One lone number on a dashboard needs a reference line for context

500 sales today. Good day or bad one?

Beginner to intermediateRead 5 minDoing: under an hour6 steps

What you'll have at the end

A chart with a labeled average or target reference line, so any point above or below it reads as good or bad immediately.

Before you start

You need

A bar or line chart on a continuous date axis, showing at least the last couple of weeks of one measure including today's own mark, already built in a Tableau workbook.

Not covered

Turning a plain text or big-number KPI tile into a chart with an axis in the first place, or deciding which KPIs across a whole dashboard deserve a formal target and an owner.

Leans on

Tableau Cheat SheetCarries the Reference Line, Create Parameter, and Parameter in Calculated Field rows this recipe wires together.
Descriptive Statistics Cheat SheetExplains why a median resists the one outlier day that would otherwise drag a mean-based reference line off true.

6 steps

Where to go next

Give every dashboard KPI a target, an owner, and a trend line

When the real job is choosing which KPIs across a whole dashboard deserve a formal target and an owner, not drawing one line on one chart.

Checked 26 Aug 2026

Part of the Tableau cookbook