



An org chart isn't included among the charts on the Show Me menu. But it isn't difficult to create one from scratch. In this article, I want to show you how to do it in 3 easy steps.

First of all, what is an org chart? An org chart, or organizational chart, is a chart that shows the structure of an organization, and the relationships and relative ranks of its parts and positions ( Wikipedia) . It is also frequently used to show hierarchies between entities.

Here is an example of such a chart, that I used to explain the relationships and ranks between different types of Tableau Certification .

Here is how I've built this org chart in Tableau

Step 1. Getting all the data you need for your org chart

To build this chart, you will need to provide the following:

hierarchy entities,

relationships,

ranks,

positions of hierarchy entities.

Let's take a closer look at each of these items.

Hierarchy entities are things that you want to display in a hierarchical structure; in my example, it is different certification types (Tableau Certification, Tableau Desktop, etc.).

Relationships are the grey lines between each of the entities. In my case I have 2 grey lines that represent relationships between 9 hierarchy entities.

Ranks are the position of the hierarchy entities from left to right. Tableau Certification has the highest rank and Delta entities have the lowest rank.

Positions of the entities are determined by the grid. For example, on the grid below Tableau Certification is 4;0.

Now that you know what data you need, let's look at how to structure it correctly.

Step 2. Structuring the data

Here is the dataset that I used to build the org chart above. I used Excel to create this dataset.

Step 3. Visualizing your org chart in Tableau

Drag and drop the X Position on Rows and Y Position on columns. Go to Analysis on the main toolbar, and uncheck Aggregate Measures. Drag and drop Y Positions on columns one more time. Right click on it and select Dual Axis. You will see the positions of all of your hierarchy entities.

Next, go to the Marks Card. On the first Y Positions card, select Line instead of Automatic. Place the Relationships dimension on the Detail Marks Card and Rank on the Path Marks Card.

Then, select the second Y Positions card. Change it to Square instead of Automatic. Place Hierarchy on the Color Marks Card and Label on the Marks Card. Place the description on the Tooltip.

Finally, adjust the formatting of the visualization. That's it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Subscribe below to learn more about data visualization and Tableau.

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