Understanding Fixed Level of Detail (LOD) in Tableau

In the previous blog, we focused on understanding the concept of Fixed LOD in Tableau. In this blog let’s try understanding it with an example.

Scenario:

We would like to understand the purchasing pattern of customers. As the first step in this analysis, we will try to find out how many customers made how many Orders/Purchases.

E.g. How many customers made 5 Orders.

Let’s try to understand the question better with an example.

Build the following view:

Understanding Fixed Level of Detail (LOD) in Tableau – Part 2

We can see than Customer Cynthia Arntzen has placed seven orders, Cythia Voltz nine orders and Cynthia Delaney five orders. Therefore, we know that one customer has placed seven orders, one customer has placed nine orders and one customer has placed five orders. But the business scenario is to find out how many customers placed seven/nine or five orders. Providing solution by scrolling down the above view and noting down how many customers have placed a certain number of orders is very cumbersome.

We can try using Countd(Order ID).

This view shows us how many orders each customer has placed and not How many customers placed how many orders.

Solution

Using Fixed LOD: {FIXED [Customer Name]: COUNTD([Order ID])}

The expression can be translated as follows: For each Customer how many unique orders were placed.

This expression calculates how many Orders were placed by customers, but what is the significance?

The total number of Orders made by each Customer will be represented as a separate dimension.

We can see from the above image that a certain customer has made THREE orders in total, another customer has made SEVEN orders in total. The total number of Orders will be treated as values of a dimension. Let’s apply the Fixed LOD expression to understand better.

{FIXED [Customer Name]: COUNTD([Order ID])}

After creating a calculation with above mentioned Fixed syntax drag and drop the calculation under dimensions pane. We do this to treat the output of calculation as a dimension and not aggregate. Use the same dimension and place it on column shelf and Countd(Customer Name) or rows shelf.