As a data visualization consultant, having proof-of-concept dashboards is essential for discussing the types of visualizations we want—or, more importantly, don’t want—when starting a new project. The biggest challenge, however, is finding a clean, anonymized dataset to build these demo dashboards. That’s where Tableau Community Projects, like RealWorldFakeData (RWFD), come in handy. RWFD is a treasure trove of business-related datasets. A more recent initiative, Adam Mico’s Data Mockstar, is incredibly useful as well. This ChatGPT tool allows you to specify the desired columns and it returns a dataset of randomly generated data. For my Help Desk Dashboard, I decided to take Data Mockstar for a test drive. With just a few clicks and the following prompt, I had a mock dataset in csv format ready to use for my demo dashboard.
Brilliant! I connected Tableau Desktop to the csv file provided by Data Mockstar and began an initial data discovery to determine the best way to visualize the data (hello, bar charts). Early in the process, I realized that the analysis relies heavily on date fields—specifically, Ticket Created Date and Ticket Closed Date. The mock dataset contains two years of daily data (2023 and 2024, per my specifications), which is fine for now. However, to future-proof this dashboard, I needed to shift the rows of data so that it always includes two years up to and including today, rather than a fixed period from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2024. Shoutout to Andy Kriebel, whose Next-Level Tableau Program inspired the set of calculations needed to perpetually shift the dates.
The end result? A dynamic dashboard that appears to update “live” even though the data source is a flat file generated once. You can find the dashboard on my Tableau Public profile page—feel free to download it and take a look under the hood!
Happy Vizzing!
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