Table of Contents

Getting Started with Tableau 2019.2 Second Edition

Why subscribe?
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Section 1: An Introduction to Tableau
1. Catching Up with Tableau 2019
Connector improvements
Worksheet enhancement
MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)
Vector Map (2019.2)
Other improvements
New actions
Improved URL Actions (2019.1)
Change Parameter (2019.2)
Empowered Dashboard
Show/Hide containers (2019.2)
Replace Worksheets (2019.2)
Other improvements
Tableau Server
New browsing experience (2019.2)
Ask Data (2019.1)
New Alerts view (2019.2)
 Device preview (2019.1)
Other improvements
Summary
2. The Tableau Core
The different Tableau products
Speaking Tableau
Dimension and Measure
Blue and green – Discrete and Continuous
The toolbar options
Live or Extract
Live
Extract
Summary
3. Getting Started with Tableau Desktop
Connecting to data
Creating your first set of visualizations
Sales and profit by sub-categories – bar charts
Profit evolution – line charts
Profit by state – filled maps
Building your first Dashboard
Assembling the Dashboard
Adding interactivity to your Dashboard
Using Tableau for data exploration
Summary
Section 2: Connecting, Building, and Sharing
4. Connecting to Data and Simple Transformations
Data connections
General rules
Connecting spatial files
Join data easily
The join principle
Join requirements and types
Hands-on with a simple join
Join risks
Union your data
Hands-on with a union example
Simple transformations
 The Data Interpreter
Splitting a column
Pivot
Summary
5. Building an Efficient Data Source
Understanding the data source
Data types in Tableau
Generated information
Data source options
Refreshing a data source and dealing with changes
How to refresh a data source
Dealing with changes
Field customization and default properties
Field customization options
Default properties
Hierarchies
Groups, sets, and bins
Groups
Sets
Bins
Summary
6. Design Insightful Visualizations
Creating visualizations
Building a visualization, the automatic way
Double-click
Show Me
Building a visualization, the manual way
The Mark type
Mark properties
Color
Size
Label (text)
Detail
Tooltip
Shape
Path
Angle
 Using multiple Measures
Dual Axis
Measure Names and Measure Values
Filters
Filtering a Continuous field
Filtering a Discrete field
Quick filters
Filter hierarchy
Context
Global filter hierarchy
Pages
Worksheet options and formats
Pill options
Worksheet menu options
View options
Format
Summary
7. Powerful Dashboards, Stories, and Actions
Dashboard basics
Building a dashboard
The dashboard and layout panes
The Dashboard pane
The Layout pane
Tiled or floating layouts
Tiled
Floating
Device layouts
Dashboard options
Dashboard objects
Containers
Dashboard actions
The Filter action
The Highlight action
The Go to URL action
The Go to Sheet action
The Change Parameter action
The Change Set Values action
 Creating a story
Building a story
Customizing a Story using Story options
Summary
8. Publishing and Interacting in Tableau Server
An introduction to Tableau Server
Basics
Tableau Server content
Publishing and modifying the content
Why and how to publish a data source
Modifying a published data source
Publishing a workbook
Interacting with published content
Interacting with published data sources
Ask Data
Interacting with published workbooks
Custom views
Alert
Subscribe
Download
Comments
The mobile layout preview
Web Authoring
Summary
Section 3: Advanced features
9. An Introduction to Calculations
Calculated field basics
Creating a Calculated Field
To aggregate or not to aggregate fields
Using calculation functions
Example – highlighting values
Advanced functions
Table Calculation
Quick Table Calculation
Table Calculation functions
Hands-on – Table Calculation functions
Level of Detail
 LOD function basics
FIXED
Hands-on – using an LOD function to deduplicate your data
Summary
10. Analytics and Parameters
Using built-in Analytics tools
The Summarize tab
Constant Line
Average Line
Median with Quartiles
Box Plot
Totals
The Model tab
Average or median with a confidence interval
Trend Line
Forecast
Cluster
The Custom tab
How to work with Parameters
Creating a Parameter
Using a Parameter
Creating a year-on-year comparator
Summary
11. Advanced Data Connections
Cross-database join
Data blending
Wildcard union
Summary
12. Dealing with Security
Tableau Server security
User filters
Row-level filters
Summary
Section 4: After Finishing the Book
13. How to Keep Growing Your Skills
The Tableau Community
Tableau Public
 Community projects
Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz
Ambassadors
Zen Masters
Iron Viz
Summary
A. Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review – let other readers know what you think
Index
Getting Started with Tableau
2019.2 Second Edition
Getting Started with Tableau
2019.2 Second Edition
Copyright © 2019 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in

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Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure
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the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot
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Commissioning Editor: Amey Varangaonkar

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Indexer: Priyanka Dhadke

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First published: September 2018

Second edition: June 2019

Production reference: 1040619

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Contributors
About the author
Tristan Guillevin started his professional life in 2015 as a
consultant, where he discovered Tableau. Quickly, data visualization
became a real passion! During this time, he provided data
visualization expertise to more than thirty clients in many different
sectors around the world. In 2017, Tristan won the global Iron Viz
competition in Las Vegas. Now, he helps people with Tableau
through webinars, conferences, blog articles, and this book! Tristan
currently works at Ogury as a data visualization engineer.

I'd like to first thank Laura for her daily support and
understanding. Writing a book is not an easy task, even for a
second edition. A special thanks to Ivett, Sayli, Unnati, and all the
Packt team for making the publication of this book possible.
Finally, to everyone with the same passion for data visualization,
thanks for having contributed making this passion grow on me,
from my first bar chart to the completion of this book.
About the reviewer
Ivett Kovács was always very comfortable with data—after majoring
in statistics, she started working as a data analyst. She was one of
the first Hungarian power users of Tableau Desktop 2012, and has
been mastering Tableau ever since. Currently, she is Starschema's
senior data visualization expert, leading a team of 10+ dataviz
developers. She is not only Tableau certified, but has also been a
Tableau Ambassador since 2017, as well as an Iron Viz judge.

She is also a featured volunteer with Viz for Social Good. She has
developed several Tableau dashboards on various social topics,
such as the refugee crisis and gender inequality in tech companies
and political institutions.
Packt is searching for authors
like you
If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit
authors.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked with
thousands of developers and tech professionals, just like you, to help
them share their insight with the global tech community. You can
make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic that we are
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Preface
Tableau is one of the leading data visualization tools and is regularly
updated with new functionalities and features. The latest release,
Tableau 2019.2 promises new and advanced features related to
visual analytics, reporting, dashboarding, and a host of other data
visualization aspects. Getting Started with Tableau 2019.2 will get
you up to speed with these additional functionalities.

The book starts by highlighting the new functionalities of Tableau

2019.2 providing concrete examples of how to use them. However, if
you're new to Tableau, don't worry—you'll be guided through the
major aspects of Tableau with relevant examples. You'll learn how to
connect to data, build a data source, visualize your data, build a
Dashboard, and even share data online. In the concluding chapters,
you'll delve into advanced techniques, such as creating a cross-
database join and data blending.

By the end of this book, you'll be able to use Tableau effectively to

create quick, cost-effective, and business-efficient business
intelligence (BI) solutions.
Who this book is for
Existing Tableau users and BI professionals who want to get up to
speed with what's new in Tableau 2019 will find this beginner-level
book to be a very useful resource. No, you can start without any
experience. This is a book for beginner. They can start with
absolutely no knowledge.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Catching Up with Tableau 2019, explains every new
feature of the different Tableau 2019 versions. You'll learn how to
use them with clear explanations, examples, and tutorials. This
chapter is the best way to catch up with the new releases if you
already have some Tableau knowledge. Beginners should start with
Chapter 2, The Tableau Core.

Chapter 2, The Tableau Core, explains the basics that every Tableau
users should know. It contains an overview of the different products,
a description of Tableau's workspaces, wordings, and clear
explanations of Tableau's most crucial concepts, such as Dimension,
Measure, Discrete, Continuous, Live, and Extract.

Chapter 3, Getting Started with Tableau Desktop, represents your

first real experience with Tableau and is designed as a guided
tutorial. In just one chapter you'll connect to data, build three
visualizations, an interactive dashboard, and answer business
questions with the power of Tableau's data exploration capabilities.

Chapter 4, Connecting to Data and Simple Transformations, focuses

on data connections, starting with general rules when connecting to
files and servers. This chapter also goes into detail about essential
features such as Joins, Unions, and Transformations (Pivot, Split,
and more).

Chapter 5, Building an Efficient Data Source, helps you build the

best data source for your analysis. Having a customized and well-
organized data source is crucial in Tableau. You'll learn the different
elements that compose a data source, how to refresh and deals with
the changes, and change the default format. This chapter also
focuses on creating Groups, Hierarchies, Sets, and Bins.

Chapter 6, Design Insightful Visualizations, teaches you the different

ways of building visualizations in Tableau with double-clicks, the
Show Me menu, or simple drag and drops. You'll also see a
description of the different Mark Types and properties. Then you will
learn how to build visualizations with multiple measures thanks to
Dual Axis, or Measure Name and Measure Values. Filters, Quick-
Filters, Pages, and an overview of the different options available
complete the global vision of what you can do when creating a
visualization.

Chapter 7, Powerful Dashboards, Stories, and Actions, is a key

chapter in which you'll learn the basics about building dashboards in
Tableau with an overview of the different objects available and
advice about which layout to use. You'll also see how to add
interactivity with the different Actions, and how to tell compelling
stories with the Story points.

Chapter 8, Publishing and Interacting in Tableau Server, is the

culmination of what you've learned in the previous chapters. This
chapter focuses on Tableau Server/Online, how to publish your
dashboards and Data Sources online, how to interact with published
content, and how to build device-specific layouts.

Chapter 9, An Introduction to Calculations, is the first advanced

chapter where you'll expand Tableau's capabilities by creating new
calculated fields with powerful formulas. After describing the basics
of calculation, you'll understand how to use advanced formulas such
as Table Calculation and Level Of Detail.

Chapter 10, Analytics and Parameters, focuses on two significant

aspects of Tableau that combine well. The first part, Analytics,
describes how to add Reference Lines, Forecast, Clusters, Trend
Lines, Totals, and more. The second part explains how to create and
use parameters to add more interactivity to your analysis. Finally,
you'll create a real-life business usage combining analytics features,
parameters, and calculations.

Chapter 11, Advanced Data Connections, presents three major

features: cross-database Join and data-blending to create analyses
that combine multiple connection types, and Wildcard Unions to build
automatic unions based on multiple files. This chapter will help you
tackle data connection challenges.

Chapter 12, Dealing with Security, is the last technical chapter of this
book and focuses on three ways to secure your data: permissions on
Tableau Server, user filters on Tableau Desktop, and row-level data
security in your data.

Chapter 13, How to Keep Growing Your Skills, is a non-technical but

essential chapter. You'll discover many ways of learning new things
and growing your Tableau skills thanks to community projects. The
chapter is also a tribute to the Tableau community, presenting many
ways to be part of that big family, which shares a passion for data
visualization with Tableau.
To get the most out of this book
No prerequisites are necessary. Tableau is designed to be simple to
use for everyone, no matter their background. This book starts from
the very beginning and will teach you all major concepts.
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Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names,

folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs,
user input, and Twitter handles. For example: "When you open
Tableau Desktop, you start working on a Workbook. After you're
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Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Get in touch
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Section 1: An Introduction to
Tableau
This section will cover the basics of Tableau and will give you a
heads up on the new features of Tableau 2019. We will take a look at
different Tableau products, such as Tableau Desktop and Tableau
Server. We will describe the Tableau lexicon so that all the terms of
Tableau that will feature in this book can be understood. We'll also
learn about different workplaces to explain how the interface works
and understand the toolbars.

This section will include the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Catching Up with Tableau 2019

Chapter 2, The Tableau Core
Chapter 3, A First Dashboard and Exploration
Chapter 1. Catching Up with
Tableau 2019
Thank you for purchasing Getting Started with Tableau 2019.2. As its
title suggests, this book aims to provide you with explanations,
advice, tips, and the best practices to start (or continue) your journey
through Tableau using the most recent features. You'll always find
clear descriptions, reproducible examples, and tutorials. Whether
you already know how to use Tableau and want to get familiar with
its latest features, or you've never used the tool and want to learn
from the beginning, this book is for you, and I hope you enjoy it.

If you are a Tableau user looking for information about its new
features and how to use them, you are in the right place. If you are
new to Tableau, start with Chapter 2, The Tableau Core, to learn
about the basics and advanced features of Tableau. Throughout this
book, many new features will be explained. Having finished all of the
chapters, you can come back here to learn about the newest
features in detail.

In this first chapter, we'll cover the new features in Tableau's 2019
releases (2019.1 and 2019.2). This chapter will be divided into two
parts, as follows:

Connector improvements
Worksheet enhancement
New actions
Empowered Dashboard
Tableau Server

For each part, each major feature has its own section. Next to the
name of the feature, between brackets, the version that introduced
the new feature will be specified.
 Tip
This book focuses on data visualization with Tableau Desktop
and Tableau Server/Online. Tableau Prep is not covered, as it
fulfills a different need. You can learn more about Tableau Prep
at https://www.tableau.com/products/prep.

Let's start with Tableau Desktop; get ready to discover many great
new features!

To understand and reproduce the examples provided in this chapter,

you need to know how to connect to data, build a data source, and
create Worksheets and Dashboards.

Connector improvements
There are no changes regarding the way you connect to data or
what you can do with data sources. However, the newest version of
Tableau includes four new connectors, all of which have been
available since Tableau 2019.1:

Azure SQL Data Warehouse Connector

Google Ads Connector
Google Drive
MariaDB

Some other data source improvements are as follows:

OAuth is enabled for a Snowflake connector (2019.1)

You can directly use the power of spatial information in a
PostgreSQL+PostGIS database without having to export or prep
the data (2019.1)
The JDBC connector was improved for better performance
(2019.2)
 You can connect to on-premise Service Now deployments
(2019.2)
You can use Azure Active Directory username and password
authentication (2019.2)
Enhanced SAP Hana and Marketo connectors (2019.2)

Now, let's take a look at visualization improvements.

Worksheet enhancement
Mapping is the star of the newest Tableau version. We'll cover the
new MakePoint and MakeLine functions, as well as the new vector
map. These two new features will allow you to enjoy building maps
even more than before.

MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)

Since Tableau 10.2, you have been able to connect to a spatial file to
create maps using the Geometry field (a Point, a Line, or a Polygon).
Each new release brought new capabilities, such as using a spatial
field directly from a database or the recent spatial join: Intersect.
Tableau Desktop 2019.2 brings two new functionalities: MakePoint
and MakeLine.

MakePoint and MakeLine are two new functions. MakePoint

converts Latitude and Longitude into a spatial point. MakeLine takes
two Points and creates a spatial Line. This allows you to create a
path between two places on Earth by taking into account the
curvature of the earth and joining spatial and nonspatial files with
Latitude and Longitude.

Let's visualize the top 100 busiest air routes.

Note
Download the Flights.xlsx Excel file from the Chapter 1:
Catching up with Tableau 2019 section of my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com or browse to
https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Flights.xlsx.

This file contains one hundred lines and provides information on the
departure and arrival to airports, as well as the number of
passengers.

Let's start:

1. Open Tableau Desktop and select Microsoft Excel.

2. Connect to the Flights.xlsx file you've just downloaded.
3. On Sheet1, create a new calculated field. Name it Departure
Point and write the following formula: MAKEPOINT([Departure
Latitude],[Departure Longitude]).
4. Create a second calculated field for the arrivals. Name it Arrival
Point and write the following formula: MAKEPOINT([Arrival
Latitude],[Arrival Longitude]).
5. You have created two calculated fields that contain spatial
points that are mapping the departure and arrival airports. You
can test your fields by simply double-clicking on them.
6. Create a final calculated field for the routes. Name it Air Routes
and write the following formula: MAKELINE([Departure Point],
[Arrival Point]).
7. On a blank Worksheet, double-click on Air Routes; this will
automatically generate all the paths on a map.
8. To finalize the visualization, add the Route Dimension in Detail
to separate each path, and add the Passengers Measure in
Size and Color to visually spot the busiest routes. The following
screenshot shows the final results:

If, like me, you aren't new to Tableau, you will be impressed by how
fast and easy it is to achieve this now. That's what we love about
each new Tableau release: it always makes our analysis faster and
easier to do.

As I said, mapping is the star, so let's continue with this new

mapping style.

Vector Map (2019.2)

Are you ready for a smoother, faster, and more powerful than ever
mapping experience? Yes, you are! Using maps in Tableau Desktop
2019.2 never felt better. Using the MapBox technology, Tableau
maps now use vectors for an incredibly smooth zoom in and out.

Go ahead – open your favorite visualization that includes a map and

try it yourself!

But that's not all! Let's open the Maps Layers pane using the Map
top menu. Three new styles have been added. You can now
visualize your data using the Streets, Outdoors, or Satellite styles.
I can now show you where I grew up; good luck finding it:

Oh! And is if this wasn't enough, there are also new data layers that
you can add: Terrain, Routes, Water Labels, Cities, Point of
Interest, Neighborhoods, Building Footprints, and so on. Each
style has newer and richer layers. Mapping has never been so good.

Other improvements
The following is a list of other small visualization improvements:

Sort Controls: On the Worksheet top menu, you'll find a new

option, Show Sort Controls, which allows you to choose
whether users can change the sort order. (2019.2)
Nested sort: You can now use the nested sort feature on
multiple dimensions (2019.1)
Tooltip reference line: On the reference line configuration
window, you can now modify and even totally remove the tooltip
(2019.2)

Now, we'll look at the new features available for Dashboards.

New actions
Tableau's power resides in the ability to build simple and powerful
visualizations and dashboards in minutes, but also to create
interactivity with only a few clicks thanks to Actions. Tableau 2018.3
already introduced two new actions: Go To Sheet and Change Set
Values. Tableau 2019.1 and 2019.2 continue to improve on these
actions with a great enhancement for Go to URL actions and a
revolutionary way of working with parameters: Change Parameter.

Improved URL Actions (2019.1)

The Go to URL... action allows you to open a website directly inside
the Dashboard or in a new window. With effect from version 2019.2,
you have the ability to choose how to open the URL target in the
configuration window:

New Browser tab: Always opens the link in a new browser tab,
even if a Web Page object exists in the Dashboard.
Web Page object: Opens the URL in a Web Page object in your
Dashboard. You can even have multiple Web Page objects in
your Dashboard with multiple URL actions targeting each Web
Page object separately.
Browser tab if no Web Page objects exists: The default
option; this opens the URL in a browser tab if there is no Web
Page object.

Let's continue with Change Parameters.

Change Parameter (2019.2)

The Change Parameter... is the newest action to be introduced in
Tableau 2019.2. It allows you to change the value of a Parameter
based on the value on a Worksheet. It was already possible to
achieve this thanks to Extensions, but now Tableau has made it
official!

Previously, modifying the value of a Parameter was only possible

using the Parameter Control card. Now, you can use any action
triggers (Hover, Select, or Menu) to modify the current value of a
Parameter. As for the highlight action, the value you want to pass to
the Parameter has to be in the View.

Let's create an example together. We want to compare the sales

value of a state to a parameter and see if the sales are above or
below the Parameter's value. The value of the Parameter will be
automatically set when you hover over a state, allowing you to easily
compare a state with others. For this example, you can use the
Sample – Superstore saved data source. Perform the following steps:

1. On a blank Worksheet, create a new Parameter.

2. On the Parameter configuration window, name it Sales
comparison value, of the Float type with All allowable values,
and then click on OK. Your Parameter configuration should look
like this:

3. Create a new calculated field, name it Sales comparison, and

write the following formula: SUM([Sales])-[Sales comparison
value].
4. Double-click on State, then put Sales in Detail and Sales
Comparison in Color. Your visualization should look like this:

5. Open the Worksheet top menu and click on Actions….

6. Click on the Add Action button and choose Change
Parameter….
7. Name the action Set sales comparison value and set it to run
on Hover. In the Target Parameter list, choose Sales
comparison value, and in the Value list, choose SUM(Sales).
Keep the Aggregation as Sum. Your configuration window
should look as follows:
8. Back in your visualization, hovering over a state should change
the value of the parameter and therefore allow you to quickly
compare the sales of a state to the others. The following is the
final result when you hover over Washington:
This new action will unlock many new opportunities so that you can
create awesome interactions for your users. I can't wait to see what
the Tableau Community will create!

Let's continue with all the new features of the Dashboard.

Empowered Dashboard
Building Dashboards is definitely one of the most important aspects
of using Tableau Desktop. Fortunately, building a simple Dashboard
is also something very easy and enjoyable to do. In the process of
always making our life easier, Tableau has developed a few very
nice new features.

The first important new feature is the ability to show or hide a

container with a totally new button.

Show/Hide containers (2019.2)

If you are not new to Tableau, I'm sure you've already made (or had
to make) a Dashboard with lots of filters and legends. You know,
something that looks like this:

Rejoice, because this is over! You can now add a toggle button to
containers, allowing you and your user to show or hide it at will.
There's only one condition at the moment, which is that the container
needs to be floating.

Adding a toggle button is quite easy: select the containers (with the
Select Container option when you click on an item, or use the Item
hierarchy in the Layout pane), then select Add toggle button from
the container options. A default toggle button is automatically added
to your Dashboard. Among the button options, you'll find the ability to
Show or Hide the container and edit it with the Edit Button…
option.

Note
You can also use the Alt + Click shortcut to perform the button
action. Of course, this is only needed in editor mode. When the
Dashboard is published or open with Tableau Reader, the button
is triggered by a simple click.

If you click on Edit Button… a new window will open. Here, you can
choose what Dashboard element will be impacted by the button, the
Button Style (image or text), and the Button Appearance. The
Button Appearance part lets you choose the Image (or Title and
Font), Border, Background, and Tooltip when the item is currently
shown or hidden.

Let's create an example together. We will use this new feature to

enhance the example that was provided at the beginning of this
section.

Note
Download the ZIP file named ToggleButtonStart.zip from the
Chapter 1: Catching up with Tableau 2019 section of my
website, https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com or, browse to
https://ladataviz.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/05/ToggleButtonStart.zip.

Unzip the ToggleButtonStart.zip file and you'll find a Tableau

Packaged Workbook that is the start of the example:

1. Open the ToggleButtonStart.twbx workbook.

 2. Select the filters and legend container, either by double-clicking
on the grip part or using the Select Containers option of the
items, or by using the Item hierarchy in the Layout pane. You
should see the entire horizontal container with a blue outline,
like this:

3. Go to the option using the descending arrow and select

Floating.
4. Using the grip part, move the containers at the top left. Then, by
selecting the left border, increase its width, as shown in the
following screenshot:

5. Click on the arrow to option the container options and select

Add Show/Hide button.
6. You can now use this button to show and hide the container with
the filters and legends. To finalize the Dashboard, you can move
the button next to the title, increase its size, and add a tooltip
among the button options. Here's the final result:

This new feature allows everyone to build clearer and more efficient
Dashboards. The next feature is really simple to understand and
use, but will definitely help you save a lot of time.

Replace Worksheets (2019.2)

This is the kind of feature we love: simple and efficient. With Tableau
2019.2, you can now replace any Worksheet in a Dashboard with
another new Worksheet. This may not sound like a big deal to
newcomers, but Tableau veterans know how useful this new feature
is.

To replace a Worksheet, select the existing Worksheet in the

Dashboard. Then, on the Sheets pane on the left, hover over the
replacement Worksheet and click on the button highlighted in the
following screenshot:

That's it! Again: simple and efficient.

Let's finish with the other improvements.

Other improvements
Don't think that the next three improvements don't have their own
sections because they aren't important! I decided to group them only
because they are all really easy to explain, understand, and use, as
you will discover:

Export to PowerPoint: On Tableau Desktop, among the File

top menu, you'll find the Export As PowerPoint option. On
Tableau Server, you'll find the PowerPoint option when you click
on the Download button in the toolbar. In Tableau 2019.2, this
 feature was improved to export Stories, with each Story point
being a new slide (2019.1).
Name zone: In the Item hierarchy part of the Layout pane of a
Dashboard, you can now give a meaningful name to each item.
This is a great feature to combine with the Show/Hide button.
Here's an example (2019.1):

Auto phone layout: Any Dashboard built with Tableau Desktop

2019.1 or later automatically starts with an automatically
generated phone layout. Don't forget to remove it if you don't
want it (2019.1).

That's it for Tableau Desktop. In the next section, we'll see what's
new in Tableau Server.
Tableau Server
Ask Data is without a doubt one of the most important new features
of the 2019 releases. However, the change that everyone will directly
spot is the totally new browsing experience, with a new way to group
published content and a fresh look.

New browsing experience (2019.2)

Tableau Server 2019.1 introduced Mixed Content. This new way of
grouping content mixes data sources, Workbooks, flows, and sub-
projects in the same view of a project. Say goodbye to different tabs
for each content type. Now, you can see everything at the same
time. For example, here's the view of a project, World Indicators,
that contains a sub-project, Workbooks, and a data source:

Tableau Server 2019.2 pushes this change further with a totally new
look and feel when navigating on Tableau Server. The new Home
page displays your recently used content, your favorites, and what
other Tableau users are viewing. The top menu has also totally
disappeared to leave room for a new left navigation pane. Don't be
afraid – the options are still the same. Here's the new Home page:
As you may have noticed, if you click on a data source, a strange
and new tab will open. I said strange, but I should have used the
word awesome. This is Ask Data.
Ask Data (2019.1)
Ask Data is the first view that opens when you click on a data
source. It's a new tool to query any data sources using the English
language. With this new feature, Tableau Server becomes more and
more easy to use for everyone. But how does it work, exactly?

On the left, you'll find something similar to the Data pane in Tableau
Desktop, and in the middle, a simple search bar with some
suggestions. The following is an example of Ask Data when using
the Sample – Superstore data source:

All you have to do is ask. Write something in the search bar and a
new browser tab will automatically open with the result of what you
asked for. For example, if you write sum of profit by state, Ask
Data automatically creates a map with the sales in color:
Without any knowledge of how to use Tableau to create a
visualization, Ask Data was able to convert some text into a
visualization.

On the Data pane on the left, when you hover over a field, a nice
tooltip gives you some quick insights about the number of values,
their distribution, and even the formula (if it's a calculated field). But
wait—there's more! If you click on the small arrow next to a field, you
can use the Edit synonyms option. When you add a synonym to a
field, you are able to use that synonym in your sentence to create
the visualization.

On the top, you can see that the search bar has expanded and
suggested that you can adjust the question or use the Clear All
button to start over. Here are some examples of what you can add:

as a bar chart, changes the viz type to a bar (works with

different Marks type)
by category, adds the category in the View
in December 2018 filters the order date
With effect from 2019.2, you can also use replace profit with
sales, add sales, or remove profit , which do exactly what they
say
 Tip
Next to the visualization, you can also use the selector to change
the Marks type.

If you are satisfied with the visualization but you want to quickly
change a Measure or Dimension, you can click on different fields in
the query box to open a menu that allows you to choose a different
field and its aggregation. For example, if you click on sum of Profit,
you can quickly change it to display the discount instead, as you can
see in the following screenshot:
 Note
The 2019.2 version of Tableau Server pushes Ask Data even
further, allowing you to write simple calculations such as avg
sales / avg profit, but you can also create multiple Sheets and
save the workbook directly in a project.

Of course, Ask Data doesn't have the flexibility of Tableau Desktop,

and you don't have much control over what the result will be.
However, it can easily supply a feature users have long demanded:
Can you just build a big table where I can search what I want?. With
Ask Data, you don't need that anymore.

Next, we'll look at a nice evolution for the alerts.

New Alerts view (2019.2)

Alerts is an amazing feature that you can use to receive emails when
your data satisfies a condition. With Tableau Server 2019.2, clicking
on the Alerts button in the toolbar doesn't open the alert creation
window anymore; instead, it opens a new pane on the right. Here's
the Alerts view:

Thanks to this new pane, you can create alerts using the Create
button, but also view and subscribe to all the existing Alerts that
have been set by other users. When you click on an Alert, you will
see all of its details (condition, last triggered, owner, and so on).

