Category: tableau

Tableau – Custom Data View ”; Previous Next A custom data view is used to extend the normal data views with some additional features so that the view can give different types of charts for the same underlying data. For example, you can drill down a dimension field which is part of a pre-defined hierarchy so that additional values of the measures are obtained at a different granularity. Following are some of the frequently used and important custom data views Tableau offers. Drill Down View For dimension fields which are part of a hierarchy, you usually need to know the result of analysis for the next or previous level of aggregation. For example, when you know the result for a quarter, you get interested to know the results for each month in that quarter, and you may even need the result for each week. This is a case of drilling down the existing dimensions to get a finer level of granularity. To drill down and drill up for individual dimension members in a hierarchy, right-click a table header and select Drill Down from the context menu. Consider a bar chart created with the dimension category in the columns shelf and the measure Sales in the Rows shelf. Right-click on the bar representing Furniture and select Drill Down. The result of the drill down action is shown in the following screenshot. Swapping Dimensions You can create a new view from an existing view by swapping the position of the dimensions. This does not change the values of the measures, but it does change the position of the measures. Consider a view for analyzing the Profit for each year for each segment and category of products. You can click on the vertical line at the end of category column and drag it to the segment column. This action is shown in the following screenshot. The result of the swapping of the two dimensions is shown in the following screenshot. As you can see, only the position of the values of the measure Profit changes for each category and segment, and not its value. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – String Calculations ”; Previous Next In this chapter, you will learn about calculations in Tableau involving Strings. Tableau has many inbuilt string functions, which can be used to do string manipulations such as – comparing, concatenating, replacing few characters from a string, etc. Following are the steps to create a calculation field and use string functions in it. Create Calculated Field While connected to Sample superstore, go to the Analysis menu and click ‘Create Calculated Field’ as shown in the following screenshot. Calculation Editor The above step opens a calculation editor which lists all the functions that is available in Tableau. You can change the dropdown value and see only the functions related to strings. Create a Formula Consider you want to find out the sales in the cities, which contain the letter “o”. For this, create the formula as shown in the following screenshot. Using the Calculated Field Now, to see the created field in action, you can drag it to the Rows shelf and drag the Sales field to the Columns shelf. The following screenshot shows the Sales values. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Basic Filters ”; Previous Next Filtering is the process of removing certain values or range of values from a result set. Tableau filtering feature allows both simple scenarios using field values as well as advanced calculation or context-based filters. In this chapter, you will learn about the basic filters available in Tableau. There are three types of basic filters available in Tableau. They are as follows − Filter Dimensions are the filters applied on the dimension fields. Filter Measures are the filters applied on the measure fields. Filter Dates are the filters applied on the date fields. Filter Dimensions These filters are applied on the dimension fields. Typical examples include filtering based on categories of text or numeric values with logical expressions greater than or less than conditions. Example We use the Sample – Superstore data source to apply dimension filters on the sub-category of products. We create a view for showing profit for each sub-category of products according to their shipping mode. For it, drag the dimension field “Sub-Category” to the Rows shelf and the measure field “profit” to the Columns shelf. Next, drag the Sub-Category dimension to the Filters shelf to open the Filter dialog box. Click the None button at the bottom of the list to deselect all segments. Then, select the Exclude option in the lower right corner of the dialog box. Finally, select Labels and Storage and then click OK. The following screenshot shows the result with the above two categories excluded. Filter Measures These filters are applied on the measure fields. Filtering is based on the calculations applied to the measure fields. Hence, while in dimension filters you use only values to filter, in measures filter you use calculations based on fields. Example You can use the Sample – Superstore data source to apply dimension filters on the average value of the profits. First, create a view with ship mode and subcategory as dimensions and Average of profit as shown in the following screenshot. Next, drag the AVG (profit) value to the filter pane. Choose Average as the filter mode. Next, choose “At least” and give a value to filter the rows, which meet these criteria. After completion of the above steps, we get the final view below showing only the subcategories whose average profit is greater than 20. Filter Dates Tableau treats the date field in three different ways while applying the date field. It can apply filter by taking a relative date as compared to today, an absolute date, or range of dates. Each of this option is presented when a date field is dragged out of the filter pane. Example We choose the sample – Superstore data source and create