Christopher -

(Great name, by the way) Have you considered using Sets to do this work? You could create multiple sets, each which define a different "set" of skills. You'd then just drag the set you care about to the Filter shelf and be ready to go.

Let me know what you think.

Hmm - not really sure what to tell you here - If you decide to replace the current "Filter on Skill" Quick Filter with something else, you're going to have to do some "manual definition" of some sort regardless.

Whatever technique you choose, if there are a lot of combinations that need to be defined, you have a lot of work to do defining them.

Maybe I don't understand your scenario well enough? Let's pretend that Tableau is magic and can automatically add features to itself to allow you to do whatever you wanted. If that were the case, explain the approach that you might take...that may fill in the blanks for me a bit.

It does!

Based on your scenario, I'd think a pretty basic Quick Filter on "Skills" displayed as a Multiple Value List would work nicely - select any combination of :"skill check boxes", and the map filters.

However, I believe you've considered this approach and rejected it -- which makes me think I'm still missing something important.

Edit: Never mind - you need to AND the skills, not OR them. Give me a minute

Message was edited by: Russell Christopher

What shape is your data?

Does it look like this?:

Nurse1, Skill1, New York

Nurse1, Skill2, New York

Nurse1, Skill3, New York

Nurse2, Skill1, Boston

Nurse2, Skill4, Boston

Nurse2, Skill73, Boston

....or does it look more like this:

Nurse1, Skill1, Skill2, Skill3, New York

Nurse2, Skill1, Skill5, Skill73, Boston

OK - the shape of your data makes things difficult, but I got something. It's not for the faint of heart. Hopefully someone else will have a different/brilliant idea that simplifies this a bit. You also might want to consider "pivoting" the shape of the data so that each skill is a column with a Y/N value - doing so could make this problem easier to solve.

Anyway, please review the attached sample:

Overview:

A list of our 6 nurses, where they live, and what skills they have. Each nurse only has 3 skills instead of your 10.

Warm Up:

1. Note the Parameter Skills Needed which allows one to pre-select HOW many skills you are about to look for
2. Note Skill filter which allows people to choose the skills
3. Examine Sum of Skills pill on Rows shelf. It is based on an expression which counts the total number of rows being displayed for each nurse - Each row signifies a skill for that nurse which matches one of the selections in the Skills filter
4. Examine the Chooser pill on the Rows shelf. It compares the number of rows per nurse (skills per nurse) and sees if that number matches the value entered into the Skills Needed parameter. We see "Candidate" or "Lacks Skills" depending on whether the Nurse meets the criteria or not.

Now, Hide Things

This is essentially the same report as above, except we've turned "Chooser" into a filter, filtering out Nurses without a Chooser="Candidate" value. We're also hiding the Skills and Sum of Skills row values.

Map it

We convert the previous report into a Map.

...and another solution which manages to get this done with a single expression (created by a colleague who is brilliant at this sort of thing).

FYI - On Friday we often send out a tricky "Viz Challenge" for our pre-sales and professional services consultants to challenge themselves with. Your scenario will get 15 minutes of fame later today.

Russell, I'd been working on this off and on since it was posted. It certainly was trickier than it looked at first. The COUNTD() was the missing link that didn't occur to me. Thank your brilliant colleague for this.

--Shawn