With effect from Tableau 2019.1, every Dashboard has a phone

layout by default. Its new features will help you preview it.

Device preview (2019.1)

With effect from Tableau 2019.1, you can preview the layouts on
Tableau Server. Above the toolbar, a new button, Preview Device
Layouts, is now available, as highlighted in the following screenshot:

When you click on the button, Tableau opens preview mode, where
you can select Laptop, Tablet, or Phone to see how your
Dashboard renders on those different devices.

Let's finish this section with a few other improvements.

Other improvements
Here is a list of other new features available on Tableau Server:

New connections: You can connect to Google Big Query,

Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive from the web (2019.1)
Okta improvement: Tableau Server can integrate Okta identity
management for users, groups, and roles even better (2019.1)
Site Start page: Tableau Server admins can set a start page for
all users (2019.2)
Create Parameters: You can create Parameters in web editor
mode (2019.2)
Custom view for Viewer: A Viewer role user can now create
custom views (2019.2)
Secure Rserve and TabPy connections: You can host Rserve
(2019.1) and TabPy (2019.2) servers remotely from Tableau
Server and secure data in transit
Summary
We are in the middle of the year, and with only two new releases,
Tableau has already considerably improved its products.

Your Tableau life is now easier than ever before. You can add
buttons to show and hide containers, automatically replace a
Worksheet in a Dashboard, customize the reference line tooltip,
show the sorts control, name your Dashboard zone, control the URL
action targets, and sort without having to think twice.

You can also do more than ever. With the new Parameter actions,
you will be able to create new types of interactivity between data and
users. With the awesome vector maps and new spatial calculations,
working with maps has never felt so good.

Ask Data is also a breaking change of Tableau Server for those of

you who are already building worksheets and dashboards with
Tableau Desktop, but also to all the potential users within your
company. They don't need to learn Tableau to build insights. They
don't have to understand what a dimension is, nor a measure or how
to filter. All they have to do is ask.

2019 is already a great year for Tableau users and the Tableau
community. This first chapter, which described its new features, is
now over. If you learned how to use Tableau with this book, I hope
that this chapter has provided you with a greater desire to use
Tableau. If you already know Tableau, I hope this chapter gives you
a clear idea and the motivation to use the new versions that are
available.. Also, I'm sure this book has more to teach you (and that's
surely why you purchased it), so don't hesitate to continue reading:
read the tips, try the tutorials, and learn more about Tableau
Desktop, Tableau Server, and the Tableau community.
Chapter 2. The Tableau Core
New to Tableau? You are in the right place to start! Tableau is
simple, and you could start using it without any training. However,
using it the wrong way, or without knowing the basics, is a big
mistake. I have met many people who were unhappy with Tableau,
just because they never learned the basics.

To begin, we'll go through all the things that every Tableau user
should know. The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

The different Tableau products

Speaking Tableau
Dimensions and Measures
Blue and green – Discrete and Continuous
The toolbar options
Live or Extract

By the end of this chapter, you'll have all the knowledge you need to
start your Tableau journey in the best possible way.

The different Tableau products

There are seven Tableau products:

Tableau Desktop is software that you can install on your

computer. It is the core tool to connect to the data, build a data
source, and create visualizations and Dashboards.
Tableau Server is an online tool for sharing your work in a
business environment. You need this tool to secure your data.
Tableau Server is accessible with a simple browser. Your
company hosts the server where Tableau server is installed.
Tableau Online is the same as Tableau Server, but hosted by
Tableau. They do the updates and maintenance, but you lose
some personalization features.
 Tableau Reader is software that you can install on your
computer that can read Tableau Desktop files. With Tableau
Reader, you are not able to modify the Workbooks, but you can
open them and keep all the interactivity, making it better than a
PDF export or a picture.
Tableau Public is free software with almost the same
capabilities as Tableau Desktop, but you can only save your
work online in a public environment, and not all connectors are
available. Of course, it's not the best option if you don't want to
share your data with the world, but it's a great place to find
inspiration and share public visualizations.
Tableau Mobile is an application that you can install on your
smartphone or tablet. You can connect to a server and visualize
your Dashboard directly with the app.
Tableau Prep is a new software that is very different from the
others. It is not a data visualization tool, but a data preparation
tool. We'll not discuss Tableau Prep in this book. However, be
aware that it exists, and it is a great solution for cleaning and
preparing your data.

Like every tool, Tableau has its wording. Let's now learn how to
speak Tableau.
Speaking Tableau
Rather than a big list of all the terms, let's go through the basic
Tableau life cycle.

When you open Tableau Desktop, you start working on a Workbook.

After you've finished working, you will save your work in a .twb or
.twbx file. You can open multiple instances of Tableau, each of them
being a different Workbook.

The first page you see when you open Tableau Desktop is the Start
page. Here, you can connect to data, open recent workbooks,
discover the Viz of the Week, and open your saved data sources
quickly.

After choosing your connector (a Comma Separated Values (CSV)

file, an Excel file, or a database on a server), Tableau opens the data
source workplace. On this page, you create the data source by
choosing tables (or sheets) and creating joins, unions, or other
transformations. The following screenshot illustrates the Data
Source workplace:
When you're done with the Data Source, you can start building a
visualization in a Worksheet. Sheet 1 is your first Worksheet. Here's
the Worksheet workplace:

On the left, you can see your Data Source with all the fields split
between two elements: Measures and Dimensions. Each field has
a data type (Text, Number, Boolean, and so on). Later, you'll learn
how to create new fields or elements, such as Groups, Bins,
Hierarchies, Sets, Parameters, or Calculated Fields.

The big blank part is the View. It is here that your visualization will
be displayed. Around the View, you can see different shelves (Rows,
Columns, Pages, Filters, and Marks). To create visualizations, you
have to put fields on those shelves. Once a field is on a shelf, it is
called a pill. Pills can be green if Continuous, or blue if Discrete.

In the View, every distinct element you can select (click on) is called
a Mark. Each Mark has one type (Bar, Circle, Line, and so on) and
can have some properties (Color, Size, Label, and so on).

In Tableau, one Worksheet is one idea, one way of answering a

question, and one visualization. You can create as many Worksheets
as you want to find the best way to represent your data. Once you
have enough Worksheets to answer all your questions, you can
create a Dashboard.

A Dashboard is a combination of multiple Worksheets and objects

(Containers, Image, Extensions, and so on). You can use actions to
add interactivity between the different Worksheets.

If you want to tell a Story with your data, you can create a Story. The
goal of the Story is to prepare a succession of Story points (each of
them could be a Dashboard or a Worksheet). Each Story point is a
new insight into your Story where you can customize the filters and
captions and add some text. When presenting or sharing a Story,
every interaction or explanation is already done.

After all of that, you can publish your Dashboard and Stories by
using Tableau Server/Online or Tableau Public Voilà, you're done!

A bit overwhelmed? Don't worry, each chapter of this book focuses

on a specific part of Tableau, and you'll have plenty of time to get
familiar with these words with real examples. However, two words do
require more in-depth explanations: Dimension and Measure.
Dimension and Measure
When you create a data source, the fields are split between
Dimensions and Measures. The Measure is what you want to
analyze, and the Dimension is the angle of analysis.

By default, numbers are Measures, and the other data types (Text,
String, Date, Geographical Boolean) are Dimensions, However,
that's not always the case. Any data type can potentially be either a
Dimension or a Measure.

A Dimension contains qualitative information. It always splits the

number of Marks and is never aggregated.

A Measure is, by default, aggregated, contains quantitative

information, and is almost always numeric.

Note
You can easily see whether a field is aggregated by looking at its
corresponding pill when you use it on a shelf. If it is aggregated,
the name of the field is between brackets, with the name of the
aggregation at the beginning (for example, SUM(Profit)).

As you can see, it's hard to give an exact rule to discern Measure
and Dimension. It's more a concept to understand and a useful way
to arrange the fields. Don't worry; it won't prevent you from starting to
use Tableau, but understanding the difference will help you when
you face your first challenges!

Yes, you could have believed that Dimensions are blue, and
Measures are green. It is an easy mistake to make when you start
using Tableau. Are you curious to know the real difference between
the blue and green fields? Everything is explained in the next topic.
Blue and green – Discrete and
Continuous
A field or pill in blue is Discrete. A field or pill in green is Continuous.
Dimensions and Measures can be either Continuous or Discrete.

A Discrete field displays each distinct value. Any data types can be
expressed in a discrete way. In the View, a Discrete field placed in
Rows or Columns is represented with headers.

Here is an example of a Dimension (Order Date) and a Discrete

Measure (Profit) both as Discrete pills. As you can see, they both
have clickable and distinct headers:

A Continuous field represents values from an infinite set. Only

Numbers and Dates can be Continuous. In the View, Continuous
fields are represented on an axis. Here is an example using the
same Dimension (Order Date) and Measure (SUM(Profit)) fields,
but this time as Continuous pills. As you can see, both are displayed
using an axis:

It is crucial to understand these differences. It may sound a bit

abstract, but it'll help you when you start building visualizations.

Speaking of visualizations, there is a bar that you constantly see

when using Tableau: the toolbar. Let's see some of the options
available with a single click.
The toolbar options
Whether you are working on a Worksheet, Dashboard, or Story, you
can always see the toolbar on top. Let's review some of the most
important and useful options it offers (and don't worry, we'll use them
all in the next chapters):

Undo : This reverses your action. The great thing is that you
can undo an unlimited number of times, starting back from the
very beginning if you want!
Add a new Data Source : This opens the menu to choose a
new connection to a file or a server.
Duplicate Worksheet : This creates a copy of the current
Worksheet.
Clear : This removes the pills and formatting in the
Worksheet. You can use the arrow to clear only specific parts.
Swap : This replaces the pills in Rows with those in the
Columns and vice versa.
Sort ascending/descending : This automatically sorts the
selected Dimension.
Show Labels : This is a shortcut to display the labels.
Fit : This defines how the Worksheet should fit on the
screen. For Standard, the size of the cells defines the size of
the visualization. The other fitting options force the view to fit the
width, the height, or both.

Show Me : This lets you change the visualization

in the Worksheet at any time.

Before we finish this chapter, it's important to understand one last

fundamental element of Tableau, and, more specifically, your data
source: the difference between a Live connection and an Extract.
Live or Extract
When you connect to a file or a server, on the data source
workplace, in the top-right corner, you have the option to use a Live
or Extract connection, as you can see in the following screenshot:

There is a big difference between these two options, so let's look at

them in detail.

Live
A Live connection creates a direct link between the Tableau data
source and your data (server or file). It means that, if the data
changes, you see the impact in Tableau directly after actualizing the
data source, or when you reopen the workbook.

The problem with a Live connection is that you are dependent on the
performance of the database. Large text files, big Excel files, or an
unoptimized database can be very slow to analyze in Tableau. Also,
if you are connected to an online database, you are dependent on
the internet connection, and you won't be able to work offline. Every
time you use a field from your data source, Tableau sends a query to
the database, meaning that if there are hundreds of Tableau users,
the database can rapidly be impacted. For these reasons, I advise
you to always work with an Extract.
Extract
When you create an Extract, Tableau copies your database into a
.hyper file on your computer. Then, the data source is no longer
linked to the database but to the .hyper file.

The first advantage of the Extract is that it's optimized for Tableau,
meaning that irrespective of the speed of your initial connection, you
will have excellent performance. Keep that in mind. If you think that
your Dashboard is slow, the first thing to check is whether you are
using an Extract or not. You are also able to work offline because the
Extract is a local copy of your database.

Unlike a Live connection, you don't instantly observe the changes in

the database. To see the changes, you need to refresh the Extract
(recreate the .hyper file). When you refresh the Extract, Tableau
connects to the database again and creates a new copy of the data
into the .hyper file.

The only problem you may encounter is when you try to create an
Extract from a huge database. As Tableau needs to copy the data, it
could take a long time to retrieve all the rows. To deal with this, you
can use the Edit button (next to Extract) to add filters, aggregation,
and choose the schema. If you create a data source combining
multiple tables, it could be better to use the Multiple Tables schema
for better performance.

There are pros and cons of using either a Live or Extract connection.
In the end, the choice is yours, but now you can make the best
decision.
Summary
This chapter is theoretical but also necessary. The rest of the book is
filled with concrete examples based on real cases. However, like
every tool, it is important to understand the core principle to build
great visualizations. Of course, Tableau is easy, and you can start
creating visualizations without any help. However, there is nothing
worse than starting with bad habits, only to discover that you've been
doing it wrong the whole time.

What we looked at in this chapter is the core of Tableau and how it

works. We got a clear overview of the different products, learned the
Tableau language and the toolbar options, and understood the
difference between Measures, Dimensions, Discrete fields,
Continuous fields, a Live connection, and an Extract.

How about we start using Tableau now? Isn't that why you bought
this book! The next chapter is all about showing you how to build
great things.
Chapter 3. Getting Started with
Tableau Desktop
This chapter is your first concrete introduction to Tableau Desktop.
Together, we'll connect to data, create three visualizations, and
assemble them into what will be your first Dashboard. Then, we'll
use Tableau as a data exploration tool and answer business
questions by using only the power of data visualization.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

Connecting to data
Creating your first set of visualizations
Building your first Dashboard
Using Tableau Desktop for data exploration

There are a few things to remember before we start; don't be afraid; I

repeat, don't be afraid. The following two buttons on the toolbar will
always save you if something goes wrong:

: This allows you to undo any actions, and, good news, it's
unlimited. So, if you make a mistake, use it!
: This allows you to start from the beginning. It removes
everything in the Worksheet or Dashboard. You can start afresh
if you feel stuck somewhere.

Are you ready? If so, then double-click on the Tableau icon and let's
get started.

Connecting to data
For this first guided tutorial, we are using the iconic Tableau dataset:
Sample-Superstore. This dataset is an Excel file that contains data
about supermarket sales in the United States. It can be found in your
Tableau repository folder (which was created during the installation
of the product). This dataset is easy to understand and use dataset.
The Excel file is composed of three sheets: Orders, People, and
Returns.

So, let's connect to this dataset. When you open Tableau, click on
Microsoft Excel on the left-hand side:

If you're a Mac user, navigate to Documents | My Tableau

Repository | Data Source | [Your Tableau Version] | en_US-
US, and then open the file named Sample Superstore.xls.
If you're a Windows user, navigate to My Documents | My
Tableau Repository | Data Source | [Your Tableau Version] |
en_US-US, and then open the file named Sample
Superstore.xls.

Note
If you can't find the file, then you can download it from Chapter
3: Getting Started with Tableau, on my website
(https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com/) or by using this direct link:
https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Sample-
Superstore.xlsx. Then, select the downloaded file when
connecting from Tableau.

After selecting the file, you will automatically enter the data source
workplace. In the top-left of the screen, you will see the name of the
connection and, underneath it, you will see the three sheets in the
Excel file: Orders, People, and Returns.

For this example, we'll only use Orders; so, follow Tableau's
invitation and drag the Orders table into the middle of the page:
Once it's done, Tableau gives you a snapshot of the first 1,000 rows.
You can also see that, preceding each column's name, there is an
icon that indicates the data type (such as Number, Text, and Date)
defined by Tableau.

Bravo! You've built your first data source. In the following chapters,
we'll examine the meaning of each data type and the other options
that are available when connecting to data in detail. For the moment,
keep everything as it is and, at the bottom of the page, click on
Sheet 1.
Creating your first set of
visualizations
After clicking on Sheet 1, you will enter the Worksheet workplace.
This is where you create visualizations. Usually, one Worksheet
answers one question.

Let's create our first visualization.

Sales and profit by sub-categories –

bar charts
The first question is: What are the product sub-categories that
generate the most sales and profits? To answer this, perform the
following steps:

1. Double-click on Sales in the Data pane under Measures. You

should now see one bar. If you hover the mouse over the bar,
you should read Sales: 2,297,201. As a measure is always
aggregated, here, you can see the total sum of all the sales.
2. On the Data pane, under Dimensions, double-click on Sub-
Category. The sub-categories now split the bar. A quick look at
this can tell you that Chairs and Phones are the best-selling
products:
3. On the toolbar, click on the swap icon ( ). By doing this, it's
easier to read the sub-categories. We can do even better by
clicking on the descending sort icon ( ). The final result should
be as follows:

Now that the sub-categories are sorted, it's very simple to

answer questions such as What are the top three sub-
categories?, What are the bottom three sub-categories?, and
How do tables perform compared to bookcases?. So, let's
continue by adding in the profits.
4. In Tableau, it's straightforward to use preattentive attributes
(such as Color, Size, Shape, and more) in order to add
secondary information. Here, simply drag and drop Profit in the
Color property:

Tableau automatically uses a diverging color palette: orange for

negative values and blue for positive values. So, now we can
also see that Tables, Bookcases, and Supplies lose the
company money.

Note
Tableau's default color choice is adapted for colorblind
people. It's a bad habit to use red and green for negative
and positive values because colorblind people can't see the
difference between them. If the only way to understand
something is by its color, then make sure that everyone can
see the difference.

Let's finish this first visualization, as follows:

5. At the very bottom of the screen, double-click on Sheet 1, which

is next to the Data Source tab, and rename the worksheet Sales
 and Profit by Sub-Category. It's crucial to give a name to each
of your Worksheets in Tableau (you'll thank me later!).

With a few clicks and one drag and drop later, you have just created
your first visualization in Tableau – congratulations! Are you ready for
the next one?

Profit evolution – line charts

Let's take a look at how the profit evolves. To build this new analysis
and answer new questions, we need to create a new Worksheet. In
Tableau, there is always more than one way to do something. To
create a new Worksheet, you have at least three options by clicking
on one of the following buttons:

On your new Sheet 2, execute the following steps:

1. Double-click on Profit.
2. Double-click on Order date. Tableau automatically transforms
the bar into a line, as follows:
 Here, you can see a line because, depending on the data type
you use, Tableau selects the best way to visualize it. Of course,
that can be changed, but it's too soon for that young Padawan!
Here, you can see the year-by-year evolution; you will notice
that the profit is growing, and that's great! But what if we want
more details?

3. Right-click on the YEAR (Order Date) pill in the Columns shelf

and select the second instance of Quarter, where you will see
Q2 2015:
 Note
For each Date field, Tableau generates all the hierarchy:
year, month, quarter, and week. The date parts in the first
section are Discrete and don't include the year. For example,
the Discrete Quarter only shows four values: Q1, Q2, Q3,
and Q4, no matter the year. The date parts in the second
section are Continuous and include the year as in this
example. They are useful for you to examine evolution over
time.

You can now see the quarterly evolution of the profit and
discover that the fourth quarter is always the best:
 4. Rename Sheet 2 as Profit Evolution. Just like we did
previously, double-click on the Worksheet name at the bottom of
the screen. Note: if you change the title which appears on top of
the visualization, it doesn't affect the name of the Worksheet.

So, how was that second experience? I'm sure you will love using
dates in Tableau! Let's finish with my favorite topic: maps!

Profit by state – filled maps

Are you ready for the third and final visualization of this tutorial? We
are going to examine where the profit is generated and use
Tableau's mapping features:

1. Start by creating a new Worksheet.

 Tip
Hint: An easy way to do this is to click on the new Worksheet

icon, which appears at the bottom of the screen ( ).

2. Double-click on State. Tableau automatically puts Longitude

(generated) in Columns and Latitude (generated) in Rows and
generates a map. Each point represents a State.
3. Drag and drop Profit in the Color property. The following
screenshot displays the final result:

You can visually (and easily) see that the states of New York
and California generate the most profit and Texas generates the
highest loss of money.

4. Rename the Worksheet Profit by State.

Congratulations! You have just built three visualizations to analyze

your supermarket sales and profit in the following way:

By sub-categories using a bar chart

 Over time, that is, quarterly, using a line chart
By state, using a filled map

It's now time to build your first Dashboard. By doing so, you'll be able
to make your Worksheets communicate and enhance your analysis
capabilities.
Building your first Dashboard
Creating a new Dashboard is as simple as creating a new
Worksheet. Choose one of the following options (and find your new
favorite one!):

Welcome to the Dashboard workplace:

Do you see the three Worksheets that you built on the left? I hope
you now understand why renaming them was very important. You
don't want many Worksheets named Sheet 1, Sheet 2, Sheet 3, and
so on. I've been there and trust me, it's a nightmare!

Assembling the Dashboard

The first step when you build a Dashboard is to assemble your
Worksheets:

1. Drag and drop the Profit by State Worksheet where Tableau

invites you to do so.
2. Drag and drop the Sales and profit by Sub-Category
Worksheet beneath the map. The gray area helps you see
where the Worksheets are going to be placed:
 3. Drag and drop the Profit Evolution Worksheet on the right-
hand side of Sales and profit by Sub-Category. Again, use the
gray area to preview the location, as demonstrated in the
following screenshot:

4. Double-click on Dashboard 1 at the bottom and rename your

Dashboard Sales and profit analysis.
5. Click on the Show dashboard title checkbox on the left-hand
pane to display the title.

Congratulations – you've built your first Dashboard!

So, is that it? Of course not—the magic starts in the next section.

Adding interactivity to your

Dashboard
Be careful; this is going to be quick:

1. On the Dashboard, click on the Profit by State Worksheet to

select it (there is a gray outline once it's selected).
2. Click on the funnel icon, that is, the third one that appears.
Notice that it turns white once you've clicked on it. The icon is
highlighted in the following screenshot:

3. Click on any state on the map and be proud! You just created an
interactive dashboard that automatically filters a selected state.
You can also use the Ctrl (on Windows) or command (on Mac)
keys to select multiple states.

Well, why stop there? You can do the same with Sales and profit by
Sub-Category. Just click on the visualization, and then on the funnel
icon, and voilà—you can filter the Dashboard by sub-category.

The Dashboard tutorial is now over. I hope that you are as amazed
as I was the first time someone showed me how to build a
Dashboard in Tableau. We recommend that you don't skip the final
part, where we are going to use Tableau as a data exploration tool.
Using Tableau for data
exploration
Tableau can be used to answer business questions easily and
visually. In this section, we'll explore our data in order to find insights.
For this example, we will use the Sample - Superstore dataset again.
If you are starting here, please refer to the preceding section,
Connecting to data section. If you're continuing from the previous
exercise, create a new Worksheet.

Let's start by building a scatterplot. This is a visualization that allows

you to analyze two measures at the same time:

1. Double-click on Profit, and then on Sales. You should see one

mark that shows the sum of sales and profits:
2. Let's answer the first question: Are the unprofitable sub-
categories? Drag and drop Sub-Category in the Label property.
You should now see one mark per sub-category alongside their
label (if it fits):

Here, Supplies, Bookcases, and Tables are unprofitable sub-

categories. Let's go deeper into our analysis and try to
understand what's happening for Tables.

3. Click on Tables Mark and select Keep Only, as demonstrated in

the following screenshot:
 You can see that Sub-Category has been added to the Filters
shelf. Let's continue with another question: Are all the clients
who purchased tables unprofitable?

4. Drag and drop Customer Name over Sub-Category to replace

it, as follows:

You can now see all the customers who purchased a table. A
majority of clients are unprofitable, but not all.

If you want to have an even more in-depth analysis, right-click on

View or on a Mark and click on View Data..., as displayed in the
following screenshot:
This opens a new window with, on the first tab, a Summary table,
and on the second tab, Full Data, which contains all the columns
and rows used by Tableau to generate the visualization:

In the top-left, you have the option to export the data in CSV format if
you want to share it.

As you can see, we were able to answer questions and go deeper

into the analysis by staying on one Worksheet. By using the power of
Tableau to visualize data, exploration is straightforward and often
feels similar to a game.
Whether it was creating Dashboards or answering questions, I hope
that this chapter has given you the desire to continue to discover all
the great functionalities that Tableau has to offer.
Summary
This chapter was your first concrete introduction to Tableau. I hope
you enjoyed it! In this guided tutorial, you learned how to connect to
an Excel file and create three Worksheets using a bar chart, a line
chart, and a map. Then, you learned how to build a Dashboard and
made it interactive. Finally, you explored the data to visually answer
business questions.

The introduction is now over. In the following chapters, we'll focus on

specific aspects of Tableau and enter the details. Speaking of what's
next, I invite you to continue your journey with the next chapter.
There's, you'll learn everything you need to know about connecting
to any dataset, adding joins or unions, pivoting your data, and much
more.
Section 2: Connecting,
Building, and Sharing
This section will give you an insight into how to connect Tableau to
the dataset. We'll start by explaining the different connectors and
some specificities. You will be provided with a clear description of
Tableau's connections and their capabilities. The second part will
demonstrate how to join data. You will understand how to create a
key to connect two (or more) tables, and will also learn the
differences between inner, left, right, and full joins. It's also important
to explain that joining data can duplicate rows. You will receive clear
explanations about the difference between live connections and
extracts. After Tableau has been connected to data, we'll explore the
data source in detail. It's important to understand how to design and
customize a dataset. It'll help you to save a lot of time and allow you
to have a comprehensive and well-built data source. We will then
move on to the creation of visualizations. We'll examine different
mark types, such as bar, circle, and square, and explore their usage.
Then, we will focus on the options behind each property, such as the
color, size, and tooltip.

Next, we will create powerful dashboards, and we will discover how

to set the dashboard options. We will also demonstrate how to
publish in Tableau and how to create visualizations based on
published data sources.

This section will include the following chapters:

Chapter 4, Connecting to Data and Simple Transformations

Chapter 5, Building an Efficient Data Source
Chapter 6, Designing Insightful Visualizations
Chapter 7, Powerful Dashboard Stories and Actions
Chapter 8, Publishing and Interacting in Tableau Server
Chapter 4. Connecting to Data
and Simple Transformations
The first thing you usually do when opening Tableau is to connect to
a dataset. You already had a glimpse of a data connection in the
previous chapter, when we used an Excel file. In this chapter, we'll
cover the most important options that Tableau offers when
connecting to data, along with the following:

Data connections
Join data easily
Union your data
Simple transformations

To harmonize all the different terms used between the various data
providers, we'll use the following terms through the chapter:

A dataset represents any source of data. It is where your data

is located. It could be an Excel file, a database on a server, or a
file on the cloud. This is what you want to connect to Tableau.
Tables represent, no matter the connection, a sheet in Excel or
a table in a database.
Data Source represents the result of your connection after all
the transformations.

Let's start with some examples of data connections.

Data connections
In this first section, we will see the general steps to follow when you
want to connect to any kind of dataset. We'll also focus on
connecting to spatial files.

General rules
In this section, we'll see the general rules and options when
connecting to a dataset. Of course, with more than 50 different
connectors available, it's impossible to look at each in detail.
However, the goals when connecting to a dataset in Tableau are
always the same:

1. Choose your connection (file/server).

2. Connect to the dataset by selecting the file or entering the login
information.
3. Reach the Data Source workplace and have at least one table
in the area highlighted in the screenshot:

Tip
If there is only one table in your dataset (for example, in a .CSV),
Tableau automatically uses it.

Some types of connection have specificities. You can find the

customization options with a right-click on the table.

For example, if you connect to a text file, say, a .CSV file, you can
manually specify the field separator, the text qualifier, the character
set, and the locale by using Text File Properties... as displayed
here:
When you are connected to a server such as Redshift, SQL Server,
or MySQL, you need to select the database first before getting
access to the tables:
 Tip
When you connect to a server, there is a chance that the driver is
not pre-installed. If so, you have to click on Download and
install the drivers at the bottom of the connection page. You will
be redirected to Tableau's website, where you can find the driver
and download it.

With some servers, you can also create a custom SQL query if you
have special needs. To do so, double-click on New Custom SQL
following all the tables and write your query.

Note
Using a custom SQL query is slower than letting Tableau build
the query with a simple drag and drop.

Tableau can connect to a lot of different data providers. They all

have their specificities, but Tableau always keeps it simple.

Before starting the next section on joins, let's quickly focus on a

special kind of connection: spatial files.

Connecting spatial files

Tableau offers the possibility to connect to spatial files to display
custom maps. You can use this feature to create maps with your
specific territories or to add new and interesting layers of information.

When you connect to a spatial file, a special field, Geometry, is

available in your data source. On a Worksheet, simply double-click
on that field to display your custom territories. Here's an example of
what you can do with spatial files, displaying the borders of the
tectonic plates:

Don't hesitate to use this functionality to add roads, rivers,

mountains, or special boundaries to your data.

