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)

Creating conditional calculations

One of the most powerful calculations you can do is conditional calculations. Conditional calculations return a value based on the criteria you set in the calculation itself. When the conditions are met, a certain value is returned, as specified by you in the calculation. Because conditional statements are relatively resource-intensive on your computer's hardware, it is best to perform them during data preparation in Tableau Prep rather than a downstream analysis tool. By performing resource-intensive tasks in Tableau Prep, the data output will already contain the end result, preventing your analysis tools, such as Tableau Desktop, from having to perform these tasks at a less convenient time. In this recipe, we'll calculate the sales tax amount as well. However, this time, we're going to apply a different tax rate based on the department. To do so, we're going to use a conditional calculation.

Getting ready

To follow along...