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 a call center flow for instant analysis

In this recipe, we'll explore another typical real-world example. In the previous recipe, Creating a flow for transaction analytics, our focus was to provide a new data output that could be used for further analytical purposes. In contrast, in this recipe, we'll leverage Tableau Prep to investigate data in order to answer a business question. That is, our objective is to find the answer using Tableau Prep itself. You're likely to find similar use cases in any industry, where your leadership relies on you not only preparing data but investigating that data and elaborating on things such as business performance using key metrics or performing a deep dive analysis for a specific scenario.

Getting ready

To follow along with this recipe, download the Sample Files 9.2 folder from this book's GitHub repository. The files here contain information from a call center for a company selling laptops and desktop PCs. There...