Now that you know how to connect to different datasets, it's time to
discover what you can do in the Data source workplace, starting with
joins.
Join data easily
A join creates a data source with columns coming from two (or more)
tables. How can you create them? Are there risks? You'll learn
everything in this section.

The join principle

So far, we've only used one table. A join is automatically created
when you drag and drop another table next to an existing one in the
data source workplace. There is always a left-hand table and a right-
hand table. In the following screenshot, you can see a join between
Orders (the left-hand table), and People (the right-hand table):

The result of a join is a data source that contains the columns from
the different joined tables. As highlighted in the screenshot, you can
see that the Profit column comes from the Orders table, and the
Person column comes from the People table:

There are four different types of join. We will discover these in the
next section.

Join requirements and types

To create a join between two tables, you need at least one column in
each table that contains the same values. These common columns
create the link between the two tables.

Tip
When you create a join, Tableau automatically uses the columns
that have the same names as the links.

If there are no columns sharing the same name, you have to select
the common columns manually in the Join menu that opens when
you click on the Join icon. The following screenshot illustrates how
you can choose the columns when you click on the icon:

Tip
If the values don't totally match between the common columns,
you can click on Create Join Calculation to clean the data
(you'll learn how to create a calculation in Chapter 9, An
Introduction to Calculations).
Often, you'll have one column in each table, with only some shared
values. It's up to you to decide how to deal with the values that don't
match by choosing the correct join type: Inner, Left, Right, or Full
Outer. To select a join type, click on one of the four icons in the Join
menu. Here are the differences between the different type of joins:

Inner Join (default): Keeps only the lines where the

values match in both tables.

Left Join : Keeps all the lines from the left-hand table and
adds the information from the right table if the values match. If
the values don't match, Tableau puts null in the columns
coming from the right-hand table.

Right Join : Keeps all the lines from the right-hand table
and adds the information from the left-hand table if the values
match. If the values don't match, Tableau puts null in the
columns coming from the left-hand table.

Full Outer : Keeps all the lines from the two tables. If the
values don't match, Tableau enters null.

Enough of the theory–let's create a simple and useful join together.

Hands-on with a simple join

In this section we'll create a join between the Orders and People
tables from Sample – Superstore. Before we start, let's look at what
those tables contain:

Orders is the main table (the left-hand one). We already used it

in Chapter 3, Getting Started with Tableau Desktop, and this
contains the profit.
People is a table that contains only four lines and two columns. It
associates a region with a person.
Our goal is to create a data source that allows us to look at the profit
(which exists only in the Orders table) by person (which exists only in
the People table).

Open a new Tableau file and follow these instructions:

1. Select Microsoft Excel in the list of available connections and

connect to the Sample-Superstore Excel file in your Tableau
repository (use the Connecting to data section from Chapter 3,
Getting Started with Tableau Desktop, if you don't remember the
file's location).
2. In the Data Source workspace, drag and drop the Orders table.
3. Drag and drop the People table next to Orders, as shown in the
following screenshot:

Tableau automatically creates a join between the two tables, with

Region as the link, as shown in the following screenshot:
On the preview, you can see that the two new columns from the
Person table on the right:

The data source is ready. You can test it on a worksheet and display
the profit by person as we wanted.

As you can see, joins are very powerful. Be careful; there are some
risks.

Join risks
The main risk with joins is data duplication. Rather than a theoretical
explanation, consider the following example:

Note
If you want to reproduce the example, you can download the
Data duplication example file from my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, as discussed in Chapter 4:
Connecting to Data and Simple Transformation section, or go
direct to https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Data-
duplication-example.xlsx.

The Data duplication example Excel file contains two sheets: Sales
and Product.Sales contains the following data:
The total volume of sales is 300.

Product contains the following data:

Now, let's join the two tables on the Product ID columns and see
what happens. Here's the result in Tableau:
As you can see, the product number 3 is duplicated. The reason for
that duplication is because there are two different products in the
Product table, with the same Product ID. The total volume of sales
here is 400, which is wrong.

When you join tables, be sure that the values you want to analyze
won't be duplicated. There are three solutions to dealing with data
duplication:

The easiest solution: Clean the file to remove the duplication.

In the example, it means changing the ID of a product to 4.
Use data blending—this is explained in Chapter 11, Advanced
Data Connections.
Use Level of Detail (LOD) calculation functions—this is
explained in Chapter 9, An Introduction to Calculations.

After joins, the next interesting feature is unions.

Union your data
If a join adds columns, a union adds rows.

Unions are useful when you have two (or more) tables with an
identical structure (the same columns) that you want to combine to
create a unique data source.

A typical use case is when you have a dataset that contains one
table per year, and you need to compare those years. To do that, you
need to combine those different tables into a single data source. You
can, of course, spend some time copying and pasting the data into a
new table, but with Tableau and unions, you can do this in a few
clicks.

Note
To create a union, the different tables must contain the same
column names. Otherwise, Tableau will not consider them to be
identical and will create new columns.

Let's start with an example.

Hands-on with a union example

For this example, I created an Excel file with two sheets to union.

Note
If you want to reproduce the example, you can download the
Union example file from my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in Chapter 4: Connect to
Data and Simple Transformation section, or use this direct link:
 https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Union-
example.xlsx.

The Union example Excel file contains two sheets:

One named 2017, which contains the data shown in the following
screenshot:

One named 2018, with the data shown in the following

screenshot:

As you can see, the two sheets share the same column name. In
Tableau, after connecting to the Excel file, there are two ways of
making a union:

The first way: Drag and drop the 2017 table, then drag and drop
the second table, 2018, just beneath the first one, where it says
Drag table to union:
 The second way: Drag and drop New Union, as shown in the
following screenshot:

This opens a new window where you can drag and drop the two
tables to union them:

Note
 You'll learn in Chapter 11, Advanced Data Connection, how to
use the second tab to create wildcard unions.

No matter the way you choose to do it, the result of the union is a
data source that combines the two tables. Tableau automatically
creates new columns with the name of the origin table. The following
screenshot displays the final result of the union:

To end this chapter about data connections, let's look at some of the
transformations that you can apply to the data source.
Simple transformations
Tableau is not a data preparation tool. It's always better to have a
clean file to start with. However, Tableau offers some simple
transformation tools. When you connect to a dataset, you can, for
example, use the Data Interpreter, split a column into multiple
columns, or pivot your data. Let's see a case for these
transformations.

For this section, I created a dataset to clean in Excel, as illustrated

here:

Note
If you want to reproduce the example, you can download the
Dataset to clean file from my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, as discussed in Chapter 4:
Connecting to Data and Simple Transformation section, or
use this direct link: https://ladataviz.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/09/Data-duplication-example.xlsx.

Three things are problematic with this dataset:

 There is a column header for the years
The countries and the cities are in the same column
Each year is in a different column, preventing the creation of a
simple line chart

Now, let's fix the first problem of this dataset with the Data
Interpreter.

The Data Interpreter

Let's start by connecting to the Dataset to clean file in Tableau:

1. Open Tableau, select Microsoft Excel in the list of connectors,

and select the Dataset to clean Excel file.
2. Tableau automatically puts the unique sheet, Sales, in the Data
pane, but, as you can see in the preview, the connection needs
cleansing:

3. To clean the file, click on Use Data Interpreter underneath

Sheets. As you can see in the following screenshot, it's already
much better:
However, we still need to split the Country and City column and
pivot the years.

Splitting a column
The second goal is to split the Country and City column into two
columns:

1. Right-click on the Country and City column and click on Split.

2. Tableau automatically recognizes that there is a common
character and uses it to split the column into two new ones,
Country and City–Split 1, and Country and City–Split 2.
3. Right-click on the new columns and select Rename. Rename
the first one Country, and the second one City.

The result is displayed in the following table:

 Tip
If Tableau cannot find a character for the split, or if Tableau
chooses the wrong one, you can use a custom split to have
advanced options. Selecting Custom Split... opens a window
where you can choose the separator and the number of columns.

That's two problems fixed! Let's finish with the pivot.

Pivot
A pivot consists of transforming columns into lines. In this example,
we want to pivot the four columns with the different years into two
columns: one for the name of the year and one for the value.

To do this, follow these steps:

 1. Select all the year columns to pivot (click on them while pressing
Ctrl (Windows) or command (macOS)).
2. Right-click on one of the highlighted columns and select Pivot,
as highlighted here:

The result of the pivot is two columns:

One Dimension: Pivot Field Names

One Measure: Pivot Field Values

You can rename them Year and Value respectively.

The transformations are complete. You have a clean and simple data
source. To really make it perfect, you can click on the icon of the
Year column and change it to Date. Here's the final result:
As you can see, you can even use Tableau to clean your data very
quickly!
Summary
We have finished our first chapter about data connections. We
looked at how to connect to different sorts of datasets and use some
features, such as join, union, and some data transformations. Later
in the book, you'll learn other useful and powerful data
transformation features.

Now that you are connected to the data, you have a data source.
You can directly use it to create visualizations, but I advise you to
spend some time customizing and preparing your data source. There
are many ways to enhance it and create something shareable, easy
to understand, and compelling for your analysis.

In the next chapter, we'll learn how to build an efficient data source.
Chapter 5. Building an Efficient
Data Source
The data source is a crucial part of Tableau. In fact, the data source
is the engine of Tableau that allows you to build visualizations. It
affects the performance, the quality of the analysis, the speed, and
more. Additionally, like any engine, it's necessary to spend some
time taking care of it.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to build the best possible engine for
your analysis. We will cover the following topics:

Understanding the data source

Refreshing a data source and dealing with changes
Field customization and default properties
Hierarchies
Groups, sets, and bins

Let's start with a clear explanation of what a data source is.

Understanding the data source

The data source is the result of all your work when connecting to a
dataset (such as joins, unions, and transformations), and all the
customizations that you can apply afterward. The goal for your data
source is to be as performant, simple, and easy-to-use as possible.

A data source can be a Live connection ( ), an Extract ( ), or it

can be published on Tableau Server ( ). However, no matter what
type of connection it is, you will always find the same elements.

There are four elements that make up a data source: Dimensions,

Measures, Sets, and Parameters. Dimensions and Measures are
always present and are linked to the field in your dataset.

Note
It's essential to understand the difference between Dimensions
and Measures. Everything about these two elements is explained
in Chapter 2, The Tableau Core.

Sets and Parameters are optional, and they are created by you. Sets
are explained in the Groups, sets, and bins section, and there is a
focus on parameters in Chapter 10, Analytics and Parameters.

Let's continue with an overview of the different data types.

Data types in Tableau

Each field has a data type. There are seven data types in Tableau,
as follows:

Text ( ), which is also called a string

Number, decimal, or whole ( )—these data types all share the
same icon.
Date ( )
Date and time ( )
Boolean ( )—this value will either be true or false
Geographic values ( )

When you connect to a dataset, Tableau automatically chooses a

type for each column of the dataset. However, as with almost
everything in Tableau, you can customize it. To change the data
type, you can either click on the icon, or right-click on the field and
use Change Data Type.

Most of the fields in your data source come from the dataset.
However, did you notice that some of these don't? Continue reading
to learn more about generated information.

Generated information
Every data source can have up to five generated pieces of
information:

Number of records: You can use this to find out how many
lines are analyzed.
Latitude (generated) and Longitude (generated): You'll find
this information if you have a geographical field in your data
source. They are used to create maps.
Measure Names and Measure Values: The first one contains
the name of each measure, and the second one contains the
values of each measure. They must be combined and you can
use them to display multiple Measures at the same time (this is
a focus of Chapter 6, Design Insightful Visualizations).

Now that you have a clear view of what exists in your data source,
let's take a look at the options to customize it.

Data source options

All the data source options are available by right-clicking on the
name in the top-left corner of the screen:
You can also access them by clicking on Data in the top-left menu.

Here's a brief description of the most important options:

Edit Data Source...: This takes you to the data source page,
where you can change your connection, add new tables, or do
some transformations.
Refresh: This refreshes your data if you are using a Live
connection.
View Data: This opens a window where you can view your raw
data, copy it, or export it in a CSV file.
Close: This removes your data source. It also removes all the
Worksheets with a visualization based on that data source.
Extract Data: This opens a new window where you can
configure the extract and create it.
Extract...: This submenu is available when you are using an
Extract and allows you to refresh it, append data from a file, or
show the history.
Edit Data Source Filters: This opens a new window where you
can add some filters (more details on this can be found in
Chapter 6, Design Insightful Visualizations.

Tip
You can also add a data source filter in the Data Source
page, in the top-right, next to the menu where you select
Live or Extract.

Replace Data Source: This opens a menu where you can

select the current and the replacement data source. All the
Worksheets that use the current source will use the replacement
one.
Date Properties: This allows you to change three options,
including the week's starting day, the fiscal year start, and the
default date format.
 Edit Aliases: This allows you to add an alias to the values of a
dimension.
Add to Saved Data Source: This allows you to export the data
source as a file for further usage.
Export Data to CSV: This exports the data in a CSV file.
However, be careful when using this option; if you have a large
data source, then the export can be very long.

You don't have to remember all of these options. Bear in mind that if
you want to do something related to your data source, it's probably
one right-click away.

In the next section, we'll explore in detail how to refresh your data
and deal with the changes.
Refreshing a data source and
dealing with changes
Data lives and changes. Any analysis tool, such as Tableau, needs
to allow users to refresh data and deal with changes as easily as
possible.

Note
In this section, we won't talk about the published data source on
Tableau Server. The way in which to refresh or modify a
published data source is different and is explained in more detail
in Chapter 8, Publishing and Interacting in Tableau Server.

The following section describes how to refresh a data source.

How to refresh a data source

Refreshing a data source is simple for both Live and Extract data
sources.

For a Live connection, right-click on the data source and click on

Refresh—that's it!

For an Extract, clicking on Refresh won't work because the

extracted data (in the hyper file) hasn't changed. Remember that
when you create an Extract, you create a copy of your dataset. To
refresh an Extract data source, you first need to refresh the extracted
data. To do so, right-click on the data source name, go to Extract,
and then Refresh, as demonstrated in the following screenshot:
When refreshing an extract, Tableau warns you that the data will
change. If you click on Yes to continue, Tableau connects to the
dataset and imports the data again. At the end of the extraction, your
extract is refreshed.

But what happens if there are some modifications in the dataset

between the two refreshes?

Dealing with changes

Again, Tableau is here to help you if there are changes made to the
dataset. Note that not all changes will cause a problem.

Here are two trivial cases for you to consider:

A new column is added to the dataset: If there is a new

column in the dataset, then you'll see a new field in the data
source. In this case, you don't have to do anything.
An unused field is removed or renamed: If there is an unused
field in your data source that is deleted or renamed from the
dataset, you won't even notice it. It'll simply be suppressed or
renamed.
The third and last case, when a field that you use in Tableau is
deleted or renamed in the dataset, is a bit more problematic.

If a field that you use in Tableau is removed or renamed in the

dataset, there will be an exclamation point next to its name after
refreshing the Data pane. If the column is removed, you can't do
anything except put it back. Most of the time, the column is just
renamed, and, in Tableau, you can replace the references to the old
column with the new one.

Let me illustrate the process using the Sample – Superstore dataset.

Let's say that the Region column was renamed New Region:

1. When I refresh the data source, the Region pill turns red, and in
the Datasource pane, there is an exclamation mark next to the
Region field:

2. In order to correct the error, I can right-click on the Region field

and select Replace References...:
 3. Then, I select the new field that replaces the old one. In this
example, it's New Region.
4. The old field, Region, is removed from the data source and, in
the Worksheets, the pill is now using New Region. You can see
the result in the following screenshot:

Easy, isn't it? Now that you have a clear view of how to use and
refresh your data source, it's time to explore how you can customize
it.
Field customization and default
properties
Customizing the data source is the best way to make it easier to use
and share. Let's take a look at the different options available to
transform a raw data source into a customized one.

First, let's do a tour of the different field options, and then focus on
the default properties.

Field customization options

All the field customization options are available with a right-click on
any field.

There are some straightforward options, so let's take a look at a

short description of those that aren't trivial:

Hide: This hides the field but doesn't suppress it. It's a great
way to clean your data source if there are many fields that you
won't use. The option is only available if the field is never used.
You can show the hidden field by clicking on the arrow next to
Dimension and selecting Show Hidden Fields.
Delete: This suppresses custom fields (such as Bins, Sets, or
Parameters) from the data source.
Aliases...: This allows you to rename the values of a
Dimension. It opens a new window with the list of the values and
a column to specify the alias.
Create: This opens a submenu where you can create new
fields. All the different options will be examined in detail in this
book.
Convert to Discrete or Convert to Continuous: This only
applies to numbers and allows you to switch from a Continuous
field to a Discrete field or vice versa.
 Convert to Dimension or Convert to Measure: This allows
you to switch from a Measure to a Dimension or vice versa. If
you try to convert anything other than a number from a
Dimension to a Measure, then an aggregation is automatically
applied.
Geographical Role: The geographical role is available on a text
dimension and allows you to specify a geographical role if
Tableau doesn't recognize it automatically.
Group by: This opens a submenu where you can select Folder
or Data Source Table. It affects the way Tableau organizes the
dimension and measure. With Data Source Table, the fields are
linked to their tables. With Folder, all the fields are mixed, and
you can create folders to group them using the next Folders…
option.

Again, you don't have to remember everything. Bear in mind that if

you want to change or customize something related to a field, then
you'll surely find it with a simple right-click on the field.

Some of these options require more explanation. So, let's start with
default properties.

Default properties
With this option, you can define the default properties for your fields.
The properties are a slightly different between Measures and
Dimensions:

Comment… adds a comment to a field that appears when you

hover over it with your mouse; consider the following example:
This option is relatively useful if anyone other than you is going
to use the data source. This is because they'll be able to see the
comment and have a better understanding of the field.

Color… is really important in data visualizations. With this

default property, you can predefine the color for each value if the
field is a dimension, or the default palette if the field is a
measure. This option is a time saver; when you use a field with
a default color, you won't have to assign them again.
The Shape... default property works in the same way as the
Color property. The only difference is that you are not affecting
different colors, but different shapes instead. Every time you use
a field with a Shape default property in Shape, Tableau uses the
ones that you have assigned.
The Sort... default property opens a new window where you can
specify the sort order. You can choose between three options:
Data source order, Alphabetic, or Manual sort. After defining
the default sort option, Tableau will always display the values in
the order that you specified.
The Number format... property allows you to specify the format
of numbers. When you click on the option, this is the menu that
opens:
 You can use the menu to choose between the four main
formats: Number, Currency, Scientific, and Percentage.
Alternatively, you can add a Custom format. When you select
Number (Custom) or Currency (Custom), you have a few
options to create the format of your choice. Once you specify a
default format, Tableau will use it every time you use the
measure.
As you know, Tableau aggregates the measure when you use it.
By default, Tableau usually uses a sum. With the Aggregation
default property, you can change this. For example, you can
change the default aggregation of a measure to be the average.
Total using is quite similar: here, you can specify the
aggregation used to display totals.

That's it for the default properties. These options are used to

increase your speed in Tableau and are useful if you want to share
your data source. Another great way to customize your data source
is to add hierarchies.
Hierarchies
Hierarchies are quite special. A hierarchy is a group of multiple
dimensions. However, a hierarchy doesn't just affect the data source,
but also the visualization and the way the users can interact with it. A
hierarchy creates a relationship between different dimensions, such
as a parent-child relationship.

The dedicated icon for Hierarchies is .

Note
Hierarchies are crucial for geographical roles. If you try to build a
visualization in a city level without a hierarchy, lots of cities won't
be displayed because their names are ambiguous (that is, they
exist in multiple countries). By creating a hierarchy with a
country-level field and a region-level field, there is no more
ambiguity.

Dates, for example, are a hierarchy. A day is included in a week,

which is included in a month and a year. If you use a date in a
Worksheet, then Tableau automatically selects the YEAR and shows
a small + in the pill, on the left-side of its name. This means that the
dimension is a parent in a hierarchy where there are children. This is
illustrated in the following screenshot:

Once you click on the + icon, the child dimension is added next to
the parent, and the + icon switches to a - icon. The child can also be
a parent of another dimension, and so on.
That's enough for the theory; let's create a hierarchy and use it. You
can reproduce the following example using the Sample - Superstore
dataset:

1. Select Category and Sub-Category.

2. Right-click on one of the selected Dimensions and go to
Hierarchy, and then click on Create Hierarchy....
3. A new window opens asking for the name of the hierarchy; let's
name it Products.
4. The hierarchy is created, and you should see a new icon in your
Data pane, with the Category and Sub-Category fields under
it. Your hierarchy should look similar to the following screenshot:

Tip
If the order is different, then you can easily drag and drop
the field to change the order.

5. Let's add Product Name in the hierarchy, at the bottom. To do

that, you can drag and drop the field under Sub-Category:
 6. Double-click on Category, and then on Profit. This creates a
simple table. You can see the + icon next to the Category pill.
You can also see the + icon when you hover over the values in
View:

7. Click on +; Tableau automatically adds the child, Sub-Category.

From here, you can go deeper in the Product Name field using
+, or remove Sub-Category using -.

Hierarchies are useful and powerful tools. We recommend that you

use them when you can. Let's finish this chapter with the final option:
creating groups, sets, and bins.
Groups, sets, and bins
Groups, sets, and bins are synonyms, but they are fundamentally
different in Tableau:

Groups and sets are created from Dimensions. In comparison

to this, bins are created from measures.
Groups and bins are Dimensions, but sets are a different
Tableau element (such as Dimensions and Measures).

Are you a bit lost? Don't worry, that's normal! Let's take a look at
some examples that you can reproduce using the Sample-Superstore
dataset. We'll start with groups.

Groups
A group is a way to create a new dimension that gathers different
values of another dimension. Additionally, a group is static; this
means that you need to modify it manually.

A group is characterized by the icon.

There are two ways to create a group; first, manually, with a menu
—this is for when you know in advance how to gather the values.
Second, you can create a group visually in the View.

Let's start by creating a group, manually, with Sample - Superstore:

1. Right-click on Sub-Category, go to Create, and then click on

Group. A new window opens where you see the list of the
values in that Dimension. In this menu, you can manage the
groups.
2. To create a new group of values, select some values and click
on the Group button at the bottom (or with a right-click). Then,
create a group with Tables and Chairs, as demonstrated in the
following screenshot:
 3. By default, Tableau names the group with a concatenation of the
name of the values. However, it's possible to rename it by
clicking on the Rename button. Rename the group Desk
Furniture.
4. After clicking on OK, a new Dimension is created. If you didn't
change the name, then it is called Sub-Category (group).
5. To test the group, try creating a simple visualization—double-
click on Profit, and then double-click on Sub-Category (group).
You should see your new group, Desk Furnitures, among the
list.

If you have too many values and you want to group them, you can
use the visual way. Let's demonstrate how to do this with Sample -
Superstore:
 1. On a new Worksheet, double-click on Sales, and then double-
click on Sub-Category to create a simple visualization.

2. Use the button in the toolbar to swap ( ) and sort ( )

the values as descending. As you can see, there are some sub-
categories with small sales. They are not important, so we will
want to group them together.
3. Select the five bottom values by clicking on their names in the
header (note that it is crucial that you do not select the bars).
Then, in the menu that appears, click on the group icon to
create a group. The icon is highlighted in the following
screenshot:

4. Again, you can rename the group by editing it on the Data pane,
or by right-clicking on it in the View to edit the aliases. Choose
your favorite way and rename the group Small Sales.

Creating a group visually is an excellent way to reduce the number

of insignificant values and to help you to focus on what matters.
Another perfect use case is when there is a typo, and you want to
combine the wrong value with the correct one.

As we said at the beginning, a group is not dynamic. However, sets

are dynamic, so let's demonstrate how to use them.

Sets
Sets are a Tableau element. A set is created from a Dimension.
Unlike groups, sets are dynamic. With sets, the values are either In
the set or Out.

Sets have a special icon: .

Sets have two ways of being displayed in a Worksheet. By default, a

set will return In or Out, but if you right-click on its pill, then you can
see that it's possible to show the members that are in the set:

To create a set, right-click on a Dimension, go to Create, and then

click on Set. A new window opens with three tabs:

The first tab, General, allows you to select the values that will
be in the set.
The second tab, Condition, automatically puts the values in the
set if the condition is fulfilled. For example, in the following
screenshot, the values of the Dimension will be in the set if the
Profit field is greater than zero:
 The third tab, Top, puts the values in the set if they are the top
(or bottom) ones based on the limit number and a Measure. This
final option is used in the following example.

So, let's create a concrete sets example using Sample - Superstore:

1. On the Data pane, right-click on State, navigate to Create, and

then click on Set.
2. A new window opens; change the name of the set to Top 5
State by Profit.
3. Click on the Top tab and select By field. Keep Top listed and
write 5 instead of 10. Then, select the Profit field and keep the
Sum field for aggregation. The configuration window of your set
should look like the following screenshot:

4. Click on OK. You should see a new set element in your data
source:
 5. In a new Worksheet, double-click on State to show a map, and
then drag and drop Top 5 State by Profit (that is, your new set)
onto Color, as demonstrated in the following screenshot:

6. You should see a map with five states highlighted. These five
states are the five most profitable ones.

A great feature of sets is that they are dynamic. This means that, if at
the next refresh, Texas become one of the five most profitable
states, its dot will automatically be highlighted.

Sets and groups are both based on Dimensions, but their use is very
different to our last item—bins.

Bins
A bin is a Dimension. Unlike groups and sets, bins are based on a
Measure. The purpose of a bin is to group the different range of
values of a Measure inside a bin.
Bins have a special icon: .

As always, the best way to understand anything is with examples.

So, let's create bins using Sample - Superstore:

1. Right-click on Discount, navigate to Create, and then click on

Bins....
2. A new window opens in which you can edit the bin; keep the
name Discount (bin). The size of the bin is automatically
suggested by Tableau, but in our case, we will change the size
to 0.1.
3. Click on OK; you will see that a new Dimension is created. You
should find the Discount (bin) field in your data source.
4. Let's use it; double-click on Number of Records, and then on
Discount (bin). You can now easily see that the majority of the
orders have less than a 10% discount, or between 20% and
30%. Here's the final result:

With groups, sets, and bins, we've explored three of the five field
creation capabilities. The final two—Calculated Fields and
Parameters—are even more powerful. But that's for Chapter 9, An
Introduction to Calculations and Chapter 10, Analytics and
Parameters.
Summary
So, you've made it! The data source has no more surprises for you
(or maybe one or two that we'll see later!).

In this chapter, you learned about the purpose of a data source, its
options, how to refresh it, and how to deal with changes. Then, you
learned how to customize a data source using the default properties.
Finally, you created hierarchies, groups, sets, and bins.

Building the data source is not the most exciting thing to do if, like
me, you love visualization. However, spending some time creating a
good data source and understanding its potential is crucial if you
want to create the best analysis.

Speaking of visualization, how about we start using Tableau for its

primary purpose? The next chapter is all about data visualization.
Chapter 6. Design Insightful
Visualizations
Finally! Visualization! I know it was tempting to skip the last few
chapters and start here, but everything you learned earlier is crucial.
That's not because you won't be able to understand this chapter, but
because you'll miss an essential part of what Tableau can do for you.

Creating visualizations is the core of Tableau and there is a lot to

say! In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

Creating visualization
Mark types
Mark properties
Using multiple measures
Filters
Pages
Options and formats

In this chapter, we'll primarily use Tableau's Sample - Superstore

saved data source for our examples. You can find it on the first page
when you open Tableau, in the bottom-left of the screen:

All you need to do is to simply click on it, and then you're ready. The
data source is based on the Sample -Superstore Excel file and uses
many of the features that we saw in Chapter 5, Building an Efficient
Data Source.

So, are you ready? Let's start with the basics, that is, how to build a
visualization in Tableau.
Creating visualizations
In Tableau, the only way to display a visualization is by adding fields
in shelves. The different shelves are Rows, Columns, Marks,
Filters, and Pages. When you use a field on a shelf, it becomes a
pill.