a view with order date in the column shelf and profit in the rows shelf as shown in the following screenshot. Next, drag the “order date” field to the filter shelf and choose Range of dates in the filter dialog box. Choose the dates as shown in the following screenshot. On clicking OK, the final view appears showing the result for the chosen range of dates as seen in the following screenshot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Data Joining ”; Previous Next Data joining is a very common requirement in any data analysis. You may need to join data from multiple sources or join data from different tables in a single source. Tableau provides the feature to join the table by using the data pane available under Edit Data Source in the Data menu. Creating a Join Consider the data source ‘Sample superstore’ to create a join between Orders and Returns table. For this, go to the Data menu and choose the option Edit Data Source. Next, drag the two tables, Orders and Returns to the data pane. Depending on the field name and datatype, Tableau will automatically create a join which can be changed later. The following screenshot shows the creation of an inner join between Orders and Returns using the Field Order ID. Editing a Join Type The type of join which the table creates automatically can be changed manually. For this, click the middle of the two circles showing the join. A popup window appears below which shows the four types of joins available. Also Tableau automatically greys out some types of joins, which it finds irrelevant on the basis of data present in the data source. In the following screenshot, you can see the inner and left outer join as the available joins. Editing Join Fields You can also change the fields forming the join condition by clicking the Data Source option available in the join popup window. While selecting the field, you can also search for the field you are looking for using a search text box. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Data Sources ”; Previous Next Tableau can connect to all the popular data sources which are widely used. Tableau’s native connectors can connect to the following types of data sources. File Systems such as CSV, Excel, etc. Relational Systems such as Oracle, Sql Server, DB2, etc. Cloud Systems such as Windows Azure, Google BigQuery, etc. Other Sources using ODBC The following picture shows most of the data sources available through Tableau’s native data connectors. Connect Live The Connect Live feature is used for real-time data analysis. In this case, Tableau connects to real-time data source and keeps reading the data. Thus, the result of the analysis is up to the second, and the latest changes are reflected in the result. However, on the downside, it burdens the source system as it has to keep sending the data to Tableau. In-Memory Tableau can also process data in-memory by caching them in memory and not being connected to the source anymore while analyzing the data. Of course, there will be a limit to the amount of data cached depending on the availability of memory. Combine Data Sources Tableau can connect to different data sources at the same time. For example, in a single workbook you can connect to a flat file and a relational source by defining multiple connections. This is used in data blending, which is a very unique feature in Tableau. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Save & Delete Worksheet ”; Previous Next An existing worksheet can be both saved and deleted. This helps in organizing the contents in the Tableau desktop environment. While you can save a worksheet by clicking the save button under the main menu, you can delete a worksheet using the following steps. Deleting the Worksheet To delete a worksheet, right-click on name of the worksheet and choose the option ‘Delete Sheet’. The following screenshot shows the worksheet has been deleted. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Show Me ”; Previous Next As an advanced data visualization tool, Tableau makes the data analysis very easy by providing many analysis techniques without writing any custom code. One such feature is Show Me. It can be used to apply a required view to the existing data in the worksheet. Those views can be a pie chart, scatter plot, or a line chart. Whenever a worksheet with data is created, it is available in the top right corner as shown in the following figure. Some of the view options will be greyed out depending on the nature of selection in the data pane. Show Me with Two Fields The relation between two fields can be visually analyzed easily by using various graphs and charts available in Show Me. In this case, we choose two fields and apply a line chart. Following are the steps − Step 1 − Select the two fields (order date and profit) to be analyzed by holding the control key. Step 2 − Click the Show Me bar and choose line chart. Step 3 − Click the Mark Label button on the scrollbar. The following diagram shows the line chart created using the above steps. Show Me with Multiple Fields We can apply a similar technique as above to analyze more than 2 fields. The only difference in this case will be the availability of fewer views in active form. Tableau automatically greys out the views that are not appropriate for the analysis of the fields chosen. In this case, choose the field’s product name, customer name, sales and profit by holding down the control key. As you can observe, most of the views in Show Me are greyed out. From the active views, choose Scatter View. The following diagram shows the Scatter View chart created. