your title:

• Font: Change the font family, size and color.
• Style: Apply bold, italic, or <u>underline</u> styling.
• Alignment: Set the text to be left, center, or right-aligned.

Feel free to experiment with these options to match your company's branding or the visual style of your dashboard. You can even apply different formatting to different words within the same title for emphasis.

2. Creating a Dynamic Title with Filters

This is one of the most common and useful features for dashboards. A dynamic title updates automatically when a user applies a filter, making the dashboard feel more responsive and personalized.

Imagine your "Quarterly Sales Performance" dashboard has a filter for "Region." As a user filters the view for "West" or "South," you want the title to reflect that selection. Here's how to do it:

1. Drag a worksheet containing your sales data onto the dashboard.
2. From that worksheet's menu, select "Filters" and choose the field you want to filter by (e.g., "Region"). This will add a filter card to your dashboard.
3. Double-click the dashboard title to open the "Edit Title" dialog.
4. Place your cursor where you want the dynamic text to appear. Let's modify our title to say: "Quarterly Sales Performance - ".
5. Click the "Insert" button in the top right of the dialog box. A dropdown menu of fields will appear.
6. Select your filter field from the list (e.g., <Region>).
7. Your title text will now look something like: Quarterly Sales Performance - <Region>.
8. Click "OK."

Now, interact with the "Region" filter on your dashboard. When you select "West," the title will automatically change to "Quarterly Sales Performance - West." When you select "South," it will change to "Quarterly Sales Performance - South." This simple trick makes your dashboard immediately clearer for your end-users.

3. Using Parameters for More Control

Parameters give users a way to input a value that can be used in calculations or, in our case, titles. They are more flexible than filters because they are not tied directly to a field in your data source. A common use case is allowing users to toggle the primary measure being displayed on a chart.

Let's say you want to let the user choose whether they see Sales, Profit, or Quantity on your dashboard. You can create a parameter for this and link it to the title.

1. In the Data pane, right-click and select "Create Parameter..."
2. Name the parameter, for example, "Select a Measure."
3. Set "Data type" to "String" and "Allowable values" to "List."
4. In the list, add the values "Sales," "Profit," and "Quantity."
5. Click "OK." Then right-click the new parameter and select "Show Parameter."
6. Double-click your dashboard title.
7. Modify the text to read: "Quarterly Performance by <Parameters.Select a Measure>," by using the Insert menu again.
8. Click "OK."

Now, when a user selects "Profit" from the parameter control, the title will update to "Quarterly Performance by Profit." (Note: To make the chart itself change, you'd also need to create a calculated field that uses this parameter and place it on your worksheet).

4. Advanced Technique: Using a Worksheet as a Title

For maximum control over formatting and logic, you can use an entire Tableau worksheet as your title. This method lets you apply complex conditional formatting, combine many different dynamic fields, and lay out the title text with more precision than the standard title object allows.

This approach sounds complicated, but the concept is straightforward. Here's the process:

1. Create a new worksheet and name it something like "Dashboard Title."
2. Create a new "Calculated Field." This is where you will build your complex title string. For example, your formula might look like:
3. Drag this new calculated field onto the "Text" shelf or the worksheet's view.
4. Use the "Text" pane to increase font size, change colors, and set alignment to center.
5. Hide the header for this worksheet to make it look like a static title.
6. In your dashboard, instead of the "Show dashboard title" checkbox, drag the "Dashboard Title" worksheet into the dashboard, placing it at the top.

Using a worksheet gives you endless flexibility for sophisticated, data-driven titles that react not just to user selections but to the data itself.

Best Practices for Writing Dashboard Titles

Knowing the technical steps is half the battle. Here are a few best practices to ensure your titles are always clear, professional, and useful.

• Be Clear and Concise: Avoid jargon. The user should understand the dashboard's purpose in under five seconds. "Q3 Sales Leaderboard" is better than "Analysis of Sales Rep Performance Metrics For Current Fiscal Quarter."
• Consider Your Audience: A title for a C-suite presentation should be more high-level (e.g., "Executive Business Summary") than a title for a marketing analyst (e.g., "Facebook Ads Campaign ROI by creative").
• Leverage Subtitles: If you have too much information for one line, use a subtitle. Place a separate text object under your main title for details like the data source, update frequency, or author.
• Maintain Consistency: If your organization has multiple dashboards, try to adopt a consistent naming convention. This makes it easier for users to navigate and understand different reports from different teams. A common format is: [Team] - [Topic] - [Timeframe] (e.g., "Marketing - Email Nurture Performance - Last 30 Days").
• Always Include a Date: One of the most common questions about any data visualization is, "How current is this data?" You can include this by editing your title and using the "Insert" menu to add the <Data Update Time> field. This adds credibility and context instantly.

Final Thoughts

Adding and customizing a title is one of the quickest ways to improve your Tableau dashboards. While the basic "Show dashboard title" option works fine, the real value lies in creating dynamic and interactive titles using filters, parameters, and dedicated worksheets. Putting in that small extra effort provides significant clarity for your users and makes your work far more professional and intuitive.

Building effective, clearly-labeled dashboards from scratch is often a time-consuming process full of clicks, menus, and configurations. At Graphed, we’ve created a way for you to skip the manual setup and describe the dashboard you need in plain English. Instead of learning BI tools, you can just ask something like, "Show me a dashboard of a sales performance by rep for Q3," and we instantly generate a live dashboard, complete with titles and visualizations connected directly to your data sources.