However, there are two very different ways of adding a field to a

shelf: the automatic and the manual way. The automatic way is
useful when you want to go fast or if you have no idea how to
visualize your data. The manual way is needed when you know
exactly what you want to build.

Let's start with the automatic way.

Building a visualization, the automatic

way
There are two ways of allowing Tableau to do the job for you.

The first method is one that you've used the most frequently in this
book, that is, double-click. A simple double-click on a field
automatically puts it in a shelf.

Double-click
When you double-click on a field in your data source, it is
automatically added to a shelf in the Worksheet. Tableau decides
where the field should be, based on data visualization best
practices.

Of course, there are limitations to what you can do with double-

clicks. For instance, you won't be able to create a lot of different
visualizations, and you also won't be able to go outside predefined
scripts—very soon, you'll feel limited.
However, a double-click is always the most efficient way to build a
map. With a simple double-click on any geographical Dimension,
Tableau automatically puts the latitude values in the Rows and the
longitude values in the Columns.

The second method of allowing Tableau to do the work is by using

Show Me; this is the menu that appears in the top-right side of the
toolbar.

Show Me
Show Me is a special menu that can be accessed on the top-right

side of the toolbar. You can easily spot it by its icon: .

When you click on this icon, you can open or close a list of twenty-
four predefined visualizations.

If no fields are selected in your data source, then all the options are
grayed out. If you choose one or multiple fields, then you'll see that
some options are now available. One of them will have an orange
outline—this is the one that Tableau recommends that you select. To
use an option, simply click on it.

Let's take a look at a quick example using Sample - Superstore:

1. Simultaneously select Order Date, Category, and Profit in the

Data pane (using Ctrl or command).
2. Open the Show Me menu.
3. Click on some of the options to see different results.

Show Me is useful for when you first start in Tableau, and when you
have no idea how to visualize your data. You can click on the various
options to see different results and select the one that you prefer.
After some time, you'll use Show Me very rarely. That's because,
even if you have many possibilities, you are limited by how Tableau
arranges the pill.
 Tip
Show Me is quite a powerful option to create box-and-whisker
and bullet graphs. Without Show Me, these two visualizations will
require lots of steps if you were to create them manually.

The automatic ways of building visualizations are fast and easy, but
they are limiting. This is why you need to understand where to put
the fields manually in order to create what you want.

Building a visualization, the manual

way
It's impossible to describe all the possibilities and combinations of
how to build a visualization in Tableau. You are entirely free to
choose where you want to use your fields. However, there are not
many places to put them: here are the different options that you
have:

Put fields in Rows or Columns. If the pill is Discrete (blue), then

you'll see a header. If the pill is Continuous (green), then you'll
see an axis.
Put fields in the Marks properties shelf (such as Color, Size, and
Text).
Add fields in Filters.
Add fields in Pages.

That's it! With this, you can create every possible type of
visualization in Tableau—there is no hidden menu and no secret
page.

In the next section, you'll learn about the different Mark type with an
example for each.
The Mark type
The menu, highlighted in the following screenshot, allows you to
choose the Mark type:

By default, the Mark type is set to Automatic. This means that

Tableau chooses the best visualization based on the fields (that is,
which data types you use and where).

Of course, you can change the Mark type and use any type you
want. For example, if you put Order Date in Columns and Profit in
Rows, Tableau displays a Line chart because it's the best way to
visualize an evolution. However, by using the Marks shelf, you can
select the one you prefer (for example, a bar chart, an area chart, or
whatever you think is best).

Let's explore what you can build with the different Mark type. For
almost every type, there is an example that you can reproduce with
Sample - Superstore.
 Note
You can also download the Mark Types ZIP file from my website
(https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com) in Chapter 6, Design
Insightful Visualizations section, or click on this direct link:
http://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mark-Types.zip.
When you unzip the file, you'll find a Tableau Package Workbook
with an example of each Mark type.

Let's start with our Mark type tour with bar charts:

Bar ( ): This is probably the most common and useful Mark

type. It's perfect for comparing values between multiple
categories. When you don't know how to visualize your data,
start with a bar chart! Here's an example of a visualization using
a bar chart:

Line ( ): This is useful for seeing trends and evolution. When

you have multiple lines, you can easily compare the values at
each time point. However, it's harder to see the global trend
than with a bar. Here's an example of a visualization using a line
chart:
Area ( ): This is useful for seeing the global trend and the
proportions at each time point. Here's an example visualization
using an area chart:

Square ( ): You can create two types of charts with a square

—a heatmap and a treemap. A heatmap is a table, but better.
When you build a table, you have to read every value to
compare them. A heatmap gives the same level of granularity,
but with the ability to quickly spot the top and bottom values.
Here's an example of a heatmap:
A treemap is a hierarchical representation, with nested
rectangles, that gives you a quick idea of the number of values
and the proportion of each of them. Here's an example of a
treemap:

Circle ( ): The big advantage of this Mark type is that you

can easily use two properties, Color and Size, on top of the
position of the circle. In the following example, you can easily
spot the biggest city, the sales, and the profit at a glance:

Shape ( ): When you use the shape Mark, the Shape

property (the boxes beneath the Mark type menu) becomes
available. To use a Shape, drag and drop a Dimension in the
Shape property and each value gets a different shape. Here is
an example of a visualization using Shape:

Wait, there's more! Shapes are among the best features to

customize your visualization and create something unique. You
can add any custom shapes you want in Tableau. You'll learn
how to do that in the next section.
Text ( ): This is used to build tables but also word clouds.
Tables will always be there. You can build the best visualization
ever, but there will still be someone asking for a simple table
because they need to see the values. You can't do anything
about this, so you may as well learn how to create a table:

A word cloud isn't the best visualization to do an analysis.

However, it can be used to see the big picture. As with circle,
you can use a Measure in Size and another one in Color. Here's
an example of a word cloud:
Map ( ): To use the map Mark type, you need at least one
Dimension with a geographical role in the Marks shelf, the
Longitude (generated) field in Columns, and the Latitude
(generated) field in Rows. When you display a map, there are
options to search, zoom, and select values in the menu in the
top-left corner of the map. Here's an example of a map in
Tableau:

Maps are customizable. When you click on the Map top menu,
you'll find options to change the background, use a custom
geocoding, manually edit the locations, add the legend.
However, the two most important options are:

Map layers: Opens a new pane on the left where you can
change the Style of the map, the Washout, and add or
 remove multiple Layers such as Coastline, Cities,
Country Borders, Building footprints, and so on.
Map options: Opens a new menu on the map where you
can customize the options to search and zoom, but also
change the units and remove the toolbar.

Pie ( ): When you select Pie in the Mark type selector, a new
property becomes available: angle. To create a pie chart, put a
Dimension in Color and a Measure in the Angle property. A pie
chart works in one specific situation when you want to compare
the proportion between two values. With more than two values,
a bar chart is always more efficient. Here's an example of a
visualization, representing the unranked sales by category with
a pie chart and a bar chart:

If you still want to create a pie chart, at least don't forget to sort
the values as in the following example:
Gantt Bar ( ): This is generally used to create a Gantt
chart, and this visualization is helpful when you manage projects
over time or if you want to create a timeline. A Gantt Bar uses a
Continuous field (generally a date) in Rows or Columns to set
the initial position and another Continuous field in Size. Here is
an example of using a Gantt Bar for a resume:

Polygon ( ): This Mark type exists when you want to

represent something supposedly impossible to do in Tableau.
When you select Polygon, a new property is available: Path. To
create a polygon, you'll need a Dimension representing the
unique identifier of each polygon, and a number in Path to
connect the points and draw the polygons and coordinates in
Rows and Columns. Once you have that, you can create, for
example, the following polygon:

Note
The preceding example is a Stream Graph created by
Ludovic Tavernier. You can learn how to build a Stream
Graph with this tutorial:
https://greatified.com/2018/09/17/how-to-build-a-stream-
graph-in-tableau-software/

Density ( ): The newest Mark type was introduced in

Tableau 2018.3, and it allows you to show the density of your
Marks. The superposition of multiple Marks determines the color
intensity. It's a very simple Mark type; you can use it in various
cases as long as you have many Marks overlapping. In the
following example, you can see where the concentration of
customers is by sales and quantity:
Now that you know how and when to use the different Mark type, it's
time to learn how to use another critical part of the Marks shelf, that
is, the Mark properties.
Mark properties
There are five Mark properties that are always available: Color,
Size, Text/Label, Detail, and Tooltip. There are also three
properties available only when using a specific Mark type: Shape,
Path, and Angle.

Any unaggregated field, returning more than one value that is used
in a Mark property splits the number of Marks (except for the Tooltip
property).

For example, if you put a Dimension that contains three different

values in the Color property, the number of Marks is split by three.

Let's examine each property with the different options you have to
make better visualizations. For each property, you'll find an example
that you can reproduce with Sample – Superstore and World
Indicators.

Note
You can also download the Mark Properties ZIP file from my
website (https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com) in Chapter 6, Design
Insightful Visualizations, or click on this direct link:
http://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mark-
Properties.zip. When you unzip the file, you'll find a Tableau
Package Workbook with an example of each Mark type.

Let's start with the most frequently used property: Color.

Color
Color is represented by the following icon: . It is probably the
most useful and widely used property. It can be used to change the
color of all the Marks, slice a Mark if you use a Dimension, or display
another insight if you use a Measure.

If you don't place any fields on the Color property, then clicking on
the Color button opens a menu where you can set the color of the
Marks, change the opacity, and add borders and a halo. You can
also click on More colors... to open a menu where you can choose
the exact color of your choice. If you drag and drop a field on Color,
Tableau uses colors to add a new layer of information. The behavior
is different between a Continuous field and a Discrete field.

If you use a Discrete field (in blue and usually a Dimension), each
value of the field has a distinct color. Tableau uses a default set of
colors, but you can edit them by clicking on the Color button and
then on Edit Colors.

A new window opens where you can choose between different color
palettes and assign a specific color to each value. Here's an
example of a Discrete field on Color, with the Edit Colors window:

Additionally, on the Edit Colors window, to personalize your

visualization even more, you can double-click on a data item to open
another menu where you can choose any color of your choice. Using
this menu, you can also use a color picker to select a color on your
screen.

Note
It's possible to add a custom color palette by editing
Preference.tps in your Tableau repository, as explained in the
Tableau documentation at
https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-
us/formatting_create_custom_colors.html.

If you use a Continuous field (in green and usually a Measure),

Tableau uses a color gradient from the minimum value to the
maximum value. If there are positive and negative values, Tableau
automatically chooses a diverging palette. Again, the default color
palette can be edited by clicking on the Color and Edit Colors
options. If you edit the color of a Continuous Field, a different
window opens. Here's an example of using a Continuous Field in
Color with the Edit Colors window opened:

Using this menu, you have many options to configure your palette.
You can set the number of steps, reverse the palette and, after
clicking on the Advanced button, set the Start, Middle, and Center of
the palette. Again, if you click on a color box, it opens an advanced
menu to choose the exact color of your choice.
 Note
When using the Density Mark type, you can modify the Intensity
value by clicking on Color.

After Color, the second property is Size.

Size

Size is represented by the following icon: . Size is used almost

all the time when designing a visualization. It can be used to simply
change the size of the Marks or, as with Color, to add more
information.

If you don't put any fields on the Size property, then clicking on the
Size button opens a small menu where you can change the size of
the Marks. If you put a field on the Size property, the values of the
field will be represented with different sizes. If you use a Discrete
field, each value has a specific size. If you use a Continuous field,
Tableau uses a scale from the minimum value to the maximum
value.

The following screenshot is an example of a Continuous field in Size:

When using a field in the Size property, a legend appears (usually on
the right-hand side). If you double-click on the legend, a new menu
opens. Using this menu, you can choose how the size varies, but
also set the Start, End, and Size range. Here is the menu:

The next property reacts differently depending on the Mark type.

Label (text)

Label (or text) is represented by this icon: . There are two

different cases: when you use the text Mark type, and if you use any
other type. In both cases, you can drag and drop multiple fields on
the property.

If you use the text Mark type, this property is named Text. If you put
a Measure in this property, the aggregated value is displayed. If you
put a Dimension in this property, then all the different values are
displayed, multiplying the number of Marks.

If you click on the Text button, you'll find an option to change the
alignment and, if you click on the box with the three dots (...),
Tableau opens the Edit Label window. This window is a text editor
where you can modify the font, the size, the color, and write any text
you want. Here's an example of Sales and Quantity in Text with the
Edit Label window and the result:

If you use any Mark type other than text, then this property is named
Label and you can use it to add a label to the current Marks (on a
bar chart or a line chart, for example). The value of a Measure will be
displayed in the visualization; a Dimension will split the number of
Marks. When you click on the Label button, you'll find many options:

Show Mark labels is the same as clicking on the icon in

the toolbar.
The options under Label Appearance allow you to change the
text, the font, and the alignment.
The buttons under Marks to Label allows you to choose which
Marks will have a label. You can add a label to all the Marks, to
the maximum or minimum only, to only those that are selected,
or to the highlighted ones.
The last option allows the labels to overlap. By default, Tableau
chooses to show the labels only if they don't overlap.

The following screenshot is an example of using a Label to add the

Profit Ratio, Segment, and Customer Name information in Circle:
The next property is elementary, but also very useful!

Detail

Detail is represented by this icon: . Like the previous Mark

properties, dropping a Dimension on Detail splits the Marks. And
that's it! This property does nothing more than splitting the Marks.
You can use Detail to show your data at a less aggregated level.

Tooltip is the next property, and it's the only one that doesn't split the
Marks.

Tooltip

Tooltip is represented by this icon: .

The tooltip is displayed when you hover over a Mark. Any field that
you drop on Tooltip is added to the tooltip box. The fields in the
tooltip are always aggregated. For Dimensions, Tableau uses a
special aggregation, ATTR, to display them. This aggregation returns
the value if it's unique, otherwise, it shows *. Clicking on the Tooltip
button opens a window where you can edit the text and change a
few options.

Here's an example of a customized Tooltip:

You can also add other Worksheets to the tooltip property. This
functionality is called Viz in Tooltip. In the Tooltip editing window, in
the top-left corner, you have the option to insert additional
information but also other sheets. To learn more about this feature,
you can visit https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-
us/viz_in_tooltip.htm.

Here is an example of a visualization using a Viz in Tooltip:

The next property, Shape, is only available with the Mark type of the
same name.

Shape

Shape is represented by this icon: . You can only use a

Discrete field with Shape. When you drop a field on the Shape
property, the different values of the field are represented with
different shapes. When you click on the Shape button, Tableau
opens the Edit Shape window where you can, as with color, select
predefined shape palettes and assign them to the values.

However, the really interesting aspect of shapes is that you can add
custom shapes. You can do this as follows:

1. Find the Shapes folder in your Tableau repository (usually

inside the My Documents folder on your computer). In the Shape
folder, you'll find one folder for each shape palette.
2. Create a new folder, name it as you want, and put different
images inside it (PNG, JPG, BMP, or GIF are accepted).
3. In Tableau, in the Edit Shape window, click on Reload Shapes,
and you'll find your new palette with your custom shapes.

Here is an example of using country flags:

Next, let's see the Path property.

Path

Path is represented by this icon: . This property is available for

both line charts and polygons. If you click on the Path button,
Tableau opens a menu where you can select the Line Type: Linear,
Step, or Jump. Here's an example of a step line:

This property also allows you to choose the order to connect the
Marks. Usually, you only use it if, in your data, there is a special
order to connect the Marks to create a specific visualization as for
polygons.
The next and final property only exists for pie charts.

Angle

Angle is represented by this icon: . You have to use an angle

to create a pie chart and you can only use a Continuous field on
Angle. When you use a field on Angle, the values are used to
calculate the angle of the different portions of the pie.

You now have all the knowledge you need to build almost every
visualization in Tableau, but to truly unleash Tableau's potential, you
need to learn what you can do when using multiple Measures at the
same time.
Using multiple Measures
Until now, you've always used only one Continuous field (usually a
Measure) at a time on the Rows or Columns shelf. Let's discover what
happens when you use more than one.

If you use more than one Continuous field at a time in Rows or

Columns, Tableau creates multiple axes, and the Marks shelf splits
according to the number of Continuous fields (plus one for All). Each
Marks shelf can have a different Mark type and properties.

Tip
If you change the Mark type or properties for All, all the Marks are
affected.

Let's build an example together, as follows:

1. Put the Continuous Quarter of Order Date in Columns, then

Profit and Profit Ratio in Rows. The Marks shelf is split into
three, one for SUM(Profit), one for AGG(Profit Ratio), and one
for All, as you can see in the highlighted area:
 2. Click on the SUM(Profit) Marks shelf and change the Mark type to
a Bar and the Color property to black as illustrated here:

Tip
Keep this visualization for the next section!

As you can see, you can edit the different Marks shelves
independently. But can we do more than that? Well, yes! Let's discuss
dual axis and Measure values/names.

Dual Axis
When you want to combine two Continuous fields, it is possible to
create a dual axis. With a dual axis, there is one axis on the left, one
on the right, and the Marks are superimposed. To create a dual axis,
right-click on the second Continuous field and click on Dual Axis, as
shown in the following screenshot:
When using a dual axis, the pills are merged. If the Mark type is set to
Automatic, they might change when using dual axis. However, it's still
possible to edit them individually by using the different Marks shelves.
By default, Tableau puts Measure Names in Color to distinguish the
two fields. You can, of course, modify the color or remove it.

Tip
Dual Axis allows you to build new types of visualization, such as
the following:

Donut chart: https://kb.tableau.com/articles/issue/creating-donut-

charts
Dual Axis map:
https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-
us/maps_dualaxis.html
Lollipop chart: https://www.tableau.com/fr-
fr/about/blog/2017/1/viz-whiz-when-use-lollipop-chart-and-how-
build-one-64267

With dual axis, the range of the two different axes can be different. For
example, in the preceding example, we compared the Profit in dollars
and the Profit Ratio in percentages. However, if you're comparing
values with a similar scale (such as sales from the current year and
sales from the last year), the axes need to be in the same range. To do
that, right-click on an axis and select Synchronize Axis.

But what if you need to compare more than two Measures? Triple axis
doesn't exist, sorry! To do that, you'll use Measure Names and
Measure Values.

Measure Names and Measure Values

If you remember, in the data source, there is one special Dimension,
Measure Names, and one special Measure, Measure Values.
Measure values return the values of the different Measures and
Measure Names return their names. You can use them to display as
many Measures as you want.

When you use Measure values in View, Tableau displays the Measure
values shelf where you can add as many Measures as you want.

The easiest way to display multiple Measures with Measure Values

and Measure Names is to perform the following steps:

1. Put the Continuous Quarter of Order Date in Columns and Sales

in Rows.
2. Drag and drop Profit over the existing axis (you can see the
different icon when you're hovering above the axis), as shown in
the following screenshot:
3. Tableau automatically replaces the Sales pill by Measure Values,
puts Measure Names in Color, and also places it on the Filters
shelf.
4. Now, you can add Quantity in the Measure Values shelf, as
shown in the following screenshot:

Tip
Another way to add a new Measure is by editing the Measure
Names filter and selecting the Measure you want.

5. In contrast to Dual Axis, there is only one axis here, meaning that
you can only have one scale. If the different Measures have
significant different scales, it may be hard to see the variation. In
the following screenshot, you can see that the Quantity values
are too small, compared to Sales and Profit, to be readable:
Another significant difference with a dual axis is that there is only one
Marks shelf. That's because there is only one Continuous Field,
Measure Values. This means that you cannot control the Mark type or
properties for each Measure.

With Dual Axis, you can only combine two Continuous fields, but they
can have different Mark types, properties, and axis ranges. With
Measure Values and Measure Names, you can use as many
Measures as you want, but only with one axis and one Marks shelf.
The choice is yours, so use the best option!

The next section is unavoidable when speaking about data: Filters.

Filters
Filtering a value is very simple in Tableau; you simply drag and drop
any field onto the Filters shelf. You can filter as many fields as you
want.

To decide where a filter should be applied, right-click on its pill in the

Filters shelf, go to Apply to Worksheets and select one of the
following options:

All Using Related Data Sources: Only useful when you have
multiple data sources in your Workbook. This option allows you
to filter on multiple data sources at the same time.
All Using This Data Source: This option automatically adds the
filter to every Worksheet that uses the current data source.
Selected Worksheets...: This option opens a new window
where you can manually select the different Worksheets where
the filter should be applied.
Only This Worksheet: The filter is only applied to the current
Worksheet (by default).

Here's the menu:

Note
 If the field you want to filter is a Measure, a new window opens,
asking you to choose an aggregation or All values (no
aggregation).

There are differences between a Discrete and a Continuous field,

and with dates compared to other data types. Let's discover those
differences.

Filtering a Continuous field

When filtering a Continuous field, Tableau opens the Continuous
filters window. In this window, you have four options:

Range of values: Select the minimum and maximum value;

everything outside is excluded.
At least: Select the minimum value; everything lower is
excluded.
At most: Select the maximum value; everything higher is
excluded.
Special: You can filter only the null or only the non-null values.

Let's discover what happens when you want to filter a Discrete field.

Filtering a Discrete field

When you use a Discrete field on Filters, a new window
automatically opens. In this window, you have four tabs with different
options. The conditions you set on each tab are combined. Let's
demonstrate how to use the different tabs:

General: You can select the values you want to keep (or to
exclude if you check the Exclude box). At the bottom, there are
buttons to select All the values or None; at the top, you can
choose between the following:
 Select from list: This is the default option, where you can
select each item.
Custom value list: This is where you can enter a list of
custom values to keep or exclude.
Use all: To keep all the values.

Wildcard: You can enter some text so that the filter keeps (or
excludes) the values that Contains, Starts with, Ends with, or
Exactly matches your text.
Condition: You can specify a condition based on a field or
formula. Only the values that fulfill the condition are kept.
Top: This filter will only keep the values on top (or at the bottom)
based on a value. There are four main drop-down menus to
configure the filter:

Choose between either the top or bottom values

Specify the number of values to keep (with a number, a
parameter, or, a set)
Select a field and an aggregation

Filters also allow you to add interactivity to your visualizations; this is

possible thanks to quick filters.

Quick filters
With a right-click on a pill in the Filters shelf, you can find the Show
Filter option. It's the first option in this book that adds interactivity in
Tableau. Clicking on Show Filter opens the quick filter card on the
Worksheet.

Tip
You can automatically add a quick filter by right-clicking on a field
in the Data pane or a pill in View and selecting Show Filter.
The quick filter allows you, and the people who interact with the
visualization, to filter the values without having to open a menu.
Here's an example of a quick filter on Region, where only Central
and East are selected:

There are many interesting options when you click on the arrow in
the top-right of the quick filter card:

Here's a selection of the most important options:

You can allow single selections or multiple selections. For both

options, you can choose between a List, a Dropdown list, or a
Slider. The Wildcard Match is a bit different, as it allows any
values to be entered and will keep the values that contain the
pattern.
In Customize, you can remove all from the quick filter list. It
may be crucial that you don't allow all the values to be selected
 at once.
In Customize again, the last option allows you to add an Apply
button to the quick filters that allow multiple selections. It's
useful when you have a long list of values, and you don't want
the visualization to refresh after each selection.
If you select Only Relevant Values, the quick filter only shows
the possible values when considering the other filters. This
option is similar to the All Values in Hierarchy option that is
automatically applied when you are using fields from a common
hierarchy. All Values in Database always shows all the values
of the field, even if the combination of the different filters returns
no lines.

Tip
A quick filter based on a Continuous field is always represented
by a slider. You can customize it to display the Readouts, the
Slider, and the Null controls. You can also visually choose
between the Range of Values, At Least, or At Most.

Now that you know how to add filters and play with quick filters, let's
discuss the hierarchies between the filters.

Filter hierarchy
All Dimension filters are applied at the same time. There is, by
default, no hierarchy between them, but you can add one with
context.

Context
Using context is a way to add a hierarchy between the different
Dimension filters. Consider the following example using Sample -
Superstore:
1. Create a visualization with City in Rows and Sales in Columns,
and use the button in the toolbar to sort the values.
2. Add City to the Filters shelf and, on the Top tab, select Top 5
by Sales, as shown in the following screenshot:

3. Add a quick filter to State. You can do this very easily with a
right-click on the State field in the Data pane and selecting
Show Filter.
4. In the quick filter, select only California. Tableau combines the
two filters and looks for cities that are both in the global top five
and in California. Tableau returns only two cities, Los Angeles
and San Francisco. This is not what we want:

5. Right-click on the State pill on the Filters shelf and select Add
to Context. The pill automatically turns gray and goes above
the City pill. The result is as expected; you see the top five cities
in California:
You can now select any state from the quick filter and see the top
five cities in that state. Thanks to context, Tableau first filters the
states and then keeps the top five cities.

Context is a great way to put hierarchies between your different

filters. To end this section about filters, let's discuss the general
hierarchies between different filters.

Global filter hierarchy

There are six different types of filters that you can add. Some are
stronger than others, and it's important to know the order in which
the filters are applied. Always keep this book close to you when
using Tableau, and look at the following screenshot if you need to
ask yourself a question about the hierarchy between filters:

Of course, on top, you find Extract Filters. As the extract is a local

copy of your data, if you add a filter when creating the extract, you
completely remove the unwanted data from the data source. In
second place, among the data source options, you can add Data
Source Filters. All the data is present, but only some is used. Then,
as we saw, Context Filters are stronger than the Dimension
Filters. Finally, at the bottom, the last filters to be applied are the
Measure Filters.
 Note
Fixed, include/exclude, and table calculation are all advanced
techniques, which we'll address later.

Let's continue with a very special shelf called Pages.

Pages
Not only do pages add interactivity to your visualization, but they're
also the only way to create animations in Tableau. You may have
never seen a Tableau visualization with animations for a simple
reason: Tableau Server and Tableau Public can't display the
animations yet. But what exactly are pages?

Note
Pages are very rarely used because animations don't work when
you publish your work. For this reason, we won't go into too
much detail about this functionality.

Pages act as a single value filter. Each value is a page, and you can
click on the Play button to go through all the pages and create an
animation.

There are a few things to bear in mind if you want to use pages, as
follows:

You can only use Discrete fields in pages.

When you put a field in pages, the pages card, displayed in the
following screenshot, automatically opens:
Here are some things you need to know about the page card:

The first line displays the current page, and the arrows allow you
to go to the next or previous value.
The slider gives you an idea of how many values there are, and
you can move the cursor to go through them.
On the third line, on the left-hand side, you can see the
animation buttons. You can use them to automatically go
through all the pages or to stop the animation. On the same line,
on the right-hand side, you can see the speed buttons. They
define how fast Tableau changes the page.
At the bottom, you can decide whether to show the history.

If you decide to Show history, a new menu opens.

In this menu, you can configure how to display the Marks from the
preceding pages. Let's briefly explore the different options if you
decide to show the history:

In the first part, you specify which Marks should display the
history (for example, only the one you selected or all).
In the second part, you define how many historical Marks to
show (for example, all or the last number of your choice).
The third part allows you to choose between showing the
historical Marks, only the trails (that is, the path from the prior
point to the next), or both.
Finally, in the two other parts, you can customize the format of
the historical Marks or the trails.

Tip
For more example about animations and pages, visit
https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-
us/buildmanual_shelves.htm#pages-shelf.
We have seen all the different shelves available in Tableau. To
conclude this chapter, let's take a look at the various options that are
available in a Worksheet.
Worksheet options and formats
There are lots of options available in a Worksheet, and you can find
them in many different places. The three most usual places to
find options are as follows:

With a right-click on a pill

In the Worksheet menu at the top
By right-clicking on the View (or on a Mark)

Let's go through a selection of the most useful options for each

place, starting with the pill options.

Pill options
Many options are available by right-clicking on a pill. As always,
there are some differences between Continuous and Discrete pills.

Among the most important options, you'll find the following:

Filter...: A shortcut to put the current pill in the Filters shelf and
open the Edit Filter window.
Show Filter: This automatically puts the pill in the Filters shelf
and displays the quick filter (it doesn't open the menu).
Show Highlighter (only for Discrete pills): This opens the
Highlighter card, which allows you to highlight a specific value,
as shown in the following screenshot:
 Sort (only for Discrete pills): This opens the Sort window, where
you can change the sort order of the values.

