Preface

When Tableau was first introduced, it was a dramatic paradigm shift away from tabular reports and extensive cycles of data integration that produced results long after relevant decisions could have been made. Tableau disrupted the paradigm for visually interacting with data. And it continues to offer a unique paradigm — one that makes it easy and intuitive (and fun!) to be hands-on with the data, to receive instant visual feedback with every action, and to ask questions and uncover insights in a natural flow of thought and interaction. The result is an ever growing #datafam, a community that loves Tableau for its simplicity, beauty, and ability to make working with data fun!

Tableau continues to expand and evolve in ways that make seeing and understanding data easier and more powerful. The Tableau Data Model, new dashboard actions, ever-growing geospatial support, animations, and new dashboard objects expand what’s possible and make it easier than ever to gain and share insights from data. New features such as dashboard extensions allow you to go beyond the built-in functionality and integrate Tableau fully into analytic workflows. Einstein Discovery brings the power of AI and powerful predictive models to your analysis.

The continued evolution of Tableau Prep brings the same intuitive instant feedback to data prep and cleansing that Tableau Desktop brought to data visualization, greatly extending the analytical platform of Tableau. We’ll cover these new features (and more) in the chapters of this book!

We’ll look at Tableau through the lens of understanding the underlying paradigm of how and why Tableau works, in the context of practical examples. Then we’ll build on this solid foundation of understanding so that you will have the tools and skills to tackle even the toughest data challenges!

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who needs to see and understand their data! From the business user to the hardcore data analyst to the CEO, everyone needs to have the ability to ask and answer questions of data. Having a bit of background with data will definitely help, but you don’t need to be confident with scripting, SQL, or database structures.

Whether you’re new to Tableau, or have been using it for months or even years, with this book you’ll gain a solid foundation of understanding Tableau, and the tools and skills to build toward advanced mastery of the tool.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Taking Off with Tableau, introduces the foundational principles of Tableau. We’ll walk through multiple examples in a logical progression that will introduce everything from the interface to connecting to data, building your first visualization, and even building a dashboard. This chapter will give you a solid foundation for terminology and concepts that will be used throughout the book.

Chapter 2, Connecting to Data in Tableau, covers the foundational concepts involved in connecting to data, using several practical examples. It covers the various types of connections, file types, cloud-based and on-premises databases, and how to work with metadata.

Chapter 3, Moving Beyond Basic Visualizations, builds on the basic visualization principles covered in the first chapter to explore variations and extended possibilities. You will learn when and how to use a wide variety of visualizations to analyze and communicate data.

Chapter 4, Starting an Adventure with Calculations and Parameters, introduces calculations and parameters, giving an overview of the major types of calculation and then detailed examples of row-level and aggregate calculations. It combines conceptual knowledge with practical examples, and concludes with performance considerations.

Chapter 5, Leveraging Level of Detail Calculations, takes an in-depth look at the level of detail expressions and how to use them to solve complex data challenges. It not only gives an overview, but dives into examples of FIXED, INCLUDE, and EXCLUDE variations.

Chapter 6, Diving Deep with Table Calculations, gives you a strong foundation for understanding and using table calculations to solve a wide range of data challenges. It covers the concepts of scope and direction, addressing and partitioning, and walks through several in-depth practical examples.

Chapter 7, Making Visualizations that Look Great and Work Well, covers how to extend and alter the default formatting applied to visualizations by Tableau, to customize options such as font, color, lines, shading, annotations, and tooltips to effectively communicate a data story.

Chapter 8, Telling a Data Story with Dashboards, builds on concepts that were introduced in the first chapter and expanded on throughout. It walks through several practical examples of various kinds of dashboards to help you gain a solid understanding of what a dashboard is, how to build one and make it interactive, and how to use it to tell a compelling data story.

