All in Tableau Prep
Do you want to label just the first and last point in a graph in Tableau? For a line graph, that's simply a couple clicks away. But for a bar chart or any other type of graph, it might be a bit more involved.
Our go-to method for labeling just the first and last points is to write a table calculation utilizing the FIRST() and LAST() functions and to drop that on the label tab in the Marks card.
Want to learn how? Check out this video!
A fundamental component of Tableau Prep is the ability to clean messy data. One of the best ways to do that is by creating groups! However, creating groups can be confusing. How does Tableau Prep decide what to name a group? For example, if you group "Boise" and "Boise City" together into a single city name, which does Tableau Prep choose? Well, that all depends on the grouping method you select.
Automated Groups: If you use automated groups (grouping on pronunciation, common characters, etc.) it will choose the more populous value. So if there are 100 rows for "Boise" and 5 rows for "Boise City", the group name will default to "Boise".
Tableau Prep is a powerful data preparation tool which allows you to do complex data transformation in a "no code" environment. No need to learn Python, SQL or R to shape your data.
While Tableau Prep has come a long ways in its first five years of existence, it's still a young tool with limitations. For example, it's not strong at crafting multi-row formulas (e.g. referencing the value from the previous row in the next row).
Tableau Prep is a powerful tool for cleaning, structuring and preparing data for analysis in Tableau Desktop. The Tableau Prep Builder software provides the ability to create data workflows which can be run manually. That's fine when data is updated infrequently, but it doesn't work well when data needs to be refreshed every day or every hour.
Tableau Prep is a powerful tool for cleaning and shaping data. One of its weaknesses is that it can be slow on a desktop computer. There are a number of reasons for that (computer memory limitations, size of data source, complexity of steps, etc.). One of the ways that Tableau Prep conducts these performance issues is to sample your data automatically.
Are you having trouble getting your data to work in Tableau the way you want? Join us to learn how to prepare data for analysis in Tableau!
You can find a thousand tutorials on how to use Tableau, but they're all worthless until your data is structured for analysis in the format that Tableau likes. Don't get stuck in your analysis journey because Tableau doesn't like your data.
6 data formats to avoid, 8 key rules for structuring data, and 1 video you can't miss. Check out the recording to learn about the key concepts you can utilize to prepare for your data for Tableau.
The numerous grouping options in Tableau Prep are one of the best parts of the tool. In addition to manual grouping, you can group based on common characters, pronunciation and spelling. However, scrolling through existing values and grouped values to determine if the groups which Tableau Prep created were a good fit can be cumbersome.
No! This post is not a mistake. It really is our third blog post in the last three years detailing how to transpose values in Tableau Prep. The tool is rapidly evolving, and the good new is that the process of transposing values is becoming more seamless each time.
When you are working with survey data, you will occasionally come across situations where survey questions were multiple choice and those multiple choices responses are comma-delimited in a single cell.
Tableau Prep is a new desktop application (released spring, 2018) provided by Tableau to assist with complex data preparation.
In June, 2018 I wrote a blog post about three things Tableau Prep couldn’t do. One of those was the ability to transpose (unpivot) data. That is no longer the case. Tableau Prep Builder now gives you the capability to transpose rows of data into columns. Let’s look at an example.
I grew up in the Issaquah/Sammamish area of Washington State about 30 (depending on traffic 60) minutes east Seattle. When I was growing up there in the 1990s and 2000s I remember hearing comments from a lot of people that, “this area has the highest amount of high school students per capita anywhere in the state.”
Preparing survey data for analysis in a data visualization tool is notoriously difficult. It's not as simple as being able to perform a single pivot or filter.
I frequently hear the question, “Can Tableau show my missing data?”. Generally when I get this question, people want to either see a 0 or a blank where there should be missing data.
When embarking on a data communication project, you might not always have all the data you need to create a prototype in a timely manner. I often generate realistic, placeholder data sources so I can design a dashboard and get feedback, even if the actual data isn’t ready for display yet.
Have you ever found that Tableau Desktop took a long time to load a worksheet or apply a filter? You might have found yourself wondering “Is my data source too large for Tableau?” The answer is…“maybe”.