You can also directly transform the pill into a Dimension, an

Attribute, or a Measure. If the pill returns a number, you can choose
between converting it to Discrete or Continuous. If the pill is a
Measure, then you can also create table calculations, but that's for
another chapter!

Next, we'll see the options available on the Worksheet menu.

Worksheet menu options

At the top, among the different menus of Tableau, you can find the
Worksheet menu, which contains a few interesting options. Again,
let's focus on the more important ones, as follows:

Export allows you to export the Worksheet as an image, as

data (a CSV file), or an Excel cross-tab. If you choose image,
a new window opens where you can customize the result. The
Data and Excel options both convert the visualization into a
table.
Tooltip... is a shortcut to edit the tooltip.
With the different Show... options, you can display or hide many
different shelves or cards as well as the sort controls. The
Caption is a quick description of the Worksheet, and the
Summary adds statistical information to the visualization.
Duplicate as Crosstab duplicates your current Worksheet to
create a new one and transforms the visualization into a table.

Tip
By right-clicking in the bottom of the Worksheet tab, you can
perform the same action.
The final sets of options are available with a right-click on the View.

View options
In case you forgot, the part that displays the visualization and
contains the headers, axes, and Marks is called the View. When you
right-click on the different elements of the View, you may find a
number of attractive options.

As before, you'll find here a list and description of the most useful
options:

View Data opens a new window with, by default, a summary of

the displayed data, or the full data, which shows all the lines
that are used to build the visualization. From the View Data
window, you can also copy or export the current selection to a
CSV file.
Edit Locations... is available when the Mark has a geographical
role and lets you configure the locations in a new window.
With Mark Label, you can force the Mark to always, or never,
show the label.
Annotate lets you add an annotation to a specific Mark, Point,
or Area in the View. When you select one of the three options,
Tableau opens the Edit Annotation window, where you can
customize the text. Adding an annotation is an excellent way to
add context to your visualization. Here's an example of an
annotation:

Keep Only and Exclude are options that are available with a
simple left-click on a Mark. Keep Only automatically adds a
filter that includes only the value of the selected Mark. Exclude
also adds a filter, but this time, the filter excludes the selected
 value. Both options can be handy for focusing on the interesting
values and eliminating mistakes in your data.

If you right-click on an axis, you can edit it. Tableau opens the Edit
Axis window, where you can configure many aspects of the axis,
such as the range, the scale, the titles, and the tick Marks.

Always remember that if you are searching for how to configure or

edit something in Tableau, a simple right-click is almost always
enough. This is the case, for example, for opening a very useful final
option: format.

Format
When you select the Format options, Tableau opens a whole new
pane on the left-hand side rather than the Data pane. The formatting
pane is highlighted in the following screenshot:

There are five different icons for the various formatting options
available. For each option, the formatting can be applied to the
Worksheet, the Rows, or the Columns, and to different parts of the
View (Worksheet, Pane, Header, Title, and so on). The five
formatting options allow you to do the following:

Format Font: Select the font type, size, and color

 Format Alignment: Change the text alignment, direction, and
wrapping
Format Shading: Add a background color, and column or row
banding
Format Borders: Add a border and column or row dividers
Format Lines: Change the format (to plain or dotted) of the
different lines in Tableau (such as grid lines, zero lines, trends
lines, and more)

Tip
There is also an entire Format menu on top, where you can
change the format of almost everything in Tableau. In this menu,
you can open the Format Workbook pane, which is very useful
for configuring the format of the entire Workbook in a few clicks.

With those options, you can quickly make everything beautiful or

ugly. The only advice I can give you on this is to keep it simple,
readable, and easy to understand!
Summary
You now have all the keys to build your first visualizations,
automatically or manually. The different Mark types and properties
no longer hold any mystery for you. You also learned how to build a
visualization with more than two Measures using Dual Axis, Measure
Names, and Measure Values.

In this chapter, you also learned how to use filters to focus on the
right data. Then, we looked at pages and how to add interactivity to
Tableau! To finish, we explored the most useful options, where to find
them, and how to use them.

This chapter is the longest and most important one in the book. It's
the core of Tableau and where you'll spend a major part of your time.
I'm sure you'll enjoy building many different visualizations to find the
ones that make your data shine.

Once you find the best visualizations to understand your data and
answer your questions, it's time to assemble them in a Dashboard.
You have probably already guessed where this is going - the next
chapter is about building Dashboards, how to create them and make
them interactive, and, of course, this will be a chapter containing all
the best advice and lots of examples.
Chapter 7. Powerful
Dashboards, Stories, and
Actions
A Dashboard is a composition of multiple Worksheets, and objects
such as Container, Text, Image, and Actions to create interactivity.
The goal of a Dashboard is to provide insights on a regular basis.
The look and feel don’t change, just the data. In this chapter, you’ll
learn how to create a Dashboard, you’ll understand the different
objects available, and will be able to choose between the different
Actions. A Story is a composition of Worksheets and Dashboards.
You’ll learn how to create and use a Story to do a presentation, or to
tell an amazing story you found in your data.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

Dashboard basics
Dashboard objects
Dashboard actions
Creating a Story

Let's start with the Dashboard basics.

Dashboard basics
If a Worksheet is one idea, a Dashboard is a way to combine
multiple such ideas. With a Dashboard, you can create interaction
between the Worksheets, and add pictures, web pages, and other
objects to create a unique page that will answer all your questions.

To add a new Dashboard, you can either click on the icon at the
bottom-right,
, click on New Dashboard from the Dashboard top menu, or use
the New Dashboard button in the toolbar.

The Dashboard workplace is composed of a central blank part where

you can drop Worksheets and objects. On the left pane, you can find
two tabs, Dashboard and Layout:

Tip
You can't see the Data pane when creating a Dashboard. If you
need to modify your data source, you have to go to a Worksheet.

Let's start by seeing how to build a Dashboard; then, we'll focus on

the two different tabs.
Building a dashboard
To create a Dashboard, you have to drag Worksheets or objects to
the central blank area (you can also double-click on a Worksheet,
but as always, you let Tableau build it for you).

A Worksheet that you add in a Dashboard is the Worksheet itself;

this means that if you modify the Worksheet, you'll see the change in
both the Dashboard and the Worksheet.

Tip
Usually, the purpose of a Worksheet is to end up in a Dashboard.
You can hide all the Worksheets that are in a Dashboard by
using the Hide All Sheets option when you right-click on a
Dashboard tab. You can, of course, unhide them as easily.

You cannot modify any of the Worksheet shelves from the

Dashboard. However, you can still use all the toolbar buttons (to sort,
add labels, swap, create groups, and so on) and use a right-click to
change the format, or all the other options we've seen in the
previous chapter.

When you click on a Worksheet in a Dashboard, its outline will turn

gray, and you'll see four (or five) icons:

: The first removes the Worksheet from the Dashboard.

: The second takes you to the Worksheet to modify it.

: The third is a shortcut to put a filter action on the

Worksheet (detailed in a later section).

: The fourth icon is optional, and it can be used to fix the

width or height of the Worksheet if it's inside a horizontal or
 vertical Container.

: The last one, the small arrow, opens the options for the
selection Worksheet. Many of those options can be found
elsewhere among the Worksheets or Dashboard options. The
most useful options are probably legends, Filters, and
parameters, which allow you to quickly add the Legends, Filters,
or Parameters that exist on the Worksheet to the Dashboard.

Speaking of options, let's discover what you can do with the pane on
the left.

The dashboard and layout panes

On the left of the Dashboard workplace, you can find two panes,
Dashboard and Layout. Simply click on Dashboard or Layout to
open the different panes.

The Dashboard pane

On the top, you'll find the different device layouts available for your
Dashboard. You'll learn more about that in a later section of this
chapter.

The second—and more important than you think—useful option is

Size. Here, you can set the size of your Dashboard to Fixed (with a
list of standard sizes, and also the option to set the height and width
manually), Automatic (the Dashboard will resize to fit the screen), or
Range, with a minimum and maximum range.

Tip
Automatic may seem to be the best option, but it is often the
worst. The ratio between height and width is critical in data
visualization, and with automatic sizing, you have no control. A
bad ratio can lead your Dashboard to look very bad, even
 unusable. My advice is to go with Fixed size when you want
absolute power over the looks of your visualization, or choose
Range to allow resizing for when the Dashboard will be
displayed on many different screen sizes.

On the Dashboard pane, the part you'll use the most is sheets.
Here, you'll find all the different Worksheets in your workbook, as
long as they are not hidden (you understand, now, why giving a
meaningful name to each of them is crucial).

Beneath the list of Worksheets, you can find the different objects that
you can add to your Dashboard, and the option to choose between
Tiled and Floating. All these essential functionalities will be seen in
detail in this chapter.

To finish, at the very bottom, you can use the checkbox to choose
whether to show the Dashboard title. Let's continue on to the Layout
pane.

The Layout pane

The Layout pane is handy when you select a Worksheet or
Container in the Dashboard. You can show or hide its title, make it
float or not, change its position and size (only for floating items), add
a border, modify the background, and add outer and inner padding.
Don't be afraid to try those different options, especially the padding,
to add some space to your Dashboard.

At the bottom, you'll find the Item hierarchy:

Here, you can unfold all your Dashboard items to find, edit or remove
them. Among the different elements, you’ll see the added
Worksheets, but also the different Dashboard objects. Since Tableau
Desktop 2019.1, you can rename the different Containers.

Now, let’s explore the difference between Tiled and Floating.

Tiled or floating layouts

When you drag and drop a Worksheet or an object on your
Dashboard, you can either use Tiled or Floating layouts. Some
users don't like Tiled; others consider Floating dangerous. Let's see
the pros and cons.

Tiled
Tiled is the default way to add elements on a Dashboard. At the
beginning, it seems perfect: the grey part where you're dragging an
element helps you to see where it'll go; the different items are
distributed evenly; and it stays in place when you resize the
Dashboard. But rapidly, you'll notice the limits of that technique.

Many cons make it hard to create a great Dashboard with Tiled

Layouts:

You have low control over the size and position of the elements.
Achieving a pixel-perfect Dashboard is a big fight (maybe a little
less now that the grid exists).
You cannot add a border or a background that outlines multiple
items.
You cannot move multiple items at the same time.

What about the Floating Layout, then?

Floating
The Floating Layout often became the default layout for people who
had terrible experiences with Tiled. With this layout, you can drag
and drop any element wherever you want. With the Layout pane,
you can define the exact position and size of every item. Among the
options (with the small descending arrow), you can also specify the
Floating order to move the element to the back or the front.

The Floating Layout seems to be far better than Tiled, but it's more
time-consuming to define the position and size of everything on the
Dashboard. Also, the main problem is the time you have to spend if
you need to make changes in your Dashboard. Let's say that you
want to add a new Worksheet above all the existing ones—you'll
need to reset the position and size of all the existing elements on
your Dashboard, one by one. That's also the case when you resize
the Dashboard.

In short, Tiled is probably better for quick business dashboards that

can easily evolve, and Floating is better for pixel-perfect one pagers.
Fortunately, there is a third solution, using Containers, that we'll see
in the next section about objects. But first, let's talk about device
layouts.
Device layouts
You can create different device layouts on your Dashboard. Then,
depending on the device used to open the Workbook (on Tableau
Public, Server, or Mobile), the right layout is automatically chosen.

Since Tableau 2019.1, every Dashboard starts with two layouts: the
default layout that you use to build your Dashboard, and an
automatic Phone layout generated by Tableau.

To visualize or add new device layouts, click on the Device Preview

button on the Dashboard pane to open the layout toolbar:

On this toolbar, you can select the type of device, the model, and the
orientation of the layout. When you're done, click on the last button
to add the layout and start personalizing it. You can add two
additional layouts: Desktop and Tablet.

On the Dashboard pane on the left, you can click on the different
layouts to switch from one to the other and configure them. You can
specify the fitting and the height of the layout. You can also see the
different items that exists in the Default layout and choose to keep
or remove them (they are only removed from the selected layout and
not from the other layouts). It's also possible to add other objects,
such as text, that will be visible only for the selected layout.

Since Tableau Desktop 2019.1, you have two options for the Phone
layout: either use the automatic layout generated by Tableau, or edit
it manually.

Let's finish this introduction with the different Dashboard options.

Dashboard options
In the top menu, between Worksheet and Story, you can find the
different Dashboard options.

Among those options, the most important one surely is Actions....

There is a focus on Actions in a later section. Format is also handy
as you can configure the Dashboard color background, titles, and
text objects.

The Grid is a great feature if, like me, you like when everything is
properly aligned. You can decide whether to show the Grid, and how
to configure its size.

Tip
To show or hide the Grid, you can also press the G key on your
keyboard!

All the other options are either straightforward to understand and use
(such as Export Image...) or just duplicates of options in different
places (such as Device Layouts, Show Title, and Auto Update).

That's it for the basics, but you still have many things to learn about
Dashboards! A major part of building a Dashboard is adding objects.
Dashboard objects
Most of the objects are very simple. Drag and drop them on the
Dashboard to use them. Here's a list of existing objects:

Text: Drag and drop a Text object anywhere in your Dashboard

and you'll be able to add free text. This is great for titles,
explanations, credits, and so on.
Image: This is the same as Text, except you'll add an image
instead of text. You can add almost any image files. This is great
for logos or to add some context to your Dashboard. Once
you've added an image, you have a few options when you right-
click on it, such as fit or center the image, or add a target URL
when someone clicks on the picture.
Web Page: This is more useful than you think! Of course, you
can use it to display a web page in your Dashboard, but you can
also link this web page to a Dashboard action to load different
URLs based on your data. We will look at this in more detail in
the Go to URL action section.
Blank: Inserts a blank space.
Extensions: A recent feature that enables you to add new
features or interact with data from other applications. When you
add an extension to your Dashboard, a new window opens
asking to select a .trex file. You can either create your own
extensions, or download one from the Extension gallery at
https://extensiongallery.tableau.com/.

Note
If you want to learn how to build your own extensions, you'll
find tutorials, samples, and clear explanations on the
Tableau Extensions GitHub page, at
https://tableau.github.io/extensions-api.
Each extension has its own permissions and configuration window.

Button: Another recent feature to navigate between your

Dashboards or Worksheets—it adds a button that you can, with
a right-click, configure (to specify where to navigate) and
personalize (change the image or add a tooltip).

As you can see, most of the objects are easy to understand and use.
However, there are two other objects, the containers, that need a bit
more explanation.

Containers
The purpose of a Container is to group elements inside a shared
space and allow you to have better control over those elements
inside. They can be horizontal or vertical. The following screenshots
are an example of three worksheets in a horizontal container:

Tip
You can recognize a container by the blue dotted lines between
the Worksheets.

When you add a Container, it'll be empty. Then, you can drag and
drop Worksheets or objects inside it. You can also add another
Container inside a Container, and so on; it's a good practice that I
advise you to adopt. The first thing you do when you start to build a
Dashboard should be adding a container.

If you have Containers inside Containers, you can select the parent
Container by clicking on Select Layout Container among the
options (available with a click on the small arrow from a select
element), or you can also simply double-click on the grip part of
every element, as highlighted in the following screenshot:

Tip
Another way to select a specific Container is to use the Item
hierarchy in the Layout pane.

Containers act like the other elements in a Dashboard. The only

difference is that their outline is blue when selected (while the other
items are grey).

So, why exactly are Containers a good solution? First, every element
inside a Container has two great options:

Fix Width for a horizontal Container or Fix Height for a vertical

Container. If this option is ticked, the width/height of the element
will not change. So, if you change the size of your Dashboard or
add new elements, the size of the fixed item won't move.
 Tip
In a Container, you should always have at least one element
whose width/height is not fixed, so it can fill the space or
shrink.

Edit Width... for a horizontal Container or Edit Height... for a

vertical Container. This option allows you to set a specific
width/height, in pixels, for every element inside the Container.
Did you want pixel-perfect options as you had with the Floating
Layout? You've got it!

The second reason is that among the Container options, you'll find
Distribute Evenly, which you can see in the following screenshot:

If you select this option, every element inside the Container will have
the same width (or height, depending on the Container type) and will
resize if you add another item and change the size of the
Dashboard.

With Containers, you can set the size of any element to the last
pixels or distribute them evenly. By adding Containers into
Containers, you can use all those features at the same time.

Let's continue to explore the uses of Dashboard and add a bit of

Action!
Dashboard actions
Actions are the more common and easiest way to add interactivity in
Tableau. Usually, you'll add an action to create interactivity between
the different Worksheets of your Dashboard, but you can also add an
action that modifies the Worksheet itself. Actions have at least one
Worksheet as a source, and a target that depends on the Action
type.

There are three ways to trigger an Action:

Hover: Just put your mouse over a mark, and the action is
triggered.
Select: The action is triggered when you click on a mark.
Menu: A link is added at the bottom of the tooltip when clicking
on a mark, but the action is only triggered if you click on that
link. The text of the link can be customized.

You'll find the option to add an action in the Dashboard or Worksheet

top menu. When you click on Actions..., a new window opens where
you can add different types of actions, as you can see in the
following screenshot:

There six different Actions: Filter..., Highlight..., Go to URL..., Go

to Sheet..., Change Parameter..., and Change Set Values....
 Note
You can download a ZIP file called Actions from the Chapter 7:
Create Powerful Dashboards and Stories section of my
website, https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com (or, browse to
http://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Actions.zip).
When you unzip the file, you'll find a Tableau Package Workbook
that contains an example for each action.

Let's now look at the different types of Actions, starting with the most
common one: Filter.

The Filter action

The Filter action is the most common. From one or multiple Source
Worksheets, you can filter one or numerous target worksheets. It's
the only Action with a quick shortcut: when you select a Worksheet,
click on the funnel icon, Use as Filter, and a Filter Action is
automatically generated with the selected Worksheet as Source and
all the others as targets. Of course, if you need more configuration,
you'll need to add it from the Action… menu.

The next screenshot is an example of a Filter action where the

selection of a US state filters the Sales and Profit by Sub-category
worksheets in that state:
With the Filter action menu, you can specify exactly which fields
need to be filtered. You can also dictate the behavior when clearing
the Action. There are three different behaviors:

Leave the filter: When you clear the selection, the Filter stays
as it is. It's the default option for the Menu trigger.
Show all values: When you clear the selection, you'll see all the
values. It's the default option for the Select or Hover trigger.
Exclude all values: When you clear the selection, the target
Worksheets turn blank, as all values have been excluded. It's
only when you trigger the Action again that the selected data is
included.

Tip
The Target Worksheets can be in another Dashboard. Then,
when you trigger the Action, you'll be automatically redirected to
that Dashboard.

The next Action is Highlight. It's a great way to help the users
understand the related fields in your Dashboard.

The Highlight action

The Highlight action is also used quite often. From one or multiple
Source Worksheets, you can highlight fields on one or multiple
Target Worksheets. The next screenshot is an example of a Highlight
action, where hovering over a category from one of the two bottom
Worksheets automatically highlights it on both visualizations:
In the preceding screenshot, we hovered over an Office Supplies
category in the Profit Evolution by Sub-Category Worksheet.
Thanks to the Highlight Action, we can easily spot this category on
the Profit by Category Worksheet.

As for the Action filter, you can specify in the configuration window
which fields should be highlighted.

Note
Contrary to the Action filter, the fields that you want to highlight
need to exist in both the Source and the Target Worksheets (no
matter where; it can be in the Detail Mark property, for example).

The next Action, Go to URL..., is a great way to add interaction with

the world outside of Tableau.

The Go to URL action

The Go to URL... action allows you to open a website directly inside
the Dashboard or in a new window.

The following screenshot is an example of a Go to URL… action

where, when you click on a state in the map, a menu opens saying
Open State Wikipedia page, and if you click on the link, the
Wikipedia page of the state opens on the right, in a Web Page
object:

In the configuration window, you have to specify the URL of the web
page you want to reach. You can write any URL you want, and,
thanks to the small arrow at the end, add fields from the Worksheet.
In the example, we wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ and we added
the State field at the end. You can use the Test Link button to verify
that your URL is working.

Since version 2019.2, you have the ability to choose how to open the
URL target:

New Browser Tab: Always opens the link in a new browser tab,
even if a Web Page object exists in the Dashboard.
Web Page Object: Opens the URL in a Web Page object in
your Dashboard. You can even have multiple Web Page objects
in you Dashboard with multiple URL actions targeting each Web
Page object distinctly.
Browser Tab if No Web Page Objects Exists: The default
option – it opens the URL in a browser tab if there is no Web
Page object.

Let's continue with the Go to Sheet… action .

The Go to Sheet action
The Go to Sheet... action is very simple. From one or multiple source
Worksheets, you can navigate to a target Worksheet or Dashboard.
This action is quite similar to the button object, but with the possibility
to add a navigation action on Worksheets.

The next action allows you to play with Parameter!

The Change Parameter action

Change Parameter... is the newest action introduced in Tableau
2019.2. It allows you to visually change the value of a parameter
based on a Worksheet. Previously, you had to change it from a
menu.

Tip
You'll learn more about parameters in Chapter 10, Analytics and
Parameters.

The following screenshot is an example of how to use this new

Action. When you hover over a State, it updates the value of a
parameter based on the sales of the hovered state. This parameter
is used as the point of comparison against the other states. With
that, you can very easily find the states with higher or lower sales
than the one you focus on (Washington in the following example):
The configuration window for this action is quite straightforward: you
select the source Worksheet(s), the trigger, the target parameter,
and the field used to update the value of the parameter. As for the
highlight action, the field you want to use to update the parameter
needs to be in the view.

This new action will unlock many new opportunities to create

awesome interaction for the users. Another recent action that
opened many new possibilities is the Change Set Values… action.

The Change Set Values action

The Change Set Values… action allows you to select, visually, the
values to put in a set. The behavior is quite similar the Change
Parameter… action. One of the biggest differences is that a
parameter can only have one value, whereas sets can have multiple
values in them.

In the next example, you can see the usage of the Change Set…
action to drill down from the Furniture category to display its sub-
categories:
When you create a Change Set Values… action, in the
configuration window, you can specify source Worksheets, the
trigger, the data source, and the set that will be impacted by the
action. As a set is based on a field, this field needs to be on a
Worksheet.

As for the action filter, you can dictate the behavior when clearing the
action. There are three different behaviors:

Keep set value: When you clear the selection, the current
values of the set stay as selected.
Add all values to set: When you clear the selection, all the
values are added to the set.
Remove all values from set: When you clear the selection, all
the values will be removed out of the set.

That's it for Actions. In the next section, we'll see how to create a
Story.
Creating a story
Stories are designed for data storytelling. You can control what the
users will discover, in which order, and add annotations and
explanations throughout the Story.

Tip
Do not create a Story just to use it as a menu to navigate around
the Dashboard. For that, you have the button object and the Go
to Sheet… action.

Creating a new Story is as simple as creating a Dashboard; you can

either click on the icon at the bottom-right, click on New Story from
the Story top menu, or use the New Story button in the toolbar.

The Story workplace is quite similar to the Dashboard one. You'll find
a central blank part where you can drop Worksheets and
Dashboards. Again, modifying the Dashboards or Worksheets will
impact the Story. On the left pane, you can also find two tabs: Story
and Layout.

The main difference with Dashboards is the Story points. A Story is

usually composed of multiple Story points. Each of them can contain
only one Worksheet or one Dashboard. Here's an example of three
Story points:

When you hover over a Story point, you'll see these four icons:
Each icon has a unique function:

The first one removes the Story point

The second icon reverts the changes to the latest updated state
The third one refreshes the Story point and memorizes the
changes in a new state
The last icon saves the current changes in a new Story point

Now that we've seen the basics, let's start to create a Story.

Building a story
You begin to build a Story in a Story point. Each Story point contains
one Worksheet or one Dashboard. You can add them with a simple
drag-and-drop to the central blank area (or use a double-click).
Then, you can create a new blank Story point and add another Sheet
or duplicate the existing one to Highlight or Filter a specific element.
The Story keeps the selection, Highlights, and Filter added on each
Story point.

We will now create a Story together. To reproduce the example,

download the ZIP file, Story Start, from the Chapter 7: Create
Powerful Dashboards and Stories section of my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com (or, browse to
https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Story-Start.zip).

When you unzip the file, you'll find a Tableau Package Workbook
that contains a Dashboard you already built earlier (with a Filter
action when you click on the map):
Let's start building our first story:

1. Create a new Story and call it Sales and Profit Insights.

2. Drag and drop the Sales and Profit Analysis Dashboard in the
Story, and change the caption of the Story point to Sales and
Profit Analysis.
3. Duplicate the current Story point with the button on the left.
4. On this new Story point, click on the State of Texas, change the
caption to Texas is the less profitable State, and click on the
Update button in the Story point to save the changes. Here is
how your Story should look, and where to find the button to
update:
5. On the Texas is the less profitable State Story point, click
on the State of California, and then click on the Save as New
button:

1. The Save as New button takes the current state of the Story
point and copies it into a new Story point, while reverting the
changes of the existing one. You can change the caption of the
 new Story point to California is the most profitable State.
Here's the final look of your Story, with three Story points:

Now that you know how to build a Story, let's see how to customize
it.

Customizing a Story using Story

options
There are not many options to customize a Story.

On the left, at the bottom of the Story pane, you'll find three options:

Add Floating Text to add some context.

Show or hide the title of the Story.
Change the size of the Story.

On the Layout pane, you can change the style of the Story navigator.
There are four different styles: Caption boxes, Numbers, Dots, or
Arrows only. On the same pane, you can also show or hide the
arrows. Finally, on the Story top menu, you'll find similar options as
for Dashboard: Format, Copy Image, Export Image, and Clear.

Stories should not be a mystery to you anymore. Use them to amaze

your audience with great insights from your data!
Summary
Congratulations! This chapter was one of the longest, while also
being one of the most important. Building Dashboards is an essential
feature of Tableau.

We started with the basics of how to build a Dashboard and the

different panes in the workplace, and we also saw the objects that
you can add to personalize it. Then, we explored the different types
of Layout with all the pros and cons of Tiled and Floating layouts,
and Containers. To finish with the Dashboard part, we focused on
Actions, how to use them, and how they can add interactivity. After
that, we learned about Stories. You learned how, and when, to build
and customize them.

In the next chapter, we'll discover a new Tableau product—Tableau

Server. All the things you learned from the beginning of the book
were about creation—how to create data sources, how to create
Worksheets, and how to create Dashboards and Stories.

The next chapter is about sharing; we'll look at how to publish your
work to make it globally accessible. Ready to go online?
Chapter 8. Publishing and
Interacting in Tableau Server
It's time to share your work! This chapter is the culmination of
everything you've learned since the beginning of the book. It's also
the first chapter where you'll use a tool other than Tableau Desktop:
Tableau Server/Online.

Note
As Tableau Server and Tableau Online are almost the same
product (you can learn more about this in Chapter 2, The Tableau
Core), we will use the name Tableau Server for both products
throughout this book.

Thanks to Tableau Server, users can connect to new or published

data sources to create new analyses and open published Workbooks
to interact with them. In this chapter, our main focuses are as
follows:

An introduction to Tableau Server

Publishing and modifying content
Interacting with published content

Note
This book doesn't cover Tableau Server's installation and
configuration. This is a technical aspect that requires you to work
with your IT team. You can find all the useful information and
guidance for installation on the Tableau website:
https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/guides/everybody-
install/en-us/everybody_admin_intro.htm.
To reproduce the example in this chapter, you will need access to
Tableau Server. Additionally, we are going to use a Tableau
Workbook example: World Indicators. You can find it on the start
page when you open Tableau, as highlighted in the following
screenshot:

An introduction to Tableau
Server
Let's start with the basics. In this section, we will explore what
Tableau Server is and look at its contents.

Basics
Tableau Server is an online tool made for sharing workbooks and
data source. Usually, only a few people use Tableau Desktop to build
data source and workbooks, which they then publish on Tableau
Server, making them available to many users using Tableau Server
on the web.

Note
For Tableau 2019.2, Tableau has changed the design and
browsing experience of Tableau Server. We'll focus on this new
version in this chapter.

