How to Build a Storyboard of Charts in Tableau

Creating a chart-filled dashboard is one thing, but guiding your audience through the data to a specific conclusion is another. That's where a Tableau Story comes in. Far more than just a collection of visuals, a Story allows you to build a structured narrative, walking your team or stakeholders through your analysis one insight at a time. This guide will show you exactly how to plan, build, and refine a compelling data story in Tableau.

What Exactly Is a Tableau Story?

Think of a Tableau Story as a PowerPoint presentation built directly inside your BI tool. It’s a sequence of individual worksheets or dashboards organized in a specific order. Each step in the sequence is called a story point. You can add text, annotations, and titles to each story point to provide context, explain what the charts show, and build a persuasive argument backed by your live data.

Why choose a story over a standard dashboard?

• Guided Analytics: You control the flow. Instead of letting your audience get lost in a sea of filters and charts on a complex dashboard, you lead them through the data, ensuring they don't miss the key takeaways.
• Better Context: Dashboards are great at showing what is happening, but stories excel at explaining why. You can add commentary to each view to connect the dots and explain nuances in the data.
• Increased Engagement: A narrative is inherently more engaging than raw data. By framing your analysis as a story with a beginning, middle, and end, you make your insights more memorable and impactful.
• Clarity for Everyone: This format is perfect for presenting to non-technical audiences. It simplifies complex analyses into a digestible, step-by-step format that anyone can follow.

Before You Build: Scripting Your Data Narrative

The biggest mistake people make is jumping straight into the Story workspace without a plan. A powerful data story depends on a clear narrative arc. Before you drag a single chart, take a few minutes to outline your presentation.

1. Identify Your Key Message and Audience

Start with the end in mind. What is the single, most important insight you want your audience to walk away with? Are you highlighting a problem, showcasing a success, or proposing a new strategy? This central theme will be a reliable guide for every decision you make.

Next, consider your audience. Are you presenting to executives who want a high-level overview, or to marketing analysts who need to see the campaign-level details? Tailor the complexity and granularity of your story to what they care about most.

2. Outline Your Narrative Flow

Like any good story, your data narrative needs a beginning, a middle, and a compelling resolution. A simple structure works best:

• Beginning (The Big Picture): Start with a high-level view that sets the scene. Show an overall trend or a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Example: "Overall, our Q3 revenue grew by 12%."
• Middle (The Details and The Conflict): Zoom in to add detail and complexity. This is where you introduce the "but" or the "however." Uncover what’s driving the main trend - both good and bad. Example: "However, a closer look shows this growth was driven entirely by the North region, while the West region's sales declined."
• End (The "So What?" and The Conclusion): Bring it all together. Present your final insight, conclusion, or recommendation based on the evidence you've shown. Example: "To continue our growth trajectory, we should focus on replicating the successful strategies from the North region in our underperforming territories."

3. Create Your Visuals First

It's much easier to assemble a story if all the necessary pieces - your worksheets and dashboards - are already built. Go through your outline and create each chart you'll need as a separate worksheet in Tableau. This keeps your workflow organized and allows you to focus solely on storytelling once you enter the Story workspace.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create a Story in Tableau

Once you have your plan and your charts are ready, you're ready to start building. The process is very intuitive.

Step 1: Open a New Story Workspace

At the bottom of your Tableau workbook, you'll see a series of tabs for your worksheets and dashboards. To the right of these is an icon with a book symbol. Click this icon to open a new, blank Story canvas.

Step 2: Drag Your First Sheet onto the Canvas

On the left-hand side, you’ll see the Story pane, which contains a list of all existing worksheets and dashboards in your workbook. To create your first story point, simply drag the sheet for the "beginning" of your narrative onto the canvas area that says "Drag a sheet here."

Step 3: Add a Caption to Your Story Point

Above the canvas, you will see a gray box that says "Add a caption...". Click on it to add a title for your first story point. This is where you explicitly state the key insight from the chart. For example, "Q3 Sales Reached an All-Time High of $1.2M." Make your captions concise and action-oriented.

Step 4: Create a New Story Point

To move to the next part of your story, you need to add another story point. You have a couple of options in the Story pane on the left:

• Blank: Click this to create a fresh, empty story point. You can then drag a new worksheet or dashboard onto the canvas. This is ideal for showing a completely different view.
• Duplicate: This creates an exact copy of the current story point, including its filters and interactions. This is incredibly useful for narratives where you show a progression. For instance, you could duplicate a sales map and then apply a filter on the new story point to highlight a specific region, with the caption, "Zooming in on the West region reveals a 15% decline in sales."

After creating the new story point, drag your next visual into place and write its accompanying caption.

Step 5: Use Descriptions and Annotations for Added Context

Sometimes, a short caption isn't enough. You can add more detailed commentary by dragging a Text object from the Story pane on the left directly onto your canvas - either on top of your chart or beside it. A text box will appear, allowing you to type in paragraphs, bullet points, or any other information that helps your audience understand what they're seeing.

You can also annotate marks directly on the underlying worksheet. Right-click on a data point on your chart (e.g., a specific bar on a bar chart), go to "Annotate," and select "Mark." This will attach a comment box directly to that data point, which will be visible in your story.

Step 6: Customize Your Story's Layout and Navigation

Finally, you can fine-tune the look and feel of your story.

• Layout Tab: Located in the left-hand Story pane, this tab lets you change the navigator style. You can display story points as dots, numbers, arrows, or caption boxes above the view. Choose what feels most intuitive for your presentation style.
• Size: You can set a fixed size for your storyboard (great for preparing a presentation for a specific display resolution) or have it adapt automatically.
• Show/Hide Title: You can choose whether to display the overall story title at the top of the window.

Tips for Better Tableau Storytelling

Knowing the mechanics is just the beginning. To create truly impactful presentations, keep these best practices in mind.

• One Idea Per Story Point: Don't try to cram too much information into a single frame. Each story point should have one clear purpose and one key takeaway. If you find yourself saying "and also," it might be time to split it into two points.
• Guide the Viewer's Eye: Use color, size, and explicit annotations to draw your audience's attention to the most important part of each visual. You're the director - make sure the audience is looking where you want them to.
• Vary Your Visuals: Keep your story from feeling stale by using a mix of chart types. Use line charts for time-series trends, bar charts for comparisons, maps for geographic insights, and scatter plots for correlations.
• Practice Your Pitch: A Tableau Story is often a visual aid for a live presentation. Run through it yourself to ensure your narrative flows smoothly and that your talking points align with what’s on screen.

Final Thoughts

Building a Story in Tableau empowers you to move beyond being a data provider to becoming a data storyteller. By thoughtfully organizing your charts into a sequential narrative, you can turn complex analysis into clear, persuasive insights that drive smarter business conversations and decisions.

Of course, a great story starts with having easy access to your data. Building these visuals manually can be a time-consuming first step, especially when your performance data for marketing and sales is scattered everywhere. That's why we created a tool to make this part effortless. Using Graphed you can connect all your data sources and create the charts you need for any story or dashboard just by describing what you want to see in simple, plain English - freeing you up to focus on crafting the perfect narrative.