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In this article by Donabel Santos author of the book Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Cookbook would like to offer you perhaps a personal, and maybe a not-so-conventional way to introduce Tableau. I’d like to highlight a few key concepts and tricks that I think would be useful to you as you go along. These are certainly points I highlight on the board whenever I do training on Tableau. If you feel like we are jumping too far ahead, please go ahead and start with the following section Tableau Primer. Come back to this section when you are ready for the tips and tricks.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Instead of thinking of Tableau as this software tool that has a steep learning curve, it is useful to think of it as a blank slate. You will draw on it, keep on adding things, removing things until something makes sense or something insightful pops out. After you work with Tableau for a while and get more comfortable with its functionalities, it might even feel like an extension of your brain to some degree. When you get access to data, you might automatically open Tableau to try and understand what’s in that data.

Undo is your best friend

Do not be afraid to make mistakes, and do not be afraid to explore in Tableau. Do not come in with strict prejudice – for example thinking that you can only use a time series graph when you have a measure and a date field. The best way to learn and explore how powerful Tableau is to try anything and everything. It’s one of the best tools to experiment.

If you make a mistake, or if you don’t like what you see, no sweat. Just click on this friendly undo button and you are back to your previous view. If you are more of a shortcut person, it will be Ctrl + Z on a PC or Command + Z on a Mac.

It doesn’t change your original data

This is another common concern that comes up in my training sessions or whenever I talk to people about Tableau. No, Tableau does not write back to your data source. All the changes you make will be stored in Tableau like creating calculated fields, changing data types, editing aliases will be stored in your Tableau workbook or data source.

Drag and drop

Tableau is a highly drag and drop software. Although you can use the menu or a right click instead of a drag and drop for the same tasks, dragging and dropping is often faster. It also flows with your train of thought.

Look for visual cues

Tableau leverages its visual culture in your design area, so when you create views in Tableau, some of the visual cues and icons can help you along the way. A number of the visual cues have been discussed in this section. However, there may be some lesser known (or less noticeable) visual cues:

  • Italicized field names mean they are Tableau-generated fields:

  • Dual axis charts create fused pills. Notice the area when the two pills touch – they’re straight instead of curved:

  • When you zoom in to maps, or when you search for a place, your map gets pinned (or fixed to this place) until you unpin it:

Know the difference between blue (discrete) and green (continuous)

Knowing the difference between blue and green will take you far in the Tableau world. The data type icons you will find beside your field names in the side bar are colored either blue or green. When you drag fields onto shelves and cards, the pills are also colored blue and green.

Simply speaking, blue means discrete and green means continuous. Discrete means individual, separate, countable and finite. Continuous means range, and technically, there is an infinite number of values within this range.

What’s more important is how these are manifested in Tableau. A blue discrete field will produce header, and a green continuous field will produce an axis. If dropped onto the Color shelf, for example, a blue discrete field will use individual, finite colors. A green continuous field will use a range (gradient) of colors.

Some confusion also arises when we see that, by default, Tableau places numeric fields under Measures and are colored green, and categorical information under Dimensions are colored blue. These won’t always be the case. We can have numeric values that are discrete – for example an Order Number. We can also see non-numerical, discrete fields under Measures.

Learn a few key shortcuts

Shortcuts are great, but it’s typically faster to work when you know a few of them.

Here are some of my favorite shortcuts:

Shortcut

What it does

Right click + Drag

Opens the Drop Field menu, which allows you to specify exactly which variation of the field you want to use

Double click

Adds the field to the view

I particularly like this when creating text tables. After you place your first measure in Text, you can add more measures to your text table by double clicking on the succeeding measures

Ctrl + Arrow

Adjusts the height/width of the rows/columns in the view

Ctrl + H

Presentation mode

You can find the complete list of shortcuts here: http://bit.ly/tableau-shortcuts

Unpackage option

The .twbx file is a Tableau packaged workbook, which means it packages local files with your Tableau workbook. When you right click a .twbx file in a machine that has Tableau Desktop installed in it, you will see a new option called Unpackage.

When you unpack a .twbx file, you will get the .twb file and another folder that contains all the local files that were used in the original workbook:

Just keep in mind that data (at least the file-based data sources and extracts) get packaged with your .twbx files. This is an important security and data governance consideration when you are deciding how to share your workbooks with others.

Table calculations are calculations on your table.

How you structure or lay out your table (or view) will affect your table calculations. Table calculations are highly influenced by:

  • Layout
  • Filters
  • Scope and Direction

Let’s say, for example, you are calculating Percent of Total in your view.

  • If you swap the fields in your Rows and Columns, i.e. changing the layout, your numbers will change
  • If you filter some of the products out, your numbers will change
  • If you decide to compute Pane Down instead of Table Across, your numbers will change

If you’re looking for the common use cases for table calculations, check out the Tableau article entitled Top 10 Tableau Table Calculations which can be found here: http://bit.ly/top10tablecalcs

LODs Rock

Many of the tasks that required complex table calculations or data blending have been greatly simplified by LODs (Level of Detail expressions). LODs allow us to have multiple levels of detail within a single view, and this increases the possibilities in Tableau.

To learn more about Level of Detail expressions, I encourage you to check out the following:

It is possible ….

Another common question that comes up is can I do <this> or is it possible to do <this>.

The answer to many of the questions is yes, and many will include calculations and/or parameters. However, not all solutions will be quick and straightforward. Some may require multiple calculated fields, table calculations, LOD expressions, regular expressions, R scripts etc.

Summary

In this article we have seen the basics of Tableau as this software tool that has a steep learning curve, it is useful to think of it as a blank slate. You will draw on it, keep on adding things, removing things until something makes sense or something insightful pops out. After you work with Tableau for a while and get more comfortable with its functionalities, it might even feel like an extension of your brain to some degree. When you get access to data, you might automatically open Tableau to try and understand what’s in that data.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

Packt

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