There are two ways of using Tableau Server, as follows:

 In a browser: To access the Tableau Server web page and
interact with published content (such as data source,
workbooks, and views)
In Tableau Desktop: To publish data source and workbooks, or
connect to published data source and open published
workbooks

To connect to Tableau Server on a browser, you have to write the

URL of your server and enter your login details and password. If
you're using Tableau Online, the URL is
https://sso.online.tableau.com.

Note
Tableau Server can have multiple sites; each site is a different
environment with different users, groups, and content.

Once you're logged in, you can access the Home page of Tableau
Server, as shown in the following screenshot:

At the top of the page, you have a search bar to find contents, help
and notification icons, and the icon to access your profile. In the left-
hand menu, you'll always find the following:

Home: It is the first page and it contains information on the most

recent dashboards and what the other users are viewing. You
 can also use the Create button to create a new Project or
workbook.
Explore: Here, you can search for the different types of content
available in Tableau Server. On the left, you have options to
sort, filter, and change the display between a grid and a list.
Favorites: You can click on the star icon of the published
content to add it to the favorites page.
Recents: This displays the latest opened content.

With administrator rights, you'll have additional buttons for Users,

Groups, and other settings dedicated to the server administration.

To connect to Tableau Server from Tableau Desktop, go to the

Server top menu at the top of the page and select Sign In.... A new
window opens, where you can enter your credentials. Once logged
in, you can connect to published data source, open-published
workbooks, and publish new content on Tableau Server directly from
Tableau Desktop. Here's the menu:

Let's explore the different content you can find on Tableau Server.

Tableau Server content

There are four different types of content on Tableau Server:

Projects: This is like a folder; you can only create new projects
on the web. A project can contain every type of content, and
 even other projects. The top-level projects are those in the root
of Tableau Server.
Workbooks: These are either created directly on Tableau
Server or they are published from Tableau Desktop. Each
workbook is composed of one or multiple views.
Views: This refers to all the visible Worksheets, dashboards,
and stories in the workbooks.
Data sources: This is created on Tableau Desktop and is
published here. You can use data source to build new analyses
directly on the web or from Tableau Desktop. You can also open
Ask Data to use natural language to query your data source.
Flows: This is created with Tableau Prep; you can publish the
flow to run them from the web. Thank to the Tableau Prep
Conductor add-on. You can learn more about Tableau Prep and
Flows here: https://www.tableau.com/products/prep

As you can see in the following screenshot, in the World Indicators

Tutorial project, there is one other subproject, one workbook, and
one data source, which are all displayed in the same place:

The Sales project dashboard

Let's take a look at how to publish Data Source and Workbooks from
Tableau Desktop.
Publishing and modifying the
content
On Tableau Desktop, you can connect to Tableau Server with from
the Sign In... option in the Server top menu. When signed in, you
are able to publish data source and workbooks.

Before we start this section, first, create a new project on Tableau

Server and name it World Indicators Tutorial – we'll publish our
work here.

Why and how to publish a data source

Tableau Desktop is the only tool that allows you to connect to a
dataset, create an extract, publish it to Tableau Server, and schedule
an automatic refresh. Publishing a data source offers multiple
advantages:

All the customization (such as aliases, default properties, hidden

or renamed fields, and more) is saved. If you or another Tableau
Server user uses a published data source, all the customization
work is already done.
All the newly created fields (such as the calculated field, sets,
groups, parameters, bins, and more) are also saved. All
workbooks that are based on the same published data source
use the same calculation. If, for any reason, a calculation needs
to change, all the workbooks are impacted at the same time.
On Tableau Server, you can plan to refresh published data
source automatically. All the workbooks that are connected to
the same published data source are updated at the same time.
You are alerted if a refresh fails.
On Tableau Server, when you click on a published data source,
you can use Ask Data to query the data source by using natural
 language. With Ask Data, every user is able to find insights and
create visualizations.
Tableau Server users who don't have Tableau Desktop can
create new analyses on the web, based on published data
source.

If this list doesn't convince you, I don't know what could! If you plan
to work in a professional environment with Tableau, publishing a data
source is crucial.

Note
For Tableau Online users, you have to use Tableau Bridge to
connect on-premises data to Tableau Online. Learn more about
Tableau Bridge here: https://www.tableau.com/en-
gb/products/tableau-bridge

Publishing a data source is easy: in the Data pane (in the Worksheet
workplace), right-click on the data source name and click on the
Publish to Server option. You can also find this option from the
Data menu in the top of the page. When you click on this option, a
new window opens to configure the published data source. In this
window, you can do the following:

Select the project and the name of the data source.

Add a description and a tag to help understand and find the data
source (this is optional).
Schedule a task to refresh the Extract (optional and only works if
the Data Source is an Extract).
Modify the permissions (you will learn more about this in
Chapter 13, Dealing with Security).
Update the workbook to use the published data source (I
strongly advise you to use this option).

Using a published data source in a workbook makes it lighter (this is

because the extract is no longer inside the workbook but on the
server), more secure (you can control a user's access), and
sustainable (the changes and updates in the data source are
automatically passed on to the workbook).

As an exercise, open the World Indicators sample workbook, and

publish the Word Indicators data source in the World Indicators
Tutorial project. Here's the configuration window:
Note
 As you can see, you can't publish a Live data source connected
to a file; Tableau automatically generates an extract before
publishing it.

Only you and the users of your choice can modify a published data
source, making it secure and preventing anyone from making
unwanted changes. Unfortunately, this security makes it a bit more
complicated to modify a data source; let's discover how to do it next.

Modifying a published data source

A published data source cannot be modified. You cannot modify the
aliases, the groups, the original calculated fields, or any of the other
custom fields. In order to modify a published data source, you need
to download it, edit the local copy on your computer with Tableau
Desktop, and then republish it. Don't worry; it's easier than it sounds!

Instead of Publish to Server, a published data source has an

equivalent option Create Local Copy:
This option automatically downloads the data source and adds it to
the workbook as a new data source. When you create a local copy, it
appears directly in the Data pane:
You can make all the modifications you want on the local copy. Then,
when you are done, publish your modified data source with the same
name as the one you want to replace. To be sure to replace the
existing data source, check the message in the published window:

Publishing a workbook
Publishing a workbook is the best way to share your insights. You
can control who has access to your visualizations, and Tableau
Server users have many ways of interacting with it. Again, publishing
a workbook is straightforward; in the Server top menu, you have the
Publish Workbook... option, as follows:

You can publish a workbook without publishing the data source. In

that case, the data source is embedded inside the workbook. You
can also plan a refresh for workbooks using embedded Data Source
(with the condition that you integrate the credentials).

When publishing a workbook, a configuration window opens. In this

window, you'll find similar options to publishing a data source (that is,
you can choose the project, change the name, add a description and
tags, set the permissions, and schedule a refresh extract). However,
there are a few new options, as follows:
 Select the visible sheets: The sheets that you decide not to
publish are hidden in Tableau Server, but they are still available
if you open the workbook in Tableau Desktop.
Decide whether you want to embed the data source inside the
workbook or publish it separately and automatically.
Show the different sheets as tabs or not (this is usually yes, as
you'll want to show the different tabs for the different
dashboards in your workbook).
Show the selections or not (this is usually no unless you want to
highlight specific information every time a user opens the
workbook).
Include external files or not (this is usually yes to include shapes
and pictures).

Again, as an exercise and for the rest of this chapter, you can
publish the World Indicators Workbook in the World Indicators
Tutorial Project:
To sum up, publishing your work on Tableau Server is essential
when working in an organization. Publishing your Workbook makes
your findings and insights available to other users. Sharing your Data
Source makes new analysis easier and allows other users to create
their own Dashboards without having to rebuild the wheel each time.
It also adds security and control over the different fields and
harmonizes the definition of the calculations.
In the next section, you'll discover all the different ways of interacting
with published content.
Interacting with published
content
Publishing your workbooks and data source presents many more
advantages than just sharing them. Tableau Server has many
awesome functionalities that are only available online.

If you published the World Indicators data source and workbook in

the World Indicators Tutorial project, you should see something
similar to the following screenshot in your server:

Let's start by discovering all the options you have when you interact
with a data source. First, click on the World Indicators data source!

Interacting with published data

sources
When you click on a data source on Tableau Server, you open a new
page with four different tabs. Three of them are quite simple:
 Connections: Here, you can see the different connections of
your data source with the ability to edit the information if it is
connected to a server.
Extract Refreshes: Here, you'll find here the scheduled
refreshes planned for your data source, with the ability to create
a new refresh.
Connected Workbooks: Here, you'll find a list of all the
workbooks that are connected to this data source.

The first tab is, undoubtedly, the biggest revolution and most
important new feature of Tableau Server 2019.1: Ask Data. Ask
Data allows you to use natural language to query a data source and
create a visualization by just asking Tableau, in English, what you
want to see.

Ask Data
Ask Data is the first view that opens when you click on a Data
Source. This tool allows you to query any Data Source using the
English language.

When Ask Data first opens, Tableau Server starts to analyze the
data source to enrich some fields. On the left-hand side, you'll find
something similar to the Data pane in Tableau Desktop, and in the
middle, a simple search bar with some suggestions:
To be honest, the suggestions in the preceding example are quite
bad, so let's try something on our own! In the search bar, type in
average CO2 Emissions by Country. Ask Data opens a new
dedicated tab in your browser and, more importantly, displays
something similar to the following screenshot:

Without any knowledge on how to use Tableau to create a

visualization, Ask Data was able to convert some text into a
visualization. I don't know about you, but I'm very excited about that!

This workplace is quite similar to the good old Worksheet workplace

with the Data pane on the left-hand side and the different sheets at
the bottom.

Tip
From Tableau Server 2019.2 you can create multiple Worksheets
in the Ask Data window!

Speaking of the Data pane on the left-hand side, when you hover
over a field, a nice tooltip gives you some quick insights about the
number of values, their distribution, and even the calculation if it's a
calculated field. But wait, there is more! If you click on the small
arrow next to a field, you can use the Edit synonyms option. When
you add a synonym to a field, you are able to use that synonym in
your sentence to create the visualization.

At the top of the page, you can see that the search bar has
expanded and suggests that you can adjust the question or use the
Clear All button to start over. Let's try to add more insights to this
map by typing average GPD into the textbox:

When you press Enter, the query updates to average COE

Emissions and average GDP by Country and the map changes to
circles with the GDP in color and the CO2 emissions in size. The
map is not very readable, so why not continue by adding as scatter
plot to the textbox. When you press Enter, the map automatically
transforms to a bar chart.

Tip
 You could also use the selector on the right-hand side of the
visualization to change the Mark type.

If you are satisfied with the visualization but you want to quickly
change a Measure or a Dimension, you can click on the different
fields in the query box to open a menu allowing you to choose a
different field and its aggregation. For example, if you click on by
Country, you can quickly change it to display the Region instead, as
demonstrated in the following screenshot:

Of course, Ask Data doesn't have the flexibility of Tableau Desktop

and you don't have much control over what the result will be.
However, it can easily replace a famous demand from the users,
Can you just build a big table where I can search what I want?. With
Ask Data, you don't need that anymore.

When you're done, if you want to save your work, then you can use
the Save button in the toolbar or close the tab if you don't. Now, let's
explore how to interact with your workbooks!

Interacting with published workbooks

When you click on a workbook in Tableau Server, you can see all its
views (that is, Worksheets, dashboards, and stories). Then, when
you click on a view, Tableau Server opens it in reader mode. You
cannot modify it, but you can use the filters, highlighters, parameters,
actions, and see the tooltips.

On top, there is the navigation bar with the current path to the view
and some icons allowing you to open the device layout preview, see
the data sources, and the other default options (such as search,
favorites, help, and notifications):

Below the navigation bar, there is a special toolbar with some

Tableau Server-specific features. The left part (which is not very
interesting even if it is useful) allows you to Undo, Redo, or Revert
all your actions, and Refresh or Pause the data source. You won't
use that part much.

Additionally, there are Height features available only on Tableau

Server, including the following:

Edit is explained in the Web Authoring section

Share provides a link to the View and the code for embedding it
in a web page
Full Screen speaks for itself

We'll focus more on the five other features. For each feature, you
can test and reproduce the examples using the Tourism View of the
World Indicators workbook published earlier, which is highlighted
here:
 The Tourism View of the World Indicators workbook

Let's start with Custom Views.

Custom views
A custom view is a way of saving the current state of a visualization
to reopen it later. Imagine that, in a dashboard, you need to select
different values in many different filters to focus the visualization on
what really interests you. Without custom views, you'll have to apply
the different filters each time you open the workbook.

With custom views, you can save the state where all the filters are
applied, and reopen the dashboard on that state whenever you want,
with all the filters applied at once.

Tip
The default view is Original. It's the view as the author of the
workbook published it.

To add a custom view, click on the View: Original button to open the
configuration window. This window offers different interesting
options, including the following:

Make it my default: Each time you open the workbook, it will be

this custom view that will open by default.
Make it public: The other Tableau Server users are able to see
and use your custom view.
My Views: The list of all the custom views that you created for
this view.
Other Views: The list of all the other public custom views
created by other users.
Manage: With the Manage button, you can rename, delete, or
hide your custom views.

Let's take a look at a quick example on the Tourism View together:

1. Use the quick filters to start the Year Range filter in 2005 and
select Europe in the region.
2. Click on View: Original.
3. In the configuration window, name your custom view Europe,
starting in 2005, make it your default, and then click on Save.
The configuration window should look like the following
screenshot:

4. Click on World Indicators in the very top of the window to go

back to the list of views:
 5. Reopen the Tourism view; you should be automatically filtered
in Europe, after 2005.
6. Click on the View: Europe, starting in 2005 toolbar button and
uncheck the Make it my default option to reuse the original
view as your default one.

This option is a time saver when you have to apply many different
filters, or if a team only focuses on a subset of the data. The second
feature is probably just as important and useful!

Alert
With alerts, Tableau sends you an email when a condition is fulfilled
in your View after a refresh. For example, if you have a visualization
with daily sales, you can configure an alert to receive an email when
the sales are above or below a certain amount. An alert is a great
way to allow you to do something other than checking your
dashboard every day on Tableau Server. You can set an alert on any
visualization as long as it has an axis.

Tip
Make sure that the SMTP server is configured and that you have
specified a correct email address.

To create an alert, click on the Alert button in the toolbar. Since

Tableau 2019.2, a new, Alerts, opens on the right-side. To add an
alert, select an axis and then click on the Create button. Once
you've done that, Tableau Server opens a configuration window,
where you can configure the following:

The Condition and the Threshold to trigger the alert. Tableau

indicates to you whether the condition is currently true or not.
The Subject of the email and the frequency at which it is sent.
The Recipients of the email (you can specify multiple users
who will receive the email).
 The visibility of the alert to allow other users to view and use it.

In the right-hand pane, you'll find all the visible alerts that exist for
the current View. You have the ability to subscribe to an existing alert
with the Add me button. If you created the alert, you'll be able to
edit, delete, or change the owner of this alert by using the Actions
menu:

Let's create an alert for the Tourism View:

1. Click on the Alert button to open the Alerts pane.

2. Click on the axis of the Income by Region visualization (it turns
blue when selected), and then click on the Create button in the
Alerts pane.
3. Configure the alert to send you an email with the subject,
Tourism Income above 1,250B!, when the value is Above or
equal to 1,250,000,000,000. If you didn't filter a specific region,
then the condition is true for the year 2012. The configuration
window should look like the following screenshot:
 4. Click on the Create Alert button. You should see the alert
appear in the Alerts pane.
5. Refresh the page and click on the Alert button in the toolbar.
You should see that the alert was triggered a few seconds
earlier.
6. If your email address is correct, then you should have received
an email with a screenshot of the dashboard and the alert.

As you can see, the alert feature is very useful, and probably just as
much as the next one: subscribe!

Subscribe
If you subscribe to a view or workbook, you'll receive, at a chosen
frequency, an email with snapshots of your visualizations. Like alerts,
it's a useful feature that allows you to receive insights directly into
your inbox, without having to connect to Tableau Server. Each
snapshot contains a link to the published visualizations, so if you
spot something intriguing, click on the picture to automatically open
the View in Tableau Server and start your analysis.
To subscribe, click on the Subscribe button in the toolbar and
configure it on the window that opens. Here's a screenshot of the
Subscribe configuration window:

There are many interesting options in this window, including the

following:

Define the Users and Groups who will receive the emails.
Specify whether the subscription is only for This View or the
Entire Workbook (there will be a snapshot of every view in the
workbook in the email).
 Specify the Schedule and repetition of the emails.
Modify the Subject of the email and add a Message.
Manage the subscriptions and add or remove users.

The next useful feature to discover is download.

Download
When you click on the Download button, a new window opens with
six options. Four of these options are available by default:

Image: This generates a picture of the view.

PDF: This generates a PDF of the current View or the entire
workbook. You can specify the scaling and format of the PDF.
PowerPoint: This generates a PPTX file with each view of the
workbook in a specific slide.
Workbooks: This downloads the file.

To activate the two other options, you need to click on a

visualization. If you click on a mark, you will download the data of
that mark. Unfortunately, there is no way to see which Worksheet is
selected. The two options are as follows:

Data: This opens the summary data, but you can also get the
full data on the second tab.
Crosstab: This generates a CSV file that you can download.

The final feature, unlike the previous ones, isn't about interacting
with the View, but with other users.

Comments
When you click on the Comments button, a Right-hand pane opens
where you can chat with other users. Each workbook's views have
their proper comments. Any user (who is allowed to do so) can add a
comment, mention other users, and add a snapshot of the current
view.
Comments are a great way for you to add more information about
your views. Other users can also use this feature if they spot
mistakes or if they have questions.

As you will now understand, publishing a workbook isn't just about

making it safe and visible for other users. Some features, such as
alerts or subscribe, open completely new ways of working with your
data. To finish the section, let's end with how to preview the device
layouts directly from Tableau Server.

The mobile layout preview

Since Tableau 2019.1, you can preview the different layouts on
Tableau Server. Above the toolbar, a new button, Preview Device
Layouts, is now available, as highlighted in the following screenshot:

When you click on the button, Tableau opens the preview mode
where you can select Laptop, Tablet, or Phone to see how your
dashboard renders on those different devices.

This new feature is a great addition to test your different layouts

without having to use those devices or special tools.

Let's take a look at the last way of interacting with Tableau Server
contents with Web Authoring.

Web Authoring
Web Authoring is the ability to add new data sources and build new
workbooks directly from Tableau Server on the web. There are three
main ways of opening Web Authoring mode.

Tip
 The interface is almost identical to Tableau Desktop, with the
Data pane on the left-hand side. You can create new
Worksheets, new dashboards, and stories as if you were in
Tableau Desktop.

This first way to open Web Authoring mode is by clicking on the Edit
button when interacting with a view. If you click on this button,
Tableau opens the Web Authoring mode where you can modify your
workbook without leaving Tableau Server – it's a great way to fix
small issues.

The second way to open Web Authoring mode is by starting a new

workbook from a published data source. When you open a data
source on Tableau Server, just below its name, there is a button,
New Workbook, which you can use to create new content:

The final way to open Web Authoring mode is to click on the Create
button from the Home or Explore page and select Workbook. Then,
Tableau opens Web Authoring mode and starts by asking you to
connect to the data. With a creator license, you can connect to files
and servers directly from the web! There are four types of data
connections available, as follows:

File: Drag and drop an Excel file or CSV file on the web page;
you can choose the Sheets option and build a new data source.
Connectors: A list of server-hosted databases available directly
from Tableau Server.
 On this site: Use an existing published data source.
Dashboard starters: Start with prebuilt templates of cloud-
based systems.

Again, you won't be lost; all the different Workspaces are similar to
Tableau Desktop.

Note
Users who don't have a creator license can always use published
data sources to create new analyses, but they can't connect to
new data from files or servers.

Not all the functionalities of Tableau Desktop are available yet on the
web editor, but it's getting closer and closer after each new version
of Tableau Server. It is, however, an excellent way of allowing new
users to create their analyses and train future Tableau Desktop
users.
Summary
Now that you've learned how to use Tableau Server, you have a
complete view of what Tableau can do as a data visualization and
analysis tool. We looked at connecting data to Tableau Desktop,
building your data source, Worksheets and dashboards, and finally
publishing all your work online for you and other users to interact
with. What a journey!

This chapter was the last piece of the puzzle in understanding how
to use Tableau. You started by understanding what Tableau Server is
and what kind of content you can find in it. Then, you learned how to
publish your content, modify it, and interact with it on the web.

This summary may sound like the end – what else could be left to
see now? A lot! In the next chapters, we'll get our hands back on
Tableau Desktop to discover many other crucial and advanced
features. Creating parameters, using the analytics built-in tools,
using data blending, securing your data, and many more features
are waiting to be discovered. Without any more teasing, let's start
with calculated fields, and how to unlock unlimited power on Tableau
Desktop.
Section 3: Advanced features
In this section, we will create some calculated fields in Tableau. This
section will cover the basis of calculations in Tableau and will alert
you to some easy-to-make mistakes. We will also cover analysis
tools and explain them in depth. We will then browse through the
security requirements in Tableau. We'll demonstrate how to secure
projects and their elements (such as the workbook and data source).
Finally, we'll go through their different roles and all the options with
clear explanations.

This section will include the following chapters:

Chapter 9, An Introduction to Calculations

Chapter 10, Analytics and Parameters
Chapter 11, Advanced Data Connections
Chapter 12, Dealing with Security
Chapter 9. An Introduction to
Calculations
Congratulations! You have reached the first advanced chapter of this
book! This is a challenging chapter, yet essential if you want to use
Tableau without limitations. Indeed, to build the best analysis, you'll
need to create calculations. But let me reassure you: if you are
traumatized by words such as universe, cube, or MDX, you can
breathe. Creating a calculation in Tableau is straightforward, and the
language is very close to what you find in Excel. This chapter is split
into two main sections:

Calculated field basics

Advanced functions

In this chapter, some examples use the Sample-Superstore saved

data source, but others require special files. You can find the files
that are used for the tutorials on my website,
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in Chapter 9, An Introduction to
Calculations.

Calculated field basics

A Calculated Field is a new field in your data source. It can have any
data type and be a Measure or Dimension. To differentiate a field
from a calculated field, each data type icon has a small equals (=)
symbol in front of it, as you can see in the following screenshot:

Let's start by learning how to create a Calculated Field.

Creating a Calculated Field
To create a new Calculated Field, go through the following steps:

1. Click on the small arrow next to Dimensions in the Data pane,

which is highlighted in the following screenshot, and select
Create Calculated Field:

2. It's also possible to right-click on a field and go to Create to start

a new Calculated Field based on this field. You can edit a
Calculated Field when you right-click on it.
3. When you create a new Calculated Field, a new window opens
in which you have to write a formula. The formula can be based
on other fields and use functions.
4. On the right, when you click on the arrow, you can open the list
of functions.
5. When you write a formula, at the bottom of the window, Tableau
indicates to you whether the calculation is valid or not. You can
also see the dependencies (other Calculated Fields and Sheets
that use this Calculated Field).
6. Click on OK when you are done, and the calculation will be
valid.

Here's an example of the calculation window with the list of

functions:
 Tip
When you write a formula, the fields will be in orange and
between brackets and the functions will be in blue.

Formulas handle auto-completion, meaning that when you start

writing autocompletion, meaning that when you start writing at least
one character, Tableau opens a list of suggestions based on all the
fields and functions available. You just have to press Enter or click
on the desired element.

Tip
You can also drag and drop any field in the calculation window to
add it to the formula.

When using existing fields in a formula, you can decide whether to

aggregate them or not; let's discover what the difference is.

To aggregate or not to aggregate

fields
The main rule when you create a calculated measure is to think
about the aggregation. As you already know, a Measure is, by
default, aggregated, and so are calculated measures. You can
specify the aggregation inside the formula or not:

If you aggregate the data inside the formula, the pill of the
calculated Measure will start with AGG
If you don't specify the aggregation in the formula, a default one
will be added when you use the field in the View, as it would for
any normal measure

For example, the Profit Ratio field in the Sample – Superstore saved
data source contains the aggregations inside the formula
SUM([Profit])/SUM([Sales]) formula. If you use this field in the View,
the pill will start with AGG.

Note
A Calculated Field cannot contain aggregated and
nonaggregated fields in the same formula. Remember that you
can aggregate a Dimension with the ATTR() function.

Often, there will be a significant difference between adding the

aggregation inside the formula and not adding it. For the calculation
of the Profit Ratio, Tableau first aggregates the Profit and the Sales
separately, then divides the two aggregated results. An incorrect way
of calculating the Profit Ratio would be [Profit]/[Sales]. With this
calculation, Tableau divides the value of the Profit by the Sales at
each line of the data source, then aggregates the result of all the
divisions. To illustrate this, I created a Calculated Field, Wrong Profit
Ratio, with the incorrect formula. Here's the difference between the
two calculation
As you can see, if Tableau sums the result of all the divisions rather
than dividing two aggregated values, the result is incorrect. Always
keep this principle in mind.

Using calculation functions

Of course, you can create Calculated Fields based on a calculation
between different fields (such as the Profit Ratio); however, the really
interesting aspect of Calculated Fields is the functions. There are
many different functions; some basic, some hard to understand.
Each function returns a specific data type, and some require
arguments.

Tableau has made this easy: each function has a clear description
and examples for learning how to use them.

Going through all the functions and repeating the description and
example that's already available in Tableau doesn't add any value.
My strong advice for you is to take fifteen minutes to look at all the
functions to have a clear overview of what you can and can't do.

Here's an example of the round fun

In the following sections and chapters, we'll often use calculations,
so don't be afraid—you'll practice them. Speaking of practice, it's
time for a guided tutorial!

Example – highlighting values

Probably the most common use of a calculation is to highlight
values. Let's create a calculation that returns different text values
depending on sales:

1. Open Tableau Desktop and click on the Sample – Superstore

saved data source.
2. Create a new Calculated Field and name it Sales Highlight.
3. Write the following formula and check that the calculation is
valid: if SUM([Sales]) > 300000 then "Great" ELSEIF
SUM([Sales]) < 50000 then "Bad" else "Average" END.

Tip
This formula is a conditional test. If the sum of the sales is
higher than 300,000, the formula returns Great; if the sum of
the sales is lower than 50,000, the formula returns Bad;
otherwise, the formula returns Average.
 4. Create a visualization with Sales in Columns, Sub-Category in
Rows, and Sales Highlight in Color.
5. You can change the color of the three values to make it easier to
see the difference between Great and Bad values. Here's the
final

As you can see, simple calculations can already be useful. In the

next section, we'll see how we can use two sorts of advanced
functions: Table Calculation and Level of Detail.
Advanced functions
There are two types of functions that are a bit different: Table
Calculation and Level of Detail.

Table Calculation
The Table Calculation functions are special in many ways. Mastering
them requires practice, but they are very useful. It's important to
understand how they work and how to use them. Let's start slowly by
using an awesome option called Quick Table Calculation.

Quick Table Calculation

Quick Table Calculation is an option that becomes available with a
right-click on every Measure. It automatically changes the Measure
to a Calculated Measure using a Table Calculation function.

You can find very interesting functions among the Quick Table
Calculations list: Running Sum, Rank, Difference, Percentage of
Total, and many more—all available with a single right-click.

As an example, let's compare, for each year, the cumulative sales by

quarter using the Sample - Superstore data source:

1. On a blank Worksheet, add Order Date to Columns and Sales

to Rows.
2. Click on the + button next to the YEAR(Order Date) pill to add
QUARTER. The visualization should look as follows:
 3. Right-click on Sales, go to Quick-Table Calculation, and select
Running Total. What you will see is the running total of the
Sales across all years and quarters.
4. Put the YEAR(Order Date) pill in Color. It's now very easy to
see which year ends with the most Sales generated at the end
of the year; you can see this in the following screenshot:

Quick Table Calculations are great and simple to use. Sometimes,

you may want to create more advanced calculations using Table
Calculation functions.

