Parsing out a multi select cell into different rows for Tableau connection

alexis.ray89371

Hi!

Has anyone had experience with trying to connect SS multi select cells into Tableau so Tableau can read each item in the multi select cell?

If there isn't a way to do it in Tableau I'm thinking I need to find a way to copy the row in SS down and have one item from the multi select cell in each row. So, if the multi select cell had 10 options chosen then there would be 10 rows with one option selected in each row.

I found something called Sheet Director that may work in conjunction with writing a custom function/code for Google Sheets. So, it would import data into Google Sheets run the custom function/code then import it back into SS. Then connect to Tableau. But, the automated version costs money which I would need to get approval for. Probably won't get approval as we are in cost savings mode.

I attached an image of what my data would look like for reference. As you can see there are a total of 6 columns that are multi select. Only one of the columns can be used per row. So, it would be whichever column is not null would be the one that needs to be parsed out.

Thanks for any help/ideas!

Ben Goldblatt

Hi @alexis.ray89371,

If I'm understanding this correctly, you would like to use some kind of COUNTIF/HAS logic for Tableau to be able to create charts off of the data. Tableau is likely reading each cell as one large value rather than separately looking at each individual value within the cell so I could see where this might be difficult. It might be possible to use checkbox columns (one column for each multi select value) but if you have lots of multi-select values available, this wouldn't be the most viable solution.

I highly recommend Submitting a Product Enhancement Request for having this type of functionality added on to the Tableau Web Data Connector. In the meantime, you may want to look into creating a custom API solution that may help with using the multi-select column type. More information on the Smartsheet API can be found in the following Help content from the Learning Center:

• Where to Find Information About the Smartsheet API
• Smartsheet Has an API? What Is That and Why Would I Want to Use It?
• Tips and Tricks for the Smartsheet API

For help in building out API calls to sheets, take a look at the resources available in the Smartsheet Developers Portal which includes a link to a larger API-specific community in Stack Overflow (make sure to use the "smartsheet-api" tag if you decide to post there).

I hope this helps!

Ben

alexis.ray89371

Hi,

Ya, there are 6 columns that are multi select and some of them have over a 100 choices. Thank you for the feedback.