June 2021
Beginner to intermediate
159 pages
3h 8m
English
Content preview from Tableau Desktop Pocket Reference
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 2. Shaping Data
Before you open Tableau Desktop, it’s important to know that an optimal “shape,” or layout, of data rows and columns can help you get the most out of the software. In fact, failing to prepare a data source for use with Tableau is what I view as the single biggest barrier to its adoption. I’ve seen this play out several times in my career as a consultant, but it also happens to be part of my own personal story, so I will share it from my perspective.
I’ll never forget the day I was introduced to Tableau. My boss at the time walked into the office where our company’s three analysts worked and said, “I’ve heard of this tool, Tableau; can the three of you take a shot at migrating our existing reports to the new software?” Like most companies, we were doing our data reporting almost exclusively in Microsoft Excel.
We opened Tableau Desktop, and lucky for us, the very first type of file that Tableau offers to connect to (as you will see in the next chapter) is Microsoft Excel. So we connected to our existing Excel reports, thinking the process would work great and maybe we could even head to happy hour early. Unfortunately, Tableau misclassified all the fields, we didn’t know how to drag and drop anything to create meaningful visualizations, everything seemed broken, and before long many of us reverted to the familiarity of Excel.
Common Data Layout
Consider the layout shown in Table 2-1, which may look like an existing Excel report created at your office.
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.