Table Calculation functions

Table Calculation functions, such as WINDOW, LOOKUP, or INDEX,
allow you to create advanced Calculated Fields. You can quickly
spot a Calculated Field that uses a Table Calculation function by the

triangle icon in its pill: .A standard

calculated Measure is computed for every row in the Data Source,
and then aggregated when used in the View. When using a Table
function, it's a bit different:

The calculation is computed after the aggregation and is based

on the displayed result in the View. Modifying the View (the sort,
for example) directly affects the Table Calculation.
When you right-click on a Table Calculation pill, you will find two
new options:

Compute using: This allows you choose how to compute

the calculation and the ability
Edit Table Calculation...: This opens a new window where
you can use the calculation assistance to help you see how
the calculation will be computed

It's normal to still be a bit confused, but let's remedy that by creating
an example together.

Hands-on – Table Calculation functions

Let's create a visualization with the table functions computed at
different levels using the Sample – Superstore saved data source.
Let's start simply:

1. On a blank worksheet, put Region in Columns, and then

Category and Sales in Columns.
2. In the toolbar, click on the icon to display the label—that is,

. Here'
Our goal is to highlight the highest sales value. Since we have two
dimensions in the view, there are two options: either show the
maximum value for each Region or for each Category. You can
easily achieve this with Table Calculation functions. Follow these
steps to set this up:

1. Create a new calculated field and name it Highest Value.

2. Write the following calculation and check that it is valid:
SUM([Sales]) = WINDOW_MAX(SUM([Sales])).

Note
The WINDOW_MAX() function is a function that returns the
maximum value in the window. The window is defined by the
Compute Using option of the Table calculation. The formula
returns True if the value of SUM(Sales) is the highest value of
the window, or False otherwise.

3. Put the calculation in Color (and update the color if you want).
By default, the Table Calculation is computed on Table (down),
which in our case is the Region, thereby showing the Region
with the highest sales for each Category. Here's the result:
 4. Maybe you prefer to see which Category is the best for each
Region. To do that, right-click on the Highest Value pill, go to
Compute using, and select Table (across). You should see the
same result that's shown in the following screenshot:

Table Calculation functions aren't easy to understand, and they will

require practice to be mastered. It's important that you know they
exist, what you can do with them, and how to use them.

The next set of functions are called Level of Detail (LOD) functions,
and are even more powerful.

Level of Detail
Level-of-Detail (LOD) functions were introduced in version 9 of
Tableau and, today, it's hard to believe that there was a time without
them! These functions are probably the most powerful ones. The
FIXED function, in particular, allows you to ignore Filters, ignore
duplication in your data, and return a Measure that's aggregated on
the dimension of your choice. Let's start with the basics of these
functions.
LOD function basics
As you already know, each Dimension in the View splits the number
of Marks and defines the level of detail for the aggregation of the
Measures. However, at some point, you will probably need to
aggregate a Measure at a different level than the one on the View.
To do this, you can use one of the three LOD functions—namely,
INCLUDE, EXCLUDE, or FIXED:

INCLUDE adds the specified Dimensions to the level of detail of

the aggregation—for example, the { INCLUDE [Region]:
SUM([Sales])} calculation aggregates the Sales by Region and
all the other Dimensions in the View.
EXCLUDE removes the specified Dimensions from the LOD of
the aggregation—for example, the { EXCLUDE [Region]:
SUM([Sales])} calculation aggregates the Sales by all the
Dimensions in the View except the Region.
FIXED can do both, as you have to specify all the Dimensions of
the level of detail precisely—for example, the { FIXED [Region]:
SUM([Sales])} calculation aggregates Sales with Region only, no
matter the other Dimensions in the View.

Tip
INCLUDE and EXCLUDE calculations are always Measures and
as a consequence are aggregated. FIXED can be either a
Dimension or a Measure.

You can write all the INCLUDE and EXCLUDE functions with FIXED.
Let's focus on the third LOD function, which is the most powerful
one.

FIXED
With FIXED, all the Dimensions that you want to include in the level
of detail must be specified, so if you want to exclude an existing
Dimension, don't specify it, and if you want to include one, specify it.

Calculated fields that use a FIXED function have three advantages.

First, they are easier to understand than INCLUDE or EXCLUDE.
You write the Dimensions that you want to use, and that's it—
Tableau only uses them to aggregate the calculation, no matter
what's in the View.

The second advantage is even more interesting: FIXED calculations

are not impacted by Dimension filters. As you may remember, the
Filter hier

As you can see, the INCLUDE and EXCLUDE functions are

impacted by the Dimension filters, but not FIXED unless they are in
Context.

Let's see how we can use this to our advantage with an example.
Let's display three different Measures by Sub-Category, with a filter
on State to keep only California. The three Measures are:

A normal aggregation, that is, the sum of sales: SUM([Sales])

A FIXED calculation: SUM( { FIXED [Sub-Category]:
SUM([Sales]) } )
The ratio of the two previous Measures: SUM([Sales]) / SUM( {
FIXED [Sub-Category]: SUM([Sales])
'

Let's spend some time look at the result in more detail:

The first value is a simple aggregation. It returns the sum of

Sales by Sub-Category, filtered on California.
The second calculation, SUM( { FIXED [Sub-Category]:
SUM([Sales]) } ), returns the total sum of Sales by Sub-
Category for all States. As State is not specified in the list of
Dimensions in the FIXED function; the filter has no power over
this calculation.
The third calculation, SUM([Sales]) / SUM( { FIXED [Sub-
Category]: SUM([Sales]) } ), calculates the ratio between the
two previous calculations. This ratio represents the percentage
of Sales made in California for each Sub-Category. You can see
that a third of all the Supplies sales are made in California.

It's a typical use case of the useful FIXED calculation.

The third and last advantage is also very useful: FIXED allows you to
remove duplicates in your data. Since you can specify the level of
detail of a Measure, you can return the unique value of a Measure
(with MAX or MIN) by its unique row identifier. Hard to picture? The
following hands-on tutorial shows you how to deduplicate your data.
Hands-on – using an LOD function to
deduplicate your data
In the following example, we'll add a Target for each Category. The
Target table contains two columns, Category and Target, as you can
see in

Note
For this example, download the Superstore with Target Excel
file from my blog, https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in Chapter
9: An Introduction to Calculations section. The direct link is
https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Superstore-
with-Target.xls. This Excel file contains two sheets, Orders and
Target.

Let's add a target to our orders and deduplicate the data thanks to
the FIXED function:

1. Open Tableau and connect to the Superstore with Target Excel

file.
2. Create a Join between the two tables on Category. As you can
see, the TargetValue is duplicated
 3. In a worksheet, add Target in Text. The current sum of Target is
154 659 000. Good luck reaching that!. As you can see, the
value is way above the expected sum of targets.
4. Create a Calculated Field, name it Target - fixed, and write the
calculation {FIXED [Category]:MIN([Target])}.
5. Add the new calculation, Target - fixed, in the text. You should
see 37,000, which is the expected value of the sum of the
targets.

That's it! You can now use the Target - fixed calculation in all the
Worksheets or other calculations; it'll always be calculated correctly.

As you can see, Fixed is a very useful function for removing

duplicates, ignoring Filters, and specifying precisely the LOD of a
Measure. Always be sure to put the Filters in Context if you want
them to have an impact on the Fixed calculation.
Summary
This chapter is a door opened to unlimited power. With the right
dataset and calculations, you can build absolutely anything you
want. Yes, it requires a bit, and sometimes, a lot of practice, but
mastering Tableau goes through this. As the title of this book says,
we're only getting started here!

In this chapter, you learned the basics of Calculated Fields. With

simple examples, you learned why aggregation is so important,
created your first calculations, and used your first Tableau functions.
In the second part of this chapter, things started to get a bit more
complicated, as we looked at two types of special functions: Table
Calculation and LOD. Table functions are applied after the
aggregations and can be computed in various ways. You can use
them to calculate ranks, difference, percentages of totals, and more.
LOD can ignore dimension filters and even remove duplication. Both
are powerful; both require practice.

In the next chapter, you'll learn how to use all the analytics tools
provided by Tableau to add Trend Lines, Clusters, Forecasts, and
more. Then, you'll create Parameters to bring more interactivity to
your visualizations. Finally, with the help of calculations (I told you,
this chapter is crucial), you'll create one of the most efficient and
useful visualizations by combining Parameters, Analytics tools, and
Calculated Fields!
Chapter 10. Analytics and
Parameters
Analytics and parameters are two significant but easy ways to
enhance your work. Analytics tools offer new insights, such as Trend
Line, Forecast, and Cluster. With Parameters, you'll discover a
new way of bringing interactivity to your visualizations with user
inputs.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

Using built-in Analytics tools

How to work with Parameters
Creating a year-over-year comparison

If you went through all the chapters prior to this one, you know what
data source we'll be using! If this is the first chapter you are reading,
all the examples and a guided tutorial can be reproduced with the
Sample – Superstore data source, which you can find on the first
page when opening Tableau.

Using built-in Analytics tools

When creating a visualization on a Worksheet, you will have always
used the Data pane on the left; that is, until now! Under the
preceding data source name, you can see that there are two tabs:
Data and Analytics. If you click on Analytics, Tableau opens a new
pane, divided into three parts: Summarize, Model, and Custom.

This is highlighted in the following screenshot:

 Tip
All the options on the Analytics pane can be found in other
places in Tableau (with a right-click on an axis or the Analysis
menu at the top of the page). The options in the Analytics pane
are mostly just shortcuts or preconfigured options.

Let's explore all the options of each section. All of them can be used
with a simple drag and drop.

The Summarize tab

In the Summarize tab, you can find options to add a reference Line,
Band, Box Plot, or Totals. Let's look at a quick overview of each
option, starting with Constant Line.

Constant Line
By double-clicking on Constant Line or by dragging and dropping
into the View, you can automatically add a Constant Line to your
visualization. When you add one, Tableau opens a small textbox
where you can enter the value of the constant. A Constant Line is an
excellent way of representing a goal.

For example, the goal could be to have sales exceeding $450,000

for each Region. As you can see in the following screenshot, it's
straightforward to spot the Regions that have exceeded or are yet to
achieve the goal with a Constant Line:

With a simple click on the line, you can change the value of the
constant, change its format, or remove it. Let's continue with the
second, very similar option: Average Line.

Average Line
Average Line works in the same way as Constant Line; however, you
don't enter any values. Instead, Tableau automatically calculates the
average of the Measure. When you start to drag Average Line into
the View, Tableau displays a menu where you can drop the option on
Table, Pane, or Cell, as shown in the following screenshot:
The following descriptions of the icons will help you understand the
difference between the three options:

Table: Tableau draws a unique line that is the average of all the
Marks
Pane: Tableau draws as many lines as there are intersections
between the Dimensions (in the preceding example, there are
three lines)
Cell: Tableau draws a line for each different value (so it's usually
not very useful when using averages)

When you click on Average Line, you can edit the default
aggregation average, to make it median or sum, for example. If you
click on Edit, Tableau opens a menu where you can customize the
Average Line. We'll look at what else we can do in this window in the
The Custom tab section.

The next option combines a reference Line and Distribution Band.

Median with Quartiles

This option creates a Median with Quartiles and a Distribution
Band with upper and lower quartiles. As for the Average Line, you
can create a Median with Quartiles on the Table, Pane, or Cell.
Here's an example:
After adding it, if you right-click on the axis and go to Edit Reference
Line, you can see that you can configure the Median Line and the
Quartiles Distribution separately. You can also configure them with a
click on the line or on the border of the quartiles.

The next option, Box Plot, only works under certain conditions.

Box Plot
The Box Plot option is only available when there is more than one
unstacked Mark per cell. A Box Plot may be hard to read for people
who don't come from a statistical background, but it's a great tool for
viewing the dispersion in your data and spotting outliers. Here's an
example of a Box Plot:
This example shows the profit made by each Region, with one circle
per state. As you can see, you can easily spot the outliers as Texas
and California.

The last Summarize option is a classic option called Totals.

Totals
When you start to drag Totals into the View, Tableau displays a new
menu where you can specify whether you want to add the Subtotals,
the Column Grand Totals, or the Row Grand Totals.

Tableau uses the default property, Total using, of the Measure to

choose the aggregation. Here's an example of Subtotals and
Column Grand Totals:

Now, let's explore a new set of options, which are under the Model
tab.

The Model tab

The options under Model don't just add a new aggregation to
summarize your data, but add new statistical models such as
Cluster, Trend Line, and Forecast. Using them is as simple as in the
previous section; drag and drop them into the View.

Average or median with a confidence interval

The first two options are similar to Average Line or Median Line. The
only difference is the addition of a confidence interval of 95%.

The next option is, this time, very different compared to what you've
seen before.

Trend Line
You can only add a Trend Line when you have two continuous fields
on opposing axes (one on Rows and one on Columns). A Trend Line
can be used to view a trend of a Measure over time or the correlation
between two Measures.

To add a Trend Line, drag and drop the option into the View. By
default, the Trend Model that's used is linear. You can specify the
Trend Model to use when you drag and drop the option.

Tip
It's also possible to add a Trend Line with a right-click on the
View.

Here's an example of the usage of Trend Lines:

As you can see, it's easy to see that the profits are growing for
Office Supplies and Technology, but are stagnating for Furniture.

When you hover over a Trend Line, you can see information about
the Trend Model. If you right-click on the Trend Line, you can open
an advanced description of the Trend Line and the Trend Model or
open the Edit Trend Lines... window, where you can change the
Trend Model and customize it.

For the next option, a Date is mandatory.

Forecast
Forecast is a great option when you have Date fields in your data
source. You can only add a Forecast when you're displaying a
Measure through a continuous date. Tableau calculates the forecast
based on the existing data points. To add a Forecast, drag and drop
the option into the View or select Show Forecast from the right-click
options.

When you add a forecast, the Measure is replaced by a Forecast

Measure, and the Forecast indicator is added in Color. Here's an
example of the forecast of the Profit by Continuous Quarter of
Order Date:
Great news, Profit is forecast to grow! When you right-click on the
View, if you hover over Forecast, you can find a description of the
Forecast Model and some options for configuring the Forecast.

Last but not least, is cluster.

Cluster
To add a cluster, you need to have at least one Measure and one
Dimension in the View. To add a cluster, double-click on the option or
drag and drop it into the View.

Here's an example of four clusters on the subcategories by Sales

and Profit:
When you add a Cluster, Tableau opens a window where you can
add or remove variables (Measure or Dimension) and define the
number of Clusters. Then, Tableau adds a new generated pill,
Clusters, on Color. You can use this generated pill wherever you
want in the View (for another property or in filters, for example) or
drag and drop it among the fields in your data source to add it as a
new field. Like the other model options, you can right-click on the
Clusters pill to edit it or view the model's description.

To finish with this section, let's look at the Custom analytics options.
Be careful; this will be fast!

The Custom tab

The Summarize options are just shortcuts or preconfigured Custom
options such as reference Line, Band, and Distribution.

When using a Custom option, Tableau automatically opens a window

to configure it. In this window, you can set the scope and the value,
change the format, set the aggregation, and configure many other
options. Here's an example of the Add Reference Line, Band, or
Box Plot menu:
 Tip
Another way to open this is with a right-click on an axis and by
selecting Add Reference Line.

Custom options give you the liberty to choose precisely what you
want to display. The available values when editing a reference Line,
Band, or Box Plot are the pills in the View and the Parameters. You
won't find all the Measures from the data source. If you want to build
a reference Line, Band, or Box Plot with a specific Measure, you
need to add it somewhere in the View (usually in the Detail Mark
property, since it doesn't alter the visualization).

Note
You can download the Analytics ZIP file from my website
(https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com) in Chapter 10: Analytics
and Parameters, or click on this direct link:
https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Analytics.zip.
When you unzip the file, you'll find a Tableau Package Workbook
with an example of each Analytics option.

The last section of this chapter, Creating a year-on-year comparator,

includes a concrete usage of a Custom Reference Line. But before
that, we need to take a look at the last Tableau element, Parameters.
How to work with Parameters
Parameters are a particular element in Tableau, such as
Dimensions, Measures, and Sets. They can be Continuous or
Discrete, depending on the data type in use. The two major aspects
of Parameters are as follows:

They are not linked to the data source (they don't rely on any
field)
They only return one value at a time

Let's start with how to create a Parameter.

Creating a Parameter
To create a Parameter, you can use the small arrow next to
Dimensions, as highlighted in the following screenshot:

When you create a Parameter, Tableau automatically opens the Edit

Parameter window, as illustrated in the following screenshot:
This window is the only place where you can configure a Parameter.
At the top, you can specify its Name and add a Comment (visible
when you hover over the field). You can also change the Parameter
properties by defining the Data type and the Current value (the
default value that the Parameter will have when you have created it).
For some data types, you can also change the default Display
format.

The last option, Allowable values, is a core element of a Parameter.

As you know, a Parameter is not related to the dataset and can
thereby take any possible value. With the Allowable values option,
you can, however, limit the possibilities of what the users can enter.
Let's spend some time learning a bit more about the three Allowable
values options:

The first option, All, allows all possible values to be entered.

The second option, List, limits the values that a user can
choose from a list. For each item, you can specify the value and
the alias in the Display As column. You can enter the value
manually, add all the values from a field, or paste copied values
from your clipboard (from an Excel file, for example). Here's an
example of the usage of List:
 Tip
You can add all the values from a field by right-clicking on it
and using the Create option.

The last option, Range, is available for Date, Date and Time,
Integer, and Float. With Range, you can set a Minimum, a
Maximum, and a Step size. The user will only be able to
choose a value from that range. Here's an example of the usage
of Range:

Note
If you create a Boolean Parameter, you can't use those
options, and you'll be limited to True and False. However,
you can change the aliases.
Click on OK, and your Parameter will be ready! You may be
wondering how you can use it. Continue reading!

Using a Parameter
Usually, a Parameter is displayed on a Worksheet or a Dashboard.
To display a Parameter on a Worksheet, right-click on it and select
the Show Parameter Control option. On a Dashboard, you can add
a Parameter from the options when you select a Worksheet or from
the Analysis menu at the top.

Note
Since Tableau Desktop 2019.2, you can also update the value of
a parameter with an Action, as shown in Chapter 7, Powerful
Dashboards, Stories, and Actions.

Using the small arrow next to the parameter card, as highlighted in

the following screenshot, you can change the display mode and find
other options to customize:

Depending on the data type and the allowable value specified, the
parameter can be displayed as follows:

As a Type In, a free textbox where the users can enter any
value they want
As a Slider, which is usually associated with a ranged
parameter
 As a Compact List or Single Value List, usually associated
with a list parameter

So far, you've only learned how to create, configure, and display a

Parameter. Displaying a Parameter and selecting a value has no
impact. To use a Parameter, you need to put it in a Calculated Field.

The next section is a step-by-step tutorial where you'll see the

potential of Parameters and how to use them to perform great
analysis.
Creating a year-on-year
comparator
To create a year-on-year comparator, you need to combine
everything that we have seen previously: Calculated Field,
Reference Line, and Parameter.

Your mission (if you accept it) is to build a visualization where you
can see the profit by region of a selected year compared to the
previous year with a Reference Line. The Color also helps you to
quickly spot the regions where the profit is lower than in the previous
year. Here's the final result:

Quite impressive, isn't it? Let's build it! Follow this tutorial to learn
how to do this:

1. Create a new Parameter and name it Select a year. Configure

it as an Integer with a list of allowable values. The list is
composed of four values: 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
2. If you want to make it perfect, you can change the display of the
values to remove the thousand.
3. Choose 2018 as the Current value.

Your Parameter configuration window should look like this:

4. Display your Parameter (right-click on it and select Show
Parameter Control).
5. Create a Calculated Field that will return the profit of the
selected year. Name it Profit - Selected year and write the
following formula inside it: if YEAR([Order Date]) = [Select a
year] then [Profit] END. This formula returns the profit if the
Year of Order Date is the same as the value of the parameter.
6. Create a second Calculated Field, name it Profit - Last year,
and write the following formula: if YEAR([Order Date]) =
[Select a year]-1 then [Profit] END. This formula returns the
profit if the Year of Order Date is the value of the Parameter
minus one (so, if you select 2018 in the Parameter, the formula
returns the profit value of 2017).

Tip
For each Calculated Field, make sure that the calculation is
valid.
7. Now, you need to build the visualization. Put Profit - Selected
year inColumns, Region in Rows, and sort the values. You can
now play with the Parameter to show the Profit of the selected
year.
8. Put Profit - Last year in the Detail property. Your Worksheet
should look as follows:

9. Go to the Analytics pane and add a Custom Reference Line

in each cell. For the value of the reference Line, select Profit -
Last year (the aggregation doesn't matter as we are on the cell
level). In the Formatting section, you can make the line a bit
darker. Here's how your reference Line should be configured:
10. Visually, you should be able the see the current and previous
year's profit values, thanks to the reference Line.

11. For a final touch, create a new Calculated Field, name it Is

selected year better?, and write the following formula:
SUM([Profit - Selected year]) >= SUM([Profit – Last year]).
 This Calculated Field returns True if the profit of the selected
year is higher than the profit of the previous year and False if
not.
12. Finally, put the new Calculated Field, Is selected year better?,
in Color. If you want, you can modify the colors. In the end, your
Worksheet should look as follows:

You can play with the Parameter to change the year, and you'll
immediately spot the problematic region. This visualization is a good
exercise because it makes you practice a lot of Tableau's features,
and it's also a great way of comparing two different years.
Summary
This chapter focused on two ways of enhancing your visualizations.
With the Analytics tools, you can use models such as Trend Line,
Cluster, and Forecast, but also all sorts of reference Lines, Bands,
and Distribution. You can use all of these options to visualize your
data in new ways and get a deeper understanding of it. With
Parameters, you can create any input to interact with a visualization.
The last section of this chapter summed up what you covered in this
chapter with a real use case using Parameters and a reference Line.

In the next chapter, we'll talk about data sources again. You'll
discover how to work with multiple data sources using a cross-
database join and data blending, and how to create advanced
unions.
Chapter 11. Advanced Data
Connections
In a Workbook, you can add as many data sources as you want. In a
Worksheet, you can see which data source is used thanks to the tick
✓
mark ( ) next to its icon, as shown in the following screenshot:

You can create different Worksheets based on different data sources

and assemble them in a Dashboard. But what if you need more than
that? What if you want to create a visualization using two different
data sources, or create a unique data source based on a different
type of connection? You can do all of that, too.

In this chapter about advanced data connections, we'll see how to

work with multiple datasets, as well as some other new features for
unions. The three sections of this chapter focus on the following:

Cross-database join
Data blending
Wildcard union

The different examples require a specific dataset or file to be

reproduced.

Let's start this chapter by learning how to combine multiple datasets

in one data source.
Cross-database join
In Chapter 4, Connecting to Data and Simple Transformations, you
saw how to create joins between different tables of the same
dataset. With cross-database joins, you can create joins between
different tables from different connection types. It's a great way to
add new dimensions to your analysis.

Tip
You can't use all the different types of connections in a cross-
database join.

As an example, let's create a join betweenSample - Superstore and

another Excel file, Reimbursement, which contains the reimbursed
orders.

Tip
To reproduce the following example, you need to download the
Reimbursement Excel file available at
https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in the Chapter 11: Advanced
Data Connections section, or use this link:
https://ladataviz.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/09/Reimbursement.xlsx.

Here's what the Reimbursement table contains:

Let's see now how to create a cross-database join between those
two files:

1. Open Tableau and click on the saved data source, Sample -

Superstore.
2. Click on the Data Source tab at the bottom-left of the window to
open the data source workplace.
3. Next to Connections, click on Add to connect to another file or
server, as highlighted in the following screenshot:

4. Search and select the Reimbursement Excel file. Tableau

automatically opens it in the same data source page,
underneath Sample - Superstore.
5. Add the Reimbursement table as a left join on the Order ID
column:
 Tip
Each connection has a unique color, so it's easy to
differentiate them.

6. In a new Worksheet, you can now create a visualization that

combines the sales and the reason for reimbursement (exclude
the null):

A cross-database join has the same disadvantage as a standard

join: it can duplicate the data. However, it's a great feature that
allows you to combine multiple datasets of different types in a unique
data source.

The next section presents another way of combining two datasets.

Data blending
Data blending is a way of using different fields from different data
sources in one Worksheet. There is always a primary data source
(the tick icon in blue) and one or more secondary data sources (the
tick mark in orange). As for joins, one or multiple common fields are
needed to create the relationships between the data sources.

Unlike joins, data blending is often used to add new Measures.

Fields coming from the secondary data sources are always
aggregated. However, they are only aggregated using the common
fields between the two data sources, so there is no data duplication.
However, data blending can rapidly have a negative impact on
performance.

Fields with the same name can automatically be used to create a

relationship. In the secondary data sources, you can recognize the
fields that can be used for the relationship with the small link icon
next to their name. You can click on the link icon to enable or disable
them. For example, in the following screenshot, both Order Date
and Order Number can be used as links, but only Order Date is
selected and thus, used by Tableau:
If no fields have the same name, you can use Edit Relationships...
option from the Data top menu. A new window will open where you
can configure the relationships, and, with the custom option, you can
select the common fields manually. This will be illustrated in the
following example.

Tip
If no fields are common, you can create a Calculated field to
build the relationship.

Let's add a yearly target for our sales. In a previous chapter, we had
to deduplicate the target value. You'll see that, with data blending,
there is no need to do that.

Note
To reproduce the following example, you need to download the
Target Excel file from https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in the
Chapter 11: Advanced Data Connections section, or use this
link: https://ladataviz.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/09/Target.xlsx.

Target is a simple Excel file with the Year and the value of the Target,
as you can see here:
Go through the following steps to add a target to the sales:

1. Open Tableau Desktop and select the saved Sample-

Superstore data source.

2. Click on the New Data Source icon in the toolbar: .

3. Search and select the Target Excel file that you've downloaded.
4. Click on Sheet 1; you should now have two different data
sources, as shown in the following screenshot:

5. Create a bar chart with the year of the Order Date in Columns
and the Sales in Rows.
6. Add the Target Measure from the Target data source in Detail.
A warning will open because Tableau isn't able to find a
relationship between the two data sources. Your current
visualization should look as follows:
7. Open the Data menu at the top and click on Edit
Relationships....
8. Choose Sample - Superstore as the Primary data source and
Target as the secondary, then select Custom. The configuration
window should look as follows:

9. Click on the Add... button and, in the window that opens, select
the YEAR(Order Date) field from the primary data source field
and Year from the secondary, as highlighted in the following
screenshot. Then click on OK:
10. In the visualization, right-click on the axis and select Add
Reference Line.
11. In the configuration window, change the scope to Per Cell,
select SUM(Target) as the value, choose a Custom label, and
write Target. Your configuration window and visualization should
be similar to this screenshot:

Adding the targets with a normal join will duplicate the values.
Thanks to data blending, it's both easy and practical to add new
Measures with different aggregations coming from different data
sources. However, there are some limitations, such as you can't use
the count distinct or median aggregation, and Level of Detail (LOD)
calculations are not allowed.

In the next section, unions are back!

Wildcard union
The first time you saw how to create unions, you had to select the
different tables of the dataset that you wanted to use manually.
Wildcard unions allow you to create more powerful unions that
automatically add all the files and all the tables that match a specific
pattern. This kind of union is convenient because you don't have to
add the new tables manually; you only need to refresh the data
source.

As an example of a wildcard union, I am going to split the Sample-

Superstore Excel file into four Excel files, one for each year, and put
them in a folder named Sales.

Note
To reproduce the following example, you need to download the
Sales.zip file from https://tableau2019.ladataviz.com, in the
Chapter 11: Advanced Data Connections section, or use this
link: https://ladataviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Sales.zip.

Let's union those files:

1. First, unzip the Sales.zip file you've just downloaded.

2. Open Tableau Desktop and chose Microsoft Excel from the list
of connectors.
3. Navigate to the Sales unzipped folder and select the Sales
2015.xlsx file.
4. Replace Sheet1 with New Union:
5. Select the second tab, Wildcard, and configure it to include all
the sheets named Sheet1, and all the Excel Workbooks starting
with Sales by writing Sales *.xlsx (use the * symbol to
represent any other characters).

Your configuration window should look like this:

 Note
You can also expand the search to the subfolders or parent
folders using the options.

