Tableau Your Data!, 2nd Edition

Introduction: Overview of the Book and Technology

This book aims to provide an introduction to Tableau in the context of the needs of enterprises—large and small. With every Tableau deployment, there are several user constituencies—report designers who are responsible for performing analysis and creating reports, information technology team members who are responsible for managing Tableau Server and maintaining good data governance, and the information consumers who use the output and may want to do their own report creation.

This book's goal is to provide each group with a basic introduction to Tableau's Desktop and Server environments while also providing best practice recommendations that encompass novice, intermediate, and advanced use of the software.

How This Book Is Organized

There are four distinct sections. Part I (Chapters 1–10) covers the basics of Tableau Desktop and then progresses to more advanced topics including best practices for building dashboards to ensure they are understandable to end users, load quickly, and are responsive to query requests made by your audience. A lot of new and updated content had to be created in Chapters 1–5 because of interface enhancements and added capability in the tool. Chapter 6 includes expanded content related to data discovery and editing content on Tableau Server. Chapter 7 includes new tips and tricks that relate to V9+. Chapter 8's detailed dashboard example has been edited to include an additional action to create a floating ...