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Mastering Tableau

Mastering Tableau

By : Jen Stirrup, Baldwin
4.4 (10)
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Mastering Tableau

Mastering Tableau

4.4 (10)
By: Jen Stirrup, Baldwin

Overview of this book

Tableau has emerged as one of the most popular Business Intelligence solutions in recent times, thanks to its powerful and interactive data visualization capabilities. This book will empower you to become a master in Tableau by exploiting the many new features introduced in Tableau 10.0. You will embark on this exciting journey by getting to know the valuable methods of utilizing advanced calculations to solve complex problems. These techniques include creative use of different types of calculations such as row-level, aggregate-level, and more. You will discover how almost any data visualization challenge can be met in Tableau by getting a proper understanding of the tool’s inner workings and creatively exploring possibilities. You’ll be armed with an arsenal of advanced chart types and techniques to enable you to efficiently and engagingly present information to a variety of audiences through the use of clear, efficient, and engaging dashboards. Explanations and examples of efficient and inefficient visualization techniques, well-designed and poorly designed dashboards, and compromise options when Tableau consumers will not embrace data visualization will build on your understanding of Tableau and how to use it efficiently. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with all the information you need to create effective dashboards and data visualization solutions using Tableau.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Getting Up to Speed – a Review of the Basics
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1. Getting Up to Speed – a Review of the Basics
The Tableau universe
Understanding the Tableau interface and basic terminology
Worksheet and dashboard creation
Connecting Tableau to your data
Measure Names and Measure Values
Three essential Tableau concepts
Summary
2
2. All about Data – Getting Your Data Ready
2. All about Data – Getting Your Data Ready
Understanding Tableau's data-handling engine
Data-mining and knowledge-discovery process models
CRISP-DM
Focusing on data preparation
Summary
3
3. All about Data – Joins, Blends, and Data Structures
3. All about Data – Joins, Blends, and Data Structures
About joins
Complex joins
Data blending
Data structures
Summary
4
4. All about Data – Data Densification, Cubes, and Big Data
4. All about Data – Data Densification, Cubes, and Big Data
About data densification
Working with cubes
Tableau and big data
Summary
5
5. Table Calculations
5. Table Calculations
A definition and two questions
What is the function?
How is the function applied?
Summary
6
6. Level of Detail Calculations
6. Level of Detail Calculations
Building playgrounds
Practical application
Summary
7
7. Beyond the Basic Chart Types
7. Beyond the Basic Chart Types
Improving popular visualizations
Custom background images
Summary
8
8. Mapping
8. Mapping
Extending Tableau mapping capabilities without leaving Tableau
Extending Tableau mapping with other technology
Summary
9
9. Tableau for Presentations
9. Tableau for Presentations
Getting the best images out of Tableau
From Tableau to PowerPoint
Embedding Tableau in PowerPoint
Animating Tableau
Story Points dashboards for presentations
Summary
10
10. Visualization Best Practices and Dashboard Design
10. Visualization Best Practices and Dashboard Design
Visualization design theory
Dashboard design
Sheet selection
Summary
11
11. Improving Performance
11. Improving Performance
Understand the Performance Recording dashboard
Hardware and on-the-fly techniques
Single Data Source > Joining > Blending
Working efficiently with data sources
Intelligent extracts
Using filters wisely
Efficient calculations
Additional performance considerations
Summary
12
12. Interacting with Tableau Server
12. Interacting with Tableau Server
Tableau file types
Tableau Server architecture
Tableau Server revision history
Tableau Server web authoring environment
User filters
Accessing the Tableau Server Performance Recording dashboard
Summary
13
13. R Integration
13. R Integration
Architecture, installation, and integration
Using R functions
Troubleshooting
Summary

Measure Names and Measure Values

I've observed the following scenario frequently. A new Tableau author creates a worksheet and drags a measure to the Text shelf. They would like to create another row to display a second measure but do not know how. They drag the second measure to various places on the view and get results that seem entirely unpredictable. The experience is very frustrating for the author, since it's so easy to accomplish this in Excel! The good news is that it's also easy to accomplish in Tableau. It just requires a different approach. Let's explore the solution via an exercise.

Measure Names and Measure Values - the basics

Measure Names and Measure Values are generated fields in Tableau. They do not exist in the underlying data, but they are indispensable for creating many kinds of views. As may be guessed from its placement in the Data pane and its name, Measure Names is a dimension whose members are made up of the names of each measure in the underlying dataset. Measure Values contains the numbers or values of each measure in the dataset. Watch what happens below when measure names and measure values are used independently. Afterward observe how they work elegantly together to create a view.

Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values

  1. In the workbook associated with this chapter, navigate to the worksheet entitled Measure Names/Values.
  2. Drag Measure Values to the Text shelf and observe the results:

    Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values

  3. Clear the worksheet by clicking on the Clear Sheet icon on the toolbar:

    Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values

  4. Drag Measure Names to the Rows shelf and observe that the view merely displays No Measure Value.
  5. Drag Measure Values to the Text shelf. Note the list of measures and associated values.

Perhaps the interrelationship between Measure Names and Measure Values is best explained by an analogy. Consider several pairs of socks and a partitioned sock drawer. Step 2 is the equivalent of throwing the socks into a pile. The results are, well, disorganized. Step 4 is the equivalent of an empty sock drawer with partitions. The partitions are all in place but where are the socks? Step 5 is a partitioned drawer full of nicely organized socks. Measure Names is like the partitioned sock drawer. Measure Values is like the socks. Independent of one another they are not of much use. Used together, they can be applied in many different ways.

Measure Names and Measure Values - shortcuts

Tableau provides various shortcuts to quickly create a desired visualization. If you are new to the software, this shortcut behavior may not seem intuitive, but with a little practice and a few pointers, you will quickly gain understanding. Let's use the following exercise to explore how you can use a shortcut to rapidly deploy Measure Names and Measure Values.

Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values shortcuts

  1. In the workbook associated with this chapter, navigate to the worksheet entitled MeasureNames/Values ShrtCts.
  2. Drag Sales directly on top of the Profit number in the view:

    Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values shortcuts

  3. Observe the results, including the appearance of the Measure Values shelf, the deployment of Measure Names on the Rows and Filters shelves, and Measure Values on the Text shelf:

Exercise - Measure Names and Measure Values shortcuts

Exercise commentary

Several things happened in step 2. After placing Sales on top of the Profit number in the view, Tableau did the following:

  1. Deployed Measure Names on the Filters shelf:
    • Open the Measure Names filter and observe that only Profit and Sales are selected. This limits the view to display only those two measures.

  2. Deployed Measure Names on the Rows shelf:
    • Measure Names is acting like a partitioned container; that is, like the sock drawer in the preceding analogy. Because of the filter, the only rows that are displayed are for Profit and Sales.

  3. Displayed the Measure Values shelf:
    • The Measure Values shelf is somewhat redundant. Although it clearly shows the measures that are displayed in the view, it essentially acts as an easy way to access the filter. You can simply drag measures on and off the Measure Values shelf to adjust the filter and thus display/hide additional Measure Values. You can also change the order within the Measure Values shelf to change the order of the measures in the view.

  4. Deployed Measure Values on the Text shelf:
    • Measure Values simply defines the numbers that will be displayed for each row - in this case, the numbers associated with Profit and Sales.

If the visualization has an axis, the shortcut to deploy Measure Names and Measure Values requires the placement of a second measure on top of the axis of an initial measure, as shown in the following screenshot:

Exercise commentary

End of Section 6
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