2 Replies Latest reply on Feb 12, 2012 8:07 AM by David Klass

    Creating calculated fields

    David Klass
    David Klass Feb 12, 2012 3:58 AM

      Hello: I am trying to create a calculated field that uses 2 previously created fields but as I am a new user i cannot finfd the 'secret key' as to how to do this within Tableau itself without retreating to the query that created the .twb file

       

      Field 1 is a count of 'return less than 5 days' and is the sum in Tableau of

       

      IF([TimeOutBRDays]/[Number of Records])<5 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

       

      Field 2 is COUNT([TimeOutBRDays])

       

      I would like to create Field 3 :  Field1/Field2*100

       

      You can see the layout of the crosstab in the inclosed file to get a sense of the structure of the crosstab.

       

      Thanks for any help with this. David

        • 1. Re: Creating calculated fields
          Alex Kerin
          Alex Kerin Feb 12, 2012 6:50 AM (in response to David Klass)

          Difficult to answer without seeing the structure of your data. With that said, the first calculation could be a problem as this is operating at the row level (there's no aggregation - sum, max, etc), so number of records (i.e. rows) will always be 1.

           

          Maybe try:

           

          IF([TimeOutBRDays])<5 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

          COUNT([TimeOutBRDays])

           

          and sum([field 1)/sum(field 2)

          Don't multiply by 100 - let Tableau handle this as a percent.

           

          If that doesn't help, then if you can post some of the data and the 'expected' result from this data, that would really let us see what needs to be done.

           

          Don't you love the smell of Tableau on a Sunday morning? I need more coffee.

          1 of 1 people found this helpful
          • 2. Re: Creating calculated fields
            David Klass
            David Klass Feb 12, 2012 8:07 AM (in response to Alex Kerin)

            Thanks for the response.  I altered a bit what you suggested and found that the following gave me what I wanted

             

            SUM([Return_5_Days])/[CountRDate]*100

             

             

            The calculated  field: IF([TimeOutBRDays]/[Number of Records])<5 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END was named [Return_5_Days]  and dividing by the calculated field [CountRDate] works with the SUM operator for the row level field.  Thanks again.  David