In my last post (Part 1) I showed you how to create a combination area fill & symbol map.  Last week a client in Washington, DC asked me if it was possible to create these types of maps and display specific regional groupings of states.

The answer is – yes.  Your data must support that grouping or you can group states within Tableau only to render the desired map.

Continuing from my last post the steps to create a regional display of the data are:

1. Start from the sample file created in my last blog post (that one used the Superstore data that ships with your copy of Tableau Desktop).
2. Drag the region dimension into the filter shelf
3. Make that a quick filter so that it displays on the desktop by right-clicking on the region filter pill and selecting “Show Quick Filter.”

Now you can select the region you wish to view and the surrounding map shapes are not displayed.  This is normal Tableau behavior if you de-select the map layers displayed in the Map Options shelf on the right side of the workspace.

This video will show you exactly how to build this variation on the map we created in my original post.