Chapter 9, Visual Analytics: Trends, Clustering, Distributions, and Forecasting, introduces the visual statistical analytics capabilities built into Tableau and supplies you with practical examples of how and when to leverage these capabilities. This includes adding and modifying trend models, leveraging clustering capabilities, using and modifying forecast models, and visualizing the distribution of data. This chapter also includes new details regarding the new features and interface present for Explain Data. You will not only understand how to employ statistical models but also evaluate their accuracy.

Chapter 10, Advanced Visualizations, builds upon the visualizations and techniques already covered, demonstrating how Tableau can be used to create any kind of visualization. A multitude of examples demonstrates a wide variety of advanced visualizations, from bump charts to Marimekko charts to animated visualizations.

Chapter 11, Dynamic Dashboards, builds your dashboard skills by demonstrating various techniques to show, hide, and swap content on a dashboard. The result is a truly dynamic user experience that enhances your ability to communicate data.

Chapter 12, Exploring Mapping and Advanced Geospatial Features, demonstrates everything about maps and geospatial visualization, from map basics to geospatial functions, custom territories, and plotting data on custom background images.

Chapter 13, Integrating Advanced Features: Extensions, Scripts, and AI, explores the incredible potential of extending Tableau’s functionality using new features and integrations in Tableau. The chapter explores dashboard extensions that give you the ability to seamlessly integrate code, backend systems, and new user interfaces directly into your dashboards. You’ll also see examples of leveraging scripts that could be used for anything from data cleansing to advanced predictive models. Finally, this chapter will explore the new integration of Einstein Discovery, which unleashes the full power of AI and predictive models and can be fully integrated into interactive dashboards.

Chapter 14, Understanding the Tableau Data Model, Joins, and Blends, explores the major ways of relating data in Tableau, including joins, blends, and relationships, using Tableau’s Data Model. With practical examples and detailed descriptions, you will understand the difference between logical and physical layers and how to leverage relationships, joins, and blends to achieve great analytical results.

Chapter 15, Structuring Messy Data to Work Well in Tableau, acknowledges that real-world data is sometimes a mess, and gives you a foundation for understanding well-structured data and a toolset for dealing with data that isn’t structured well in Tableau.

Chapter 16, Taming Data with Tableau Prep, explores the Tableau Prep Builder tool, including the overall paradigm and specific features. You will work through an extended practical example to understand how to leverage Tableau Prep’s amazing ability to clean and structure data.

Chapter 17, Sharing Your Data story, concludes the book with a look at a wide range of options for sharing your story. From printing to sharing interactive dashboards to output PDFs and images, you’ll be ready to share the stories contained in your data with those who need it most.

To get the most out of this book

This book does not assume specific database knowledge, but it will definitely help to have some basic familiarity with data itself. We’ll cover the foundational principles first, and while it may be tempting to skip the first chapter, please don’t! We’ll lay a foundation of terminology and explore the paradigm that will be used throughout the remainder of the book.

You’ll be able to follow along with many of the examples in the book using Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder (in Chapter 16, Taming Data with Tableau Prep).

Most examples can be completed with almost any recent version of Tableau. New features and interfaces will require version 2022.1 or later.

You may download and install the most recent versions from Tableau using these links:

Tableau Desktop: https://www.tableau.com/products/desktop/download

Tableau Prep Builder: https://www.tableau.com/products/prep/download

Please speak to a Tableau representative for specific licensing information. In most cases, you may install a 14-day trial of each product if you do not currently have a license.

Depending on the terms of your license, Tableau also typically allows you to use your license on two machines. This means you might have Tableau installed at the office (perhaps even an older version) but can also install the latest version on your home machine. Check your licensing agreement and speak to a Tableau representative to verify details in your case.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learning-Tableau-2022. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801072328_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: “Connect to Hospital Visits.xlsx and generate an extract.”

A block of code is set as follows:

IF LEFT([Room], 1) = "1" 
THEN "First Floor" 
ELSEIF LEFT([Room], 1) = "2" 
THEN "Second Floor" 
END 

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. For example: “Select Table Layout | Advanced from the Analysis menu.”

Get in touch

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