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

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Tableau Cookbook - Recipes for Data Visualization
Shweta Sankhe-Savale
Dec, 2016 | 504 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Tableau Cookbook – Recipes for Data Visualization
Tableau Cookbook – Recipes for Data Visualization
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Keep Calm and Say Hello to Tableau
Keep Calm and Say Hello to Tableau
Introduction
Starting with Tableau Desktop
Introduction to My Tableau Repository and connecting to the sample data source
Building our first visualization and understanding the Tableau workspace
Saving a Tableau workbook
2
Ready to Build Some Charts? Show Me!
Ready to Build Some Charts? Show Me!
Introduction
Building views manually
Building views automatically
Understanding Show Me!
Creating a Text table
Creating a Highlight table
Creating a Heat map
Creating a Bar chart
Creating a Stacked Bar chart
Creating a Pie chart
Creating a Line chart
Creating an Area chart
Creating a Treemap
Creating a Packed Bubble chart
Creating a word cloud
3
Hungry for More Charts? Dig In!
Hungry for More Charts? Dig In!
Introduction
Creating an Individual axes chart
Creating a Blended axes chart
Creating a Side by Side Bar chart
Creating a Dual axes chart
Creating a Combination chart
Creating a Scatter plot
Creating a Box and Whisker plot
Creating a Gantt chart
Creating Maps
Using Background images
4
Slice and Dice – Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering Data
Slice and Dice – Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering Data
Introduction
Sorting our data
Creating a custom hierarchy
Grouping our data
Creating bins to bucket our data
Creating and using filters
Creating and using sets
Creating and using context filters
5
Adding Flavor – Creating Calculated Fields
Adding Flavor – Creating Calculated Fields
Introduction
Understanding how to create and use Calculations
Creating string calculations
Creating arithmetic calculations
Creating date calculations
Creating logic calculations
Using sets in calculations
Understanding Table Calculations
Understanding Level of Detail (LOD) Calculations
Understanding INCLUDE LOD
Understanding EXCLUDE LOD
Understanding FIXED LOD
Understanding how to create and use Parameters
6
Serve It on a Dashboard!
Serve It on a Dashboard!
Introduction
Combining multiple visualizations into a dashboard
Using the filter action
Using the highlight action
Using the URL action
7
The Right MIX – Blending Multiple Data Sources
The Right MIX – Blending Multiple Data Sources
Introduction
Understanding Multiple Table Join within a single database
Understanding Multiple Table Join across databases
Understanding Data Blending
Understanding and using Unions
Using Custom SQL Query to fetch data
Working with Tableau Extracts
8
Garnish with Reference Lines, Trends, Forecasting, and Clustering
Garnish with Reference Lines, Trends, Forecasting, and Clustering
Introduction
Understanding how to create and use trend lines
Understanding and using the forecasting functionality
Understanding and using reference lines – the bullet chart
Understanding how to perform clustering
9
Bon Appétit! Tell a Story and Share It with others
Bon Appétit! Tell a Story and Share It with others
Introduction
Understanding and using story points
Saving our work as a packaged workbook
Publishing our work to Tableau Server or Tableau Online
10
Formatting in Tableau for Desserts
Formatting in Tableau for Desserts
Introduction
Formatting across our entire workbook
Formatting within a worksheet
Using and formatting labels and annotations
Using and formatting titles and captions
Index
Index

Working with Tableau Extracts

As discussed in our first chapter, there are two options of connecting to our data, namely, Live and Extract. With the Live option, Tableau connects directly to our data and maintains a Live' connection with the data source. In Live connection, Tableau leverages the capabilities of our data source and hence the speed of our data source will determine the performance of our analysis. Whereas, the Extract option helps us import the entire data or subset of our data into Tableau's fast data engine as an Extract. This basically creates a .tde file which stands for Tableau Data Extract.

So far we have used the Live connect option for connecting to our data sources. However, in this section, we will focus on the Extract option.

Typically, Extracts are used for the following reasons:

  • Improving performance: If the data source speed is hampering the performance of our analysis, then we can use an Extract. This could be the case when connecting to flat files such as Excel...

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