#Tableau - Create a Full Year Calendar Heatmap

Calendar heatmaps are a great way to visualize time-series data over an entire calendar year. Individual days are shaded on a light-to-dark gradient based on a measure that has been added to the visualization.

In this tip, I going to show you, step-by-step, how to create a full year calendar heatmap in Tableau.

Creating a heatmap for a single month in Tableau is pretty straightforward. It gets a bit more complicated when you want to view an entire year at once.

You'll find all of the calculations you need in the workbook.

Get the date file for scaffolding here -

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

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[paulwyatt]

Thank you Andy. This video took me the longest to understand and be able to implement all of the techniques you have used. Of note are the ‘Month name’ and the ‘empty dates’ - absolute genius. I’m now able to use the FULL YEAR calendar with a MONTH widget to really powerful effect. 😊

[TemporallyYours]

Great tutorial, thanks. Two things,

1) For anyone else trying to do this with a count of the rows of your data/table based on appointments/sessions/visits dates, you may run into the issue where days with 0 still show as having 1 count as it is counting the day from the scaffolding data. You cannot just modify the calculated statement by subtracting by 1 because days that DO have at least 1 count are counted accurately (ie it does not add 1 from the scaffolding sheet). To get around this I did two things (not sure which one worked or if you need to do both, so listing them both here): first I changed the way the data was connected from an actual join to just a relationship (many to many), and second I changed the calculated statement to create the white squares to as follows:

IF COUNT([TableName]) = 0
THEN -1
ELSE COUNT([TableName])
END


2) As others have mentioned, this viz does not work well with any filters applied. Has anyone found a good workaround for this?

[premgct]

What a timely video. Yesterday I was making a hourly heat map and was thinking it would be better if I had an easier way to create a daily heat map just like yours. Going to try this now.

[jameswood]

Perfect! I love it when I find the exact video tutorial I am looking for. Thanks for putting this together!

[nowfeleusuf]

This was "Boss''! Absolutely mind blowing..

[rolandnwatarali]

Hi Andy, Always adding value to the Community with your awesome videos. Thanks. Quick question, i added a filter (Customer ID) on the filter pane (if you select a customer, it returns the sum of sales of that customers for the calendar year), However, when i select a customer ID, the calendar readjust (Not maintaining the original orientation). How do i keep the calendar fixed, while selecting different customers. Thanks again for the awesome videos. 👏

[josephsparacino]

Thank you so much for this video. I was able to create a proportional circle and a density circle calendar map based off of your idea.

[mweksgf]

ANDY U ARE INCREDIBLE, ITS SO HELPFUL ND I FOLLOW EVERY STEPS U TAKE, THANKS SO MUCH ND GOG BLESS

[formulamaxima]

"I hope you find this tip useful"

Dude... this is not a tip, this is a masterclass

[vpnath]

Thanks, this is very creative! I always get good ideas from your videos. Much appreciated!

[melchornegrete]

Hello Andy, what a nice videos!. They are so easy to understand, congratulations.

[SonofthewindsInc]

You are an inspiration ! I have just started learning tableau

[joeliddiard]

Love this! Gong to use this to visualize our Hubspot Deals. Thanks!

[weilingtang]

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing!

[abhaysingh-vegg]

Looking amazing... thanks for sharing this

[lte]

This is so amazing. Thanks for uploading, very helpful.

[kodkkt]

Thank you Andy for this magnificent tip, quick question; when I am using any filter or parameter, the calendar shows the related period, not the full-year view, how can I include filters/parameters to the calendar view?

[sir-cute]

Hi Andy, When other dimension filter selections are applied, the calendar skews showing only those days which have metric values. Can this be avoided so that the full calendar continues to show despite the selections ?

[sir-cute]

This is super useful. Thank you. I am trying to solve a small issue. When the metric is null, the cell color is white. But when the metric value is 0, the cell color shows up gray. I want the cell color to be zero for nulls as well as for zeros

[marjidcustalow]

Hi Andy, this was so cool, and I am using the structure today!
I have one sticking point, maybe you can help
I am using the Heat Map in a dashboard contain with a cross-tab sheet with several data columns (not the date scaffold but the data connected to it) in it
If I set the cross-tab sheet to filter and select any column cell the heat map responds as it I would expect (showing only the days applicable to the cell I selected)
My problem, if I select a data on the heat map my cross-tab goes blank, nothing shown - what I expect was the map would filter the cross-tab and show only items relative to that date.

Any help correct my error would be most helpful and appreciated.

Thanks

Zach