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Paged Workbook ”; Previous Next A paged workbook is used to save the view of the data in different pages for different values of the dimension or measure. A common example is to see how each type of products have performed against each other in a specific sales region. As each of the values of product type is stored as a separate page, we can view them one at a time or see it as a range of values. Creating Paged Workbook The paged workbook contains worksheets which have fields put in the page shelf. Consider an example of studying the profit of various sub-category of products in different regions. Following are the steps. Step 1 − Create a bar chart with two dimensions and one measure. In this case, drag the Measure Profit to the columns shelf and the dimensions sub-category, and Region to the rows shelf as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 − Drag the Sub-Category field again to the page shelf. You will see that a page control is automatically added, just below the Pages shelf. This page control provides the following features to navigate through the pages in a view − Jump to a specific page Manually advance through the pages Automatically advance through pages In this case, we will see how to jump to a specific page and how to get the automatic display of pages. To go to a specific page, click on the drop-down on the page control and select Accessories. The chart seen in the following screenshot appears. Step 3 − For automatic display of pages, keep the show history checkbox ticked and click the play button. You can then see an automatic play of different pages of sub categories. While the current Sub-Category value is shown with a dark color, the previous values are shaded with light color. The following screenshot illustrates this. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Fields Operations ”; Previous Next Tableau has many features to manipulate the fields present in Tableau data pane. You can rename the fields or combine two fields to create one field. Such operations help in better organization of the dimensions and measures, as well as accommodate two or more fields with the same name for better data analysis. Following are the important examples of such Field Operations. Adding Fields to Worksheet You can add any field to the worksheet by right-clicking and choosing the option Add to Sheet. You can also drag and drop the fields into different shelves present in the worksheet, like Columns shelf, Rows shelf, Filters shelf, and many other shelves under the Marks card. The following diagram shows the right-click option. Combining Two Fields You can combine two dimension fields to create one field. This combined field has a name which is a combination of the individual fields. The values in the dimension get combined to a single value by joining the two strings into one string separated by a comma. However, this default name can be changed by using the rename field operation. The following diagram shows the step to combine two fields. Searching Fields You can search for names of fields by using the search box option. Writing first three or more letters of the field name brings out the result showing only the fields whose name contains these letters. Reordering Fields You can change the position of fields by simply dragging them up and down. In the following example, we drag the field customer name to the place between state and city. This is usually done to bring similar fields together which are frequently used for analysis. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Tableau – Overview ”; Previous Next As a leading data visualization tool, Tableau has many desirable and unique features. Its powerful data discovery and exploration application allows you to answer important questions in seconds. You can use Tableau”s drag and drop interface to visualize any data, explore different views, and even combine multiple databases easily. It does not require any complex scripting. Anyone who understands the business problems can address it with a visualization of the relevant data. After analysis, sharing with others is as easy as publishing to Tableau Server. Tableau Features Tableau provides solutions for all kinds of industries, departments, and data environments. Following are some unique features which enable Tableau to handle diverse scenarios. Speed of Analysis − As it does not require high level of programming expertise, any user with access to data can start using it to derive value from the data. Self-Reliant − Tableau does not need a complex software setup. The desktop version which is used by most users is easily installed and contains all the features needed to start and complete data analysis. Visual Discovery − The user explores and analyzes the data by using visual tools like colors, trend lines, charts, and graphs. There is very little script to be written as nearly everything is done by drag and drop. Blend Diverse Data Sets − Tableau allows you to blend different relational, semistructured and raw data sources in real time, without expensive up-front integration costs. The users don’t need to know the details of how data is stored. Architecture Agnostic − Tableau works in all kinds of devices where data flows. Hence, the user need not worry about specific hardware or software requirements to use Tableau. Real-Time Collaboration − Tableau can filter, sort, and discuss data on the fly and embed a live dashboard in portals like SharePoint site or Salesforce. You can save your view of data and allow colleagues to subscribe to your interactive dashboards so they see the very latest data just by refreshing their web browser. Centralized Data − Tableau server provides a centralized location to manage all of the organization’s published data sources. You can delete, change permissions, add tags, and manage schedules in one convenient location. It’s easy to schedule extract refreshes and manage them in the data server. Administrators can centrally define a schedule for extracts on the server for both incremental and full refreshes. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;