6. That's it! To test the wildcard union, you can create a new
visualization that displays the Year of Order Date and the
Sales, with the Path of the different files:

Wildcard unions are very practical. Use them as often as you can!
The only rule is to be careful with the patterns so that you don't
include things you don't want!
Summary
This chapter was short, but the three new features presented will
undoubtedly be useful for you! With a cross-database join, you can
create a unique data sources that combine multiple different
connections. With data blending, you can create a relationship
between multiple data sources and use their fields in the same
Worksheet. Finally, you learned how to give superpowers to unions
thanks to wildcard unions, a feature that automatically adds files and
tables based on a pattern.

We have one last technical chapter to go, and it's not a trivial one,
since we'll be talking about security. You will see how to secure your
data on Tableau Server and in Tableau Desktop, thanks to three
different layers of protection. What are you waiting for? You're almost
at the end!
Chapter 12. Dealing with
Security
In this last advanced chapter, we'll speak about security, which is an
essential aspect of working with data. To add protection, you need to
have Tableau Server. In this chapter, we'll focus on three ways of
dealing with security, including the following:

Tableau Server security

User filters
Row-level filters

To manage security on Tableau Server, you need to have sufficient

privileges on it. To add the user filter and build the Row-level security
filter, you need at least one a way to connect to Tableau Server. Let's
start with the most straightforward way of securing your data on
Tableau Server.

Tableau Server security

To protect your Tableau Server contents, you can click on the three
dots, ..., on any content (project, workbooks, views, and Flows) to
show the options and select Permissions. When you click on
Permissions, Tableau opens a new window where you can specify
many security options.

Here's the Permissions menu:

On this menu, you'll always see the All Users permissions. You can
click on the three dots to edit them. You can also click on Add a user
or group rule to specify new permissions for specific users or
groups. When you edit the permissions, you can see, for each
element, a list of preconfigured roles.

If you click on the arrows next to an element (Project, Workbooks,

Data Sources, and flows), you get more detail and the possibility to
edit each permission individually. Each permission can be allowed
(green), denied (red), or unspecified (grey). To edit an individual
permission, click on its box.

Here's an example of permissions with a detailed view for

Workbooks:

Be aware that not all options are available for all elements. Here's
the complete list of permissions, grouped by the elements where
they appear:

Global permissions:

View : Specifies whether a user can see the element

Save : Overwrites the existing element on the server

Project permissions:
 Project leader : A project leader has all the
permissions on that project.

Workbook, Data Sources, and Flows Permissions:

Download / : Downloads the file

Delete : Removes the element from the server
Set Permissions : Gives us the ability to change and
define the permissions
Move : Changes the project of a Workbook or Flow
Connect/Run : Gives us the ability to connect to the
Data Source or run Tableau Prep Flow

Workbook Permissions:

Download image : Downloads an image of the

visualization
Download summary data : Downloads a summary of
the data in a visualization
View comments : Sees the comments posted under a
visualization
Add comments : Adds comments under a visualization
Filter : Uses the filters available and the Keep Only and
Exclude features
Download full data : Downloads the complete data used
in a visualization, with all the rows and columns
Share customized : Gives us the ability to create and
share a customized view
Web edit : Opens the Tableau Server edition window
where a user can modify the visualization or create new
ones

With those permissions, you can control who has access to what on
Tableau Server. You can, for example, allow only a few users to
access your Workbook. But what if you want to control what those
users can see?
User filters
Let's say that, based on the Sample - Superstore data source, you
want to control the Region that the users can see. To do that, you
need to set a User Filter.

User filters are a special kind set on Tableau Desktop. They link
Tableau Server users to dimension values. It's quite easy to create a
user filter:

1. On Tableau Desktop, click on the Server in the top menu, go to

Create a User Filter, and choose the Field to secure.
2. Tableau opens a new window where you can select, on the left,
a User or a Group and, on the right, the Members of the field
that the user or group can see.
3. Once you've created the user filter, you'll see a new set in your
data source.
4. To use a user filter, add the corresponding set to the Filter shelf
or, better, as a Data Source Filter (with the Use all option).

Note
The reason it's better to add a User Filter on the Data Source
filters rather than the Filter shelf is to increase security. If you put
a User Filter in the Filter shelf, a user may be able to download
the Workbook and remove the User Filter from the Filters. They'll
have access to all the data. Also, if someone starts a new
analysis based on this Data Source, they'll also have access to
all the data. If you put the User Filter on the Data Source Filters,
the users won't be able to remove it without having the right to
edit a Data Source, and it will be automatically applied when
using this Data Source.
Now, to illustrate the usage of a User Filter, let's look at an example
with the Sample - Superstore Data Source. For this example, I've
created five groups on Tableau Server: Central Users, South Users,
West Users, East Users, and Top Management.

Tip
It's not a problem if you can't create the same groups as me to
replicate this example. Just use existing groups or users on
your Tableau Server; you can't break anything.

Let's start creating User Filters:

1. Create a new User Filter on Region... and name it Region

Filter:

2. In the User Filter configuration window, for each group, select

the members of the field that they are allowed to see. For
example, click on the West Users group and select the West
value. For the Top Management group, select All members,
and for All Users, select None. Here's an example of the
configuration for the West Users group:
3. Build a simple visualization: double-click on State and then add
Sales on Color.
4. Put the Region Filter set in the Filter shelf to test it. If you're
not inside one of the groups where we define access, you
shouldn't see anything.
5. At the very bottom of the Tableau window, you can see the
currently logged-in user in Tableau Server, as shown in the
following screenshot:

6. Beside the name of the logged-in user, there's an arrow you can
click on to select another User or Group.
7. With this option, choose the West group, and the User Filter will
automatically filter the Region to keep only the West value, as
you can see here:
 8. You can test the same with Top Management—all the regions
will be displayed. When you're confident that the User Filter
works fine, you can remove it from the Filters shelf.
9. Right-click on the Data Source name and select Edit Data
Source Filters.
10. Click on the Add button and select Region Filter field.
11. Select the Use all option and click on OK. The User Filter is
applied on all the Data Source, thereby enhancing the security
of your data.

This is the first way of securing your data. As you may have
guessed, if you have hundreds of users to give access to, and
hundreds of different values in the field to secure, the User Filter will
be extremely long to create and impossible to maintain. In those
cases, we create a row-level filter.
Row-level filters
To create a row-lever filter, your Data Source must contain a field
with the name of the Tableau Server Users. This solution only works
when the access level is already defined in your data. This option
uses a Tableau function called USERNAME() that returns the username
of the currently logged-in user.

Again, the best way to understand this is with an example. You can
reproduce the tutorial with your own Users and Groups in your
Tableau Server and the Sample - Superstore Data Source.

In my case, I've created three Users in Tableau Server and the

following Excel file, which I named User Access.xlsx:

In the Excel file, we specified that the following:

John Snow has access to all the Regions (do not confuse John
Snow, a famous epidemiologist who discovered, in 1854, that
cholera deaths were clustered around the water pumps in
London thanks to data visualization, with Jon Snow, who knows
nothing).
William Playfair only has access to West.
Charles Minard only has access to Central.
Here's the step-by-step guide of how to create a row-level filter
between the data and Tableau Server:

1. Open Tableau and connect to the Sample – Superstore Excel

file.
2. Add another Microsoft new Excel connection to the User
Access file.
3. Create a cross-database join between Orders and User
Access on the common Region field:

Tip
This join duplicates the data by the number of users, but
since you never show multiple users at the same time, it's
not a problem.

4. On a Worksheet, create a new calculated field, name it User has

access, and write USERNAME()=[User]. This calculation returns
True if the currently logged-in user is the same as the User field
in the data source.
5. Right-click on the data source name and select Edit Data
Source Filters. Add the User has access Calculated Field and
keep only the value, that is, True. The data source filter should
look as follows:
6. You can test the row-level filter by selecting different users on
Tableau Server with the bottom menu. Here is, for example, the
result for Charles Minard, who only has access to the Central
regions:

Tip
Before Tableau 2018.3, the only drawback was data duplication:
when using an extract, all the duplicated lines must be
generated, which makes the extract gigantic. Since Tableau
2018.3, you can use the multiple table schema when creating an
extract with joins. This drastically decreases the extract size
when using a row-level filter.
With this solution, you let the data control the security. It's a great
way to handle complex situations because you can create row-level
filters based on multiple fields.
Summary
In this last technical chapter, you learned how to secure your data
and content on Tableau Server. The permissions allow you to control
who can see your work and what power they have over it (such as to
download, save, edit, and more). On Tableau Desktop, with user
filters and row-level filters, you can control what the users can see in
your data.

This book is almost finished. We've covered all the technical aspects
of Tableau. The last chapter is an invitation for you to join the
Tableau Community, along with tips on how to get better and better
each day with different community projects.
Section 4: After Finishing the
Book
It's almost time to say goodbye and close this book. This conclusion
is more an opening than an ending. You'll see all the options
available to continue your journey with Tableau keep growing your
skills.

This section includes the following chapter:

Chapter 13, How to Keep Growing your Skills

Chapter 13. How to Keep
Growing Your Skills
That's it! You are now all set to use Tableau in a professional
environment, starting with connecting to your data, building your data
source, then your first visualizations and Dashboards, after which
you publish all your work in a secure and online environment. But
there is still a lot to discover and many ways to become better at
using Tableau.

In this short chapter, we'll speak about the following:

The Tableau Community

Tableau Public
Community projects
Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz

Let's start with the reason Tableau is the best tool for data
visualization: the Community.

The Tableau Community

Tableau is an excellent tool for many reasons, but there are a lot of
great tools for data visualization. If you ask me why Tableau is better
than the others, my answer would be, the Community.

When I started using Tableau, the Tableau Community Forums

helped me a lot. No questions are left unanswered, and you'll find a
lot of people that are eager to help you. Don't hesitate to ask any
questions here: https://community.tableau.com/community/forums.

The community is all about sharing. There are many events where
the Tableau Community gathers to share. The Tableau User Group
(TUG) is a regional event (check whether there's one near your
area!) where senior users meet new users and discuss new features,
tips, use cases, and more. It's also a great place to share pizzas and
beers!

Don't be sad if there is no TUG near you; there are many online
events, such as the Fringe Festival, that are organized by the
Tableau community: http://www.thefringefestival.rocks/.

Of course, there are also two major official events: the Tableau
Conference in the US and the European Tableau Conference in
Europe. These are the biggest Tableau events, and they are the best
places to meet people, discover all the new features to be released,
and cheer on your favorite competitor at the Iron Viz event.

You'll find all the events, groups, forums, links, and webinars here:
https://www.tableau.com/Community.

The other great way to learn is on Tableau Public.

Tableau Public
Tableau Public is a piece of software, similar to Tableau Desktop,
that you can download and use for free with some limitations: you
need to publish your work online in a public environment, and you
don't have access to all the connectors that are available in Tableau
Desktop.

Tableau Public is, in fact, much more than that.

Tableau Public is like a social network where you can only find the
best visualizations available. As we are data lovers, here are some
figures: 250,000 Tableau Public users have published more than 1
million Workbooks, generating more than 1 billion views.

On the Tableau Public website, you can find a Viz Of The Day
section on the home page (every day, a new Workbook is promoted
by Tableau: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/), and many featured
visualizations in different categories (Greatest Hits, Sports, Social
Goof, and so on). You can find a list of the current featured authors,
a blog, and many resources to keep learning. You can also search
for any author or interest. But wait – the best is yet to come.

At the bottom of every visualization published in Tableau Public,

there are some buttons to open the visualization in full screen, share,
and the best: download. When you click on the download button, you
can get an image, the data, a crosstab, a PDF, and – are you ready?
– the Workbook itself! Even the most beautiful Workbooks can
usually be downloaded (it's the author's choice). It is one of the
greatest ways to learn. I discover a lot by downloading the
Workbooks and figuring out how the authors built them.

Creating a Tableau Public account is very simple. Once you have an

account, you can start to follow authors you like and publish
Workbooks.
The main reason why people don't share Workbooks in Tableau
Public is that they don't know what data to share. The next section
resolves that problem.
Community projects
This section is all about growing your Tableau skills. There are many
projects being created by the community for the Community.
Participating in those projects doesn't engage you in anything; you
can only learn and become better. For the majority of those projects,
people interact through Twitter, so I advise you to create an account
to follow those projects.

Here are some Community projects:

Viz For Social Good – #VizForSocialGood by Chloe Tseng:

This project gives you the opportunity to work for non-profit
organizations such as UNICEF and the United Nations. There is
a new project almost every month, with a deadline to respect.
You can register as a volunteer to be informed of new projects.
At the end of every project, the non-profit organization chooses
one visualization to feature on its communication channels.

Viz For Social Good was awarded a Silver for Community at the
2017 Information is Beautiful Awards.

Note
All the information that is required so that you can join can
be found here: https://www.vizforsocialgood.com.

Make Over Monday – #MakeOverMonday—by Eva Murray

and Andy Kriebel: This is probably the most followed project and
the best way to practice your creativity in Tableau. Every
Monday, they share a new dataset to visualize in Tableau. On
Wednesday, there is a webinar where Eva and Andy review
some visualizations (#MMVizReview) and, during the weekend,
 they publish a blog post with all the lessons they've learned and
their favorite makeovers.

Tip
You'll find all the information about this, datasets, and links
here: https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/.

Workout Wednesday – #WorkOutWednesday—currently run

by Luke Stanke, Ann Jackson, Curtis Harris, Lorna Eden, and
guests: This is the most challenging Community project. Every
Wednesday, they share a new visualization and the dataset
that's required to reproduce it. The goal is to rebuild the same
visualization. Of course, it's more difficult than you think. If Make
Over Monday helps you practice your creativity, Workout
Wednesday is all about technical challenges.

Note
Find all the challenges at http://www.workout-
wednesday.com/weekly-overview/.

There are other projects, such as Data For a Cause

(#DataForACause) (www.olgatsubiks.com/data-for-a-cause) by Olga
Tsubiks, and Sports Viz Sunday (#SportsVizSunday)
(https://data.world/sportsvizsunday) by Simon Beaumont and
Spencer Baucke, that I invite you to follow.

As you can see, there are many ways to learn and become better at
using Tableau. Maybe, after some time, you'll compete as an Iron Viz
contestant, or you'll be recognized as one of the Ambassadors or
Zen Masters. Don't know what I'm talking about? The next – and last
– section explains everything.
Ambassadors, Zen Masters,
and Iron Viz
When you start in the Tableau Community, it may be hard to know
who to follow. Tableau has decided to help you by recognizing the
investment and spirit of some people in the Community.

Ambassadors
The first set of amazing people are the Ambassadors. They are split
into four groups:

Forums Ambassadors: They are there to answer your

questions in the Forum.
Social Media Ambassadors: They are the social network
gurus; follow them to get all the latest news.
User Group Leader Ambassadors: They help the Community
meet in real life by organizing Tableau User Groups .
Tableau Public Ambassadors: Check their Tableau Public
profiles and be ready to be blown away.

You can find all the current Ambassadors here:

https://www.tableau.com/tableau-ambassadors.

Zen Masters
The second set of amazing people is the Zen Masters. They are the
faces of Tableau Community. They passionately dedicate a huge
amount of time to help everyone excel in Tableau. They not only
create great visualizations, but they also share their knowledge as
much as they can. Everyone in the Tableau Community has learned
at least one thing from a Zen Master.
Discover who the Zen Masters are and what they are doing at
https://www.tableau.com/zen-masters.

Iron Viz
As you enhance your skills, you may want to try to compete against
other people in the Community. For that, you have Iron Viz. The
competition is divided into two parts: three qualification contests,
called the Feeders, and one Final. For the Feeders, only the theme
is imposed, and the contestants have approximately one month to
find the data and create the best possible visualization. There is one
winner per Feeder.

The three winners of the Feeders battle during the Iron Viz Final at
the annual Tableau Conference. There is no way to prepare for the
Final: build a Workbook from the start, in 20 minutes, live, in front of
thousands of screaming people. A jury, composed of four people,
and the public, vote on Twitter to determine the annual Iron Viz
champion. Since 2017, there is also a European Iron Viz
competition. All the information about the Iron Viz competition are
available here: https://www.tableau.com/iron-viz.

I advise you to participate – not for the purpose of winning, but to

push yourself further than you've ever gone in Tableau. You cannot
lose; either you win, or you learn.
Summary
This chapter, even though it's not technical, is really important. This
chapter is the key to continuing your journey with Tableau. This
chapter is also my tribute to the Community, who kept pushing me
higher and higher over the last three years since I started using
Tableau.

Even if you don't plan on sharing a lot or getting involved (which is

understandable), keep in mind that the Community Forum is the first
place to go if you have any questions regarding Tableau. Even
though I tried my best to explain all the concepts in this book, no
books or training sessions can cover every use case you will
encounter in real life. Also, if you're searching for resources, blogs,
inspiration, or webinars, you'll find it on Tableau Public or through the
Community Projects.

Thanks for purchasing and reading this book. I truly hope that you've
learned a lot and that you'll use Tableau with the same passion I do.
Appendix A. Other Books You
May Enjoy
If you enjoyed this book, you may be interested in another book by
Packt:
Tableau 2019.x Cookbook

Dmitry Anoshin, Teodora Matic, Et al

ISBN: 978-1-78953-338-5
Understand the basic and advanced skills of Tableau Desktop
Implement best practices of visualization, dashboard, and
storytelling
Learn advanced analytics with the use of build in statistics
Deploy the multi-node server on Linux and Windows
Use Tableau with big data sources such as Hadoop, Athena,
and Spectrum
Cover Tableau built-in functions for forecasting using R
packages
Combine, shape, and clean data for analysis using Tableau
Prep
Extend Tableau's functionalities with REST API and R/Python
Tableau 2019.1 for Data Scientists [Video]

Manja Bogicevic

ISBN: 978-1-78995-824-9
 Connect Tableau to various datasets and gather data from
sources such as Excel and CSV files
Work with full-suite visuals and create bar charts, area charts,
maps and scatterplots, and treemaps and pie charts
Explore storytelling and how to choose the best colors for your
dashboards
Discover the types of joins and how they work
Work with data blending in Tableau
Export results from Tableau into PowerPoint, Word, and other
software
Understand aggregation, granularity, and level of detail
Study advanced data preparation in Tableau and profit analysis

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Index
A
actions

about / New actions

Improved URL Actions / Improved URL Actions (2019.1)
Change Parameter / Change Parameter (2019.2)

Ambassadors

about / Ambassadors
Forums Ambassadors / Ambassadors
Social Media Ambassadors / Ambassadors
User Group Leader Ambassadors / Ambassadors
Tableau Public Ambassadors / Ambassadors
reference / Ambassadors

Ask Data

about / Ask Data (2019.1)

New Alerts view / New Alerts view (2019.2)
Device preview / Device preview (2019.1)
using / Ask Data

B
bar charts

for sales and profit by sub-categories / Sales and profit by

sub-categories – bar charts

bins / Bins
built-in Analytics tools
 using / Using built-in Analytics tools
Summarize tab / The Summarize tab
Model tab / The Model tab
Custom tab / The Custom tab

C
Calculated Field

about / Calculated field basics

creating / Creating a Calculated Field
calculation functions, using / Using calculation functions
values, highlighting / Example – highlighting values

Calculated Field aggregation

about / To aggregate or not to aggregate fields

avoiding / To aggregate or not to aggregate fields

calculation functions

using / Using calculation functions

Comma Separated Values (CSV) file / Speaking Tableau

community projects

about / Community projects

Viz For Social Good / Community projects
Make Over Monday / Community projects
Workout Wednesday / Community projects

connectors

improvements / Connector improvements

Container

need for / Containers

 Continuous field / Blue and green – Discrete and Continuous

filtering / Filtering a Continuous field

cross-database join / Cross-database join

D
Dashboard

building / Building your first Dashboard, Building a

dashboard
assembling / Assembling the Dashboard
interactivity, adding / Adding interactivity to your Dashboard
basics / Dashboard basics
Layout pane / The Layout pane
with Tiled Layouts / Tiled
with Floating Layout / Floating
device layouts / Device layouts
options / Dashboard options

Dashboard actions

about / Dashboard actions

Filter action / The Filter action
Highlight action / The Highlight action
Go to URL… action / The Go to URL action
Go to Sheet… action / The Go to Sheet action
Change Parameter… action / The Change Parameter
action
Change Set Values… action / The Change Set Values
action

Dashboard objects

about / Dashboard objects

Text / Dashboard objects
 Image / Dashboard objects
Web Page / Dashboard objects
Blank / Dashboard objects
Extensions / Dashboard objects

Dashboard pane / The Dashboard pane

data

connecting to / Connecting to data

joining / Join data easily

data blending / Data blending

data connection

general rules / General rules

data exploration

Tableau, using / Using Tableau for data exploration

Data For a Cause

reference / Community projects

Data Interpreter / The Data Interpreter

Data Source

about / Speaking Tableau

Measures / Speaking Tableau, Dimension and Measure
Dimensions / Speaking Tableau, Dimension and Measure

data source

improvements / Connector improvements

about / Understanding the data source
generated information / Generated information
options / Data source options
dealing, with changes / Refreshing a data source and
dealing with changes, Dealing with changes
 refreshing / Refreshing a data source and dealing with
changes, How to refresh a data source
field customization / Field customization and default
properties
default properties / Field customization and default
properties, Default properties
field customization options / Field customization options
hierarchies / Hierarchies
publishing / Why and how to publish a data source

data types

in Tableau / Data types in Tableau

Dimension / Dimension and Measure

Discrete field / Blue and green – Discrete and Continuous

filtering / Filtering a Discrete field

E
Empowered Dashboard

about / Empowered Dashboard

Show/Hide containers / Show/Hide containers (2019.2)
Replace Worksheets / Replace Worksheets (2019.2)

Extract connection

versus Live connection / Live or Extract

about / Extract

F
filled maps

for profit by state / Profit by state – filled maps

 filter hierarchy

about / Filter hierarchy

context / Context
global filter hierarchy / Global filter hierarchy

filters / Filters
Forums Ambassadors / Ambassadors
full outer join / Join requirements and types

G
groups / Groups, sets, and bins, Groups

I
inner join / Join requirements and types
interactivity

adding, to Dashboard / Adding interactivity to your

Dashboard

Iron Viz / Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz, Iron Viz

J
join

requisites / Join requirements and types

types / Join requirements and types
selecting / Join requirements and types
inner join / Join requirements and types
left join / Join requirements and types
right join / Join requirements and types
full outer / Join requirements and types
creating / Hands-on with a simple join
 risks / Join risks

join principle / The join principle

L
left join / Join requirements and types
Level of Detail (LOD) functions

about / Hands-on – Table Calculation functions, LOD

function basics
Include function / LOD function basics
Fixed function / LOD function basics, FIXED
used, for deduplicate dat / Hands-on – using an LOD
function to deduplicate your data

line charts

for profit evolution / Profit evolution – line charts

Live connection

versus Extract connection / Live or Extract

about / Live

M
MakeLine / MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)
Make Over Monday

about / Community projects

reference / Community projects

MakePoint / MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)

Mark properties

about / Mark properties

 color / Color
Size / Size
Label (text) / Label (text)
Detail / Detail
Tooltip / Tooltip
Shape / Shape
Path / Path
Angle / Angle

Measures / Dimension and Measure

Model tab, built-in Analytics tools

Average Line, with confidence interval / Average or median

with a confidence interval
Median Line, with confidence interval / Average or median
with a confidence interval
Trend Line / Trend Line
Forecast / Forecast
Cluster / Cluster

multiple Measures

using / Using multiple Measures

dual axis / Dual Axis
Measure Names / Measure Names and Measure Values
Measure Values / Measure Names and Measure Values

Multiple Tables schema / Extract

P
pages / Pages
Parameters

working with / How to work with Parameters

creating / Creating a Parameter
using / Using a Parameter
 pill / Speaking Tableau
pivot / Pivot
published content

interacting with / Interacting with published content

published data source

modifying / Modifying a published data source

published data sources

interacting with / Interacting with published data sources

published workbooks

interacting with / Interacting with published workbooks

custom views / Custom views
alert / Alert
subscribe / Subscribe
Download button / Download
Comments button / Comments
mobile layout preview / The mobile layout preview

Q
quick filters / Quick filters
Quick Table Calculation / Table Calculation, Quick Table
Calculation

R
right join / Join requirements and types
row-level filters / Row-level filters

S
 sets / Sets
simple transformations

about / Simple transformations

Data Interpreter / The Data Interpreter
column, splitting / Splitting a column
pivot / Pivot

Social Media Ambassadors / Ambassadors

Spatial files

connecting / Connecting spatial files

Sports Viz Sunday

reference / Community projects

Story

creating / Creating a story

building / Building a story
customizing, Story options used / Customizing a Story
using Story options

Summarize tab, built-in Analytics tools

Constant Line / Constant Line

Average Line / Average Line
Median with Quartiles / Median with Quartiles
Box Plot / Box Plot
Totals / Totals

T
Tableau

lifecycle / Speaking Tableau

 using, for data exploration / Using Tableau for data
exploration
data types / Data types in Tableau

Tableau Community / The Tableau Community

Tableau Desktop / The different Tableau products
Tableau Extensions GitHub page

reference / Dashboard objects

Tableau Mobile / The different Tableau products

Tableau Online / The different Tableau products

reference / Basics

Tableau Prep / The different Tableau products

Tableau products

about / The different Tableau products

Tableau Desktop / The different Tableau products
Tableau Server / The different Tableau products
Tableau Online / The different Tableau products
Tableau Reader / The different Tableau products
Tableau Public / The different Tableau products
Tableau Mobile / The different Tableau products
Tableau Prep / The different Tableau products

Tableau Public / The different Tableau products, Speaking

Tableau

about / Tableau Public

reference / Tableau Public

Tableau Public Ambassadors / Ambassadors

Tableau Reader / The different Tableau products
Tableau Server / The different Tableau products, Speaking
Tableau
 about / Tableau Server
new browsing experience / New browsing experience
(2019.2)
new features / Other improvements
basics / An introduction to Tableau Server, Basics
projects / Tableau Server content
workbooks / Tableau Server content
views / Tableau Server content
data sources / Tableau Server content
flows / Tableau Server content
content, publishing / Publishing and modifying the content
data source, publishing / Why and how to publish a data
source
published data source, modifying / Modifying a published
data source
workbook, publishing / Publishing a workbook

Tableau Server security / Tableau Server security

Tableau User Group (TUG) / The Tableau Community
Table Calculation functions

about / Table Calculation, Table Calculation functions

working with / Hands-on – Table Calculation functions

toolbar options

about / The toolbar options

Undo / The toolbar options
Add a new Data Source / The toolbar options
Duplicate Worksheet / The toolbar options
Clear / The toolbar options
Swap / The toolbar options
Sort ascending/descending / The toolbar options
Show Labels / The toolbar options
Fit / The toolbar options
Show me / The toolbar options

Totals / Box Plot

U
unions

about / Union your data

example / Hands-on with a union example

User Filter / User filters

User Group Leader Ambassadors / Ambassadors

V
Vector Map

about / Vector Map (2019.2)

visualizations

creating / Creating your first set of visualizations, Creating

visualizations
bar charts, for sales and profit by sub-categories / Sales
and profit by sub-categories – bar charts
line charts, for profit evolution / Profit evolution – line charts
filled maps, for profit by state / Profit by state – filled maps

visualizations, building automatic ways

about / Building a visualization, the automatic way

double-click / Double-click
Show Me / Show Me

visualizations, building manual ways

about / Building a visualization, the manual way

Mark ype / The Mark type

Viz For Social Good / Community projects

 Viz Of The Day / Tableau Public

W
Web Authoring / Web Authoring
wildcard union / Wildcard union
workbook

publishing / Publishing a workbook

Workout Wednesday / Community projects

worksheet enhancement

about / Worksheet enhancement

MakePoint / MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)
MakeLine / MakePoint and MakeLine (2019.2)
Vector Map / Vector Map (2019.2)
visualization improvements / Other improvements

worksheet formats

about / Worksheet options and formats

Format option / Format

worksheet options

about / Worksheet options and formats

pill options / Pill options
menu options / Worksheet menu options
view options / View options

Y
year-on-year comparator

creating / Creating a year-on-year comparator

Z
Zen Masters

about / Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz, Zen

Masters
reference / Zen Masters