tableau aggregate data based on dimension

Question

I am having a problem with Tableau, hopefully, someone can help me and is very much appreciated!!

A simplified example of a problem I can't fix in Tableau:

Payment   Customer  Amount

1          BMW       20000

2          VW        30000

3          BMW        1000

4          VW         5000

5          VW         6000

This has to be aggregated on the Customer level and has to look like this: 

Customer    Amount

BMW           21000

VW            41000

This is for 10.000 customers.

I want to take the average/mean/max for each year (pool cut-off date) in order to compare the years.

In R I always saved the new data frame, but here this seems to be different.

Thanks

Answer 1

• Sum() is one of Tableau's built-in aggregation functions, so there is no need to write a calculated field if that's all you're doing. Just drag the [Amount] field on to (say) the text shelf and select Sum() as the aggregation. Then put [Customer] on the row shelf.

• Sum() is efficient and performed on the database server only sending back the results to the client. So if you are summing a million rows, only the answer needs to be sent over the wire. Of course, if you are grouping by a dimension so that half your dimension members have only one row, you'll still be sending back lots of data.