Forcing Needed Values that Don’t Exist Yet in Your Data

Lindsay Betzendahl’s solution is simple yet powerful: build a tiny lookup table with all the expected status values, union it with your real data, and then you can force those empty categories into your visuals – not only making your tables look more consistent from the beginning, but also helping communicate to your users that “no data yet” doesn’t mean “this category doesn’t matter.” It’s an elegant, practical data-engineering idea with big payoffs for clarity and design.