Book Image

Tableau Cookbook - Recipes for Data Visualization

By : Shweta Sankhe-Savale
Book Image

Tableau Cookbook - Recipes for Data Visualization

By: Shweta Sankhe-Savale

Overview of this book

Data is everywhere and everything is data! Visualization of data allows us to bring out the underlying trends and patterns inherent in the data and gain insights that enable faster and smarter decision making. Tableau is one of the fastest growing and industry leading Business Intelligence platforms that empowers business users to easily visualize their data and discover insights at the speed of thought. Tableau is a self-service BI platform designed to make data visualization and analysis as intuitive as possible. Creating visualizations with simple drag-and-drop, you can be up and running on Tableau in no time. Starting from the fundamentals such as getting familiarized with Tableau Desktop, connecting to common data sources and building standard charts; you will walk through the nitty gritty of Tableau such as creating dynamic analytics with parameters, blended data sources, and advanced calculations. You will also learn to group members into higher levels, sort the data in a specific order & filter out the unnecessary information. You will then create calculations in Tableau & understand the flexibility & power they have and go on to building story-boards and share your insights with others. Whether you are just getting started or whether you need a quick reference on a “how-to” question, This book is the perfect companion for you
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Tableau Cookbook – Recipes for Data Visualization
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Creating a custom hierarchy


Using hierarchies is another way of slicing and dicing our data. This gives us the ability to be able to drill up and drill down into the data at various granularities. We have already seen an example of a default hierarchy in Tableau when we use any Date field.

When we get any Date field in either the Rows or Columns shelf, Tableau automatically aggregates it to the highest possible level. For example, if the date field includes multiple years, the default level is year. But, if the date field contains data for just one year but includes multiple months, then the default level is month.

In our data, if we get the Order Date field in the Rows shelf, then Tableau aggregates it at the Year level and gives us a field called YEAR(Order Date). It also gives us the + button (expand button) so that we can easily break down the view by year, quarter, month, and so on. Refer to the following image:

When Tableau identifies a field as a Date or Date/Time field, it creates the...