Book Image

Tableau Prep Cookbook

By : Hendrik Kleine
Book Image

Tableau Prep Cookbook

By: Hendrik Kleine

Overview of this book

Tableau Prep is a tool in the Tableau software suite, created specifically to develop data pipelines. This book will describe, in detail, a variety of scenarios that you can apply in your environment for developing, publishing, and maintaining complex Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) data pipelines. The book starts by showing you how to set up Tableau Prep Builder. You’ll learn how to obtain data from various data sources, including files, databases, and Tableau Extracts. Next, the book demonstrates how to perform data cleaning and data aggregation in Tableau Prep Builder. You’ll also gain an understanding of Tableau Prep Builder and how you can leverage it to create data pipelines that prepare your data for downstream analytics processes, including reporting and dashboard creation in Tableau. As part of a Tableau Prep flow, you’ll also explore how to use R and Python to implement data science components inside a data pipeline. In the final chapter, you’ll apply the knowledge you’ve gained to build two use cases from scratch, including a data flow for a retail store to prepare a robust dataset using multiple disparate sources and a data flow for a call center to perform ad hoc data analysis. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create, run, and publish Tableau Prep flows and implement solutions to common problems in data pipelines.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Renaming columns

When it comes to cleaning data, one of the simplest yet most powerful actions might be simply renaming your fields to a more user-friendly format.

Tableau Prep steps can be categorized into three items: inputs, transformations, and outputs. During the first two, the input and transformation steps, we'll always have the ability to change any field name as desired.

Getting ready

To follow along with this recipe, download the Sample Files 3.1 folder from this book's GitHub repository.

How to do it…

Open up Tableau Prep Builder and connect to the December 2016 Sales.xlsx file:

  1. Drag the Sales_Data sheet onto the flow canvas:

    Figure 3.1 – Connecting to Sales_Data

    When you select the Sales_Data input step, the bottom pane will show a preview of all the fields in the source data, along with their data type and some sample values:

    Figure 3.2 – These field names are not user-friendly

  2. In order to change any of the field...