Tableau is one of the leading business intelligence tools used worldwide, across organizations of all scale. In its latest release, Tableau 2018 promises richer and more useful features related to visual analytics, reporting, dashboarding, and a host of other data visualization aspects. Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x will get you up and running with these features.
If you're familiar with Tableau, the book starts with the new functionalities of Tableau 2018, along with concrete examples of how to use them. However, if you're new to Tableau, don't worry! The rest of the book will guide you through each major aspect of Tableau with examples. You'll learn how to connect to data, build a data source, visualize your data, build a dashboard, and share it online. In the final chapters, you'll also learn advanced techniques such as creating a cross-database join and data blending.
By the end of the book, you will have a firm understanding of how to effectively use Tableau to create quick, cost-effective, and business-efficient business intelligence (BI) solutions.
The features explained in the book are based on the Beta version of Tableau 2018.3, this is not the final version of Tableau 2018.3.
If you're a beginner or an existing BI professional looking to get the most out of Tableau 2018's latest features, this book is for you. You'll also find this book useful if you're an aspiring data analyst who wants to learn the capabilities of Tableau to answer business-specific questions. No prior knowledge or experience with Tableau is necessary.
Chapter 1, Catching Up with Tableau 2018, details of every new feature of the different Tableau 2018 versions. You'll learn how to use them with clear explanations, examples, and tutorials. This chapter is the best way to catch up with the new releases if you already have some Tableau knowledge. Beginners should start with Chapter 2, The Tableau Core.
Chapter 2, The Tableau Core, explains the basics that every Tableau users should know. It contains an overview of the different products, a description of Tableau's workspaces, wordings, and clear explanations of Tableau's most crucial concepts, such as Dimension, Measure, Discrete, Continuous, Live, and Extract.
Chapter 3, A First Dashboard and Exploration, is your first real experience with Tableau and is designed as a guided tutorial. In just one chapter you'll connect to data, build three visualizations, an interactive dashboard, and answer business questions with the power of Tableau's data exploration capabilities.
Chapter 4, Connect to Data and Simple Transformations, focuses on data connections, starting with general rules when connecting to files and servers. This chapter also goes into detail about essential features such as Joins, Unions, and Transformations (Pivot, Split, and more).
Chapter 5, Build an Efficient Data Source, helps you build the best data source for your analysis. Having a customized and well-organized data source is crucial in Tableau. You'll learn the different elements that compose a data source, how to refresh and deals with the changes, and change the default format. This chapter also focuses on creating Groups, Hierarchies, Sets, and Bins.
Chapter 6, Design Insightful Visualizations - Part 1, teaches you the different ways of building visualizations in Tableau with double-clicks, the Show Me menu, or simple drag and drops. You'll also see, in this first part, a description of the different Mark Types and properties.
Chapter 7, Design Insightful Visualizations - Part 2, focuses first on building visualizations with multiple measures thanks to Dual Axis, or Measure Name and Measure Values. Filters, Quick-Filters, Pages, and an overview of the different options available complete the global vision of what you can do when creating a visualization.
Chapter 8, Create Powerful Dashboards and Stories, is a key chapter in which you'll learn the basics about building dashboards in Tableau with an overview of the different objects available and advice about which layout to use. You'll also see how to add interactivity with the different Actions, and how to tell compelling stories with the Story points.
Chapter 9, Publish and Interact in Tableau Server, is the culmination of what you've learned in the previous chapters. This chapter focuses on Tableau Server/Online, how to publish your dashboards and Data Sources online, how to interact with published content, and how to build device-specific layouts.
Chapter 10, An Introduction to Calculations, is the first advanced chapter where you'll expand Tableau's capabilities by creating new calculated fields with powerful formulas. After describing the basics of calculation, you'll understand how to use advanced formulas such as Table Calculation and Level Of Detail.
Chapter 11, Analytics and Parameters, focuses on two significant aspects of Tableau that combine well. The first part, Analytics, describes how to add Reference Lines, Forecast, Clusters, Trend Lines, Totals, and more. The second part explains how to create and use parameters to add more interactivity to your analysis. Finally, you'll create a real-life business usage combining analytics features, parameters, and calculations.
Chapter 12, Advanced Data Connections, presents three major features: cross-database Join and data-blending to create analyses that combine multiple connection types, and Wildcard Unions to build automatic unions based on multiple files. This chapter will help you tackle data connection challenges.
Chapter 13, Dealing with Security, is the last technical chapter of this book and focuses on three ways to secure your data: permissions on Tableau Server, user filters on Tableau Desktop, and row-level data security in your data.
Chapter 14, How to Keep Growing Your Skills, is a non-technical but essential chapter. You'll discover many ways of learning new things and growing your Tableau skills thanks to community projects. The chapter is also a tribute to the Tableau community, presenting many ways to be part of that big family, which shares a passion for data visualization with Tableau.
No prerequisites are necessary. Tableau is designed to be simple to use for everyone, no matter their background. This book starts from the very beginning and will teach you all major concepts.
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CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "This file contains the an Orders sheet, with approximately 10,000 rows and another sheet, User Access, with 6,000 rows."
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