Tableau Prep is a new desktop application (released spring, 2018) provided by Tableau to assist with complex data preparation.
All in Tableau Prep
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”.
Yes, but it takes some wrangling. Unlike Alteryx, there is no “fuzzy match” tool in Tableau Prep, but there is a method you can employ which will help (though, like all fuzzy matching, it isn’t perfect).
If you’ve been using Tableau Desktop for a while you probably know that you can join, union and pivot data in the product. When you hear that Tableau Prep helps you “prepare your data” you might wonder what it can do that Desktop can’t.
You don’t.
Tableau Desktop will allow you to union multiple tables from the same database or even multiple .csv files, but you can’t union a table from SQL Server A with a tableau from SQL Server B.
Creating calculated fields in Tableau Prep is pretty straightforward. Editing them isn’t. The first time I wanted to edit a calculated field in the product I had a moment of hesitation.
Tableau Prep is a powerful tool but it can’t help solve every data preparation scenario. We focus a lot of our time and effort on what it can do, but we thought it would be worthwhile to cover what it can’t do (yet).
Tableau Prep is a great tool for dealing with messy or unorganized data. After understanding the basics, one of the first things I found myself wondering was “does Tableau Prep have the ability to unpivot data?”. It has a pivot feature but does not have an unpivot or transpose feature at this point. However, there is a workaround.