How to Create Calendar Picker in Tableau

Tableau dashboards offer various ways to select dates, including filters, parameters, single-date selection, or selecting a start and end date.

In this post, we'll focus on creating a calendar-style date picker for single-date selection, allowing users to select dates more intuitively.

Step-by-Step: Creating Calendar Picker

As an example, we’ll create a dashboard to display customer lists based on the selected date. This method is particularly useful for users focusing on recent single-date data. We recommend designing a compact calendar and placing it in the filter section of your dashboard.

1. Create a parameter to capture the selected date.

2. Build a filter that applies conditions based on the selected date.

3. Create a sheet to display the customer list filtered by the selected date.

4. Create a week parameter for the calendar sheet. This parameter allows the user to navigate between weeks independently of the selected date parameter.

5. Define a calculated field to display five weeks of dates around the week in the week parameter (e.g., ±2 weeks). This calculation identifies dates where the absolute difference from the parameter’s week is less than 2. Adjust the range as needed.

6. Build the calendar sheet:
   1. Place Week Number on the rows shelf and Weekday on the columns shelf.
   2. Add Day to the text shelf to display individual days.

7. Indicate the month for each date. Create a calculated field to display the month name only for the first day of each month. Add the Month field to Detail to reset the INDEX() table calculation for each month.

8. Add the date field for dashboard actions to pass the selected single-date value.

9. Create two navigation buttons for week navigation:
   1. Add buttons to increase or decrease the week parameter by one week using calculated fields.

10. Place the sheets in your dashboard and organize them.

11. Set up dashboard actions:
    a. Calendar sheet → Update the date parameter.
    b. Previous week button → Update the week parameter (decrement by 1 week).
    c. Next week button → Update the week parameter (increment by 1 week).

12. Add an action to disable selection highlights triggered by button clicks.

How to Disable Selection Highlighting in Tableau

This is how you can prevent the blue shading highlight that appears when selecting a specific area on a dashboard for interaction.

VizneyYehwan Hwang

13. Finalize your dashboard.

This method ensures a user-friendly way to select dates while maintaining a clean and compact dashboard design.