Tableau Desktop Fundamental Course

1.    What is data visualization

2.    Purpose of data visualization

3.    Introduction to tableau

4.    What is Tableau

5.    Why Tableau

6.    About Tableau products

·         Tableau Desktop

·         Tableau Server

·         Tableau Public

·         Tableau Online

·         Tableau Reader

7.    Installation of Tableau Desktop

8.    Connecting to Excel Data source

9.    Understanding of Data window

·         Dimension?

·         Measure?

·         Data types and Symbols

10. Different ways of dragging dimensions and measures

11. Sample report and dashboard

12. Connecting to data source

·         Connecting to single table

·         Connecting to multiple tables

·         Connecting using custom SQL

·         Exporting or saving data connection

·         Editing data connection

·         Replacing data connection

·         Refreshing the connection

·         Extract connection

·         Live vs extract

·         Data Source filters

·         switch to live

·         Refreshing extract

·         Closing data source

·         Clipboard data source

·         Data Blending

13. Different File extension types in Tableau

·         .tbm

·         .twb

·         .tde

·         .twbx

·         .tds

·         .tdsx

·         .tps

·         .tms

14. Tool bar menu icons

·         Undo

·         Redo

·         Save

·         Connect to data

·         Create new sheet or dashboard or story

·         Duplicate sheet

·         Clearing sheet

·         Swapping

·         Sorting

·         Labeling(abc)

·         Resetting cards

·         Pinning axis

·         Highlighting

·         Presentation view

15. Data window options

·         Add to sheet

·         Show quick filter

·         Duplicate

·         Rename

·         Hide

·         Group by folder or data source table

·         Create folder

·         Change data type

·         Change Geo graphic role

·         Default properties

·         Replace references

·         Describe

·         Creating calculation field

16. Cross tab reports

·         simple cross tab report

·         cross tab report with more than 6 columns

·         cross tab report with more than 16 columns

·         showing header for single measure cross tab report

·         hiding and showing columns in cross tab report

·         adding sub totals, row and column grand totals

·         formatting cross tab reports

·         conditional formatting in cross tab report

·         KPI in cross tab reports

17. Hierarchies

·         Create Hierarchies

·         Hierarchies in cross tab reports

·         Hierarchies in charts

18. Bar and Line charts

·         Simple Bar chart

·         Side by side Bar chart

·         Staked Bar chart

·         Grouped Bar chart

·         Bar with line chart (Dual axis)

·         Bar with in Bar chart (Dual axis)

·         About marks shelves (Color, Size, Label, Tool Tip)

·         Annotations (Mark, Point and Area)

·         Formatting sheets

19. Worksheet options

·         Renaming of sheet

·         Deleting sheet

·         Duplicating sheet

·         Duplicating as cross tab

·         Export sheet

·         Copy/Paste formatting

·         Copy/Paste sheets

·         Show title, caption, summary options

·         Describing sheet

20. Filters

·         Quick filters

·         Filtering Dimensions

·         Filtering Measures

·         Range filters

·         Context filters

·         Filter options

·         Applying filter to specific sheets

·         Applying filter to data source

·         Date filters

·         Conditional filters

·         Top filters

·         Relevant filters

21. Parameters

·         Create parameter

·         Parameter options

·         Sheet selector using parameter

·         Selecting measure using parameter

22. Sorting

·         Icon Sorting

·         Sorting options

·         Manual sorting

·         Computed sorting

23. Groups

·         Creating Groups

·         Dynamic Groups using calculated field

24. Sets

·         Creating Set

·         Combined Sets

·         Sets in calculation field

25. Table calculations

·         Running Total

·         Difference

·         Percent Difference

·         Percent of Total

·         Rank

·         Percentile

·         Moving Average

·         YTD Total

·         Compound Growth Rate

·         Year over Year Growth

·         YTD Growth

26. Bins

·         Creating Bins

·         Bin size with parameters

·         Custom Bins

27. Forecasting

·         Show Forecast

·         Forecast options

·         Describe Forecast

28. Trend lines

·         Show Trend lines

·         Edit Trend lines

·         Describe Trend lines

·         Describe Trend model

29. Reference lines

·         Adding reference line

·         Reference line per cell, per pane, entire table

·         Adding reference band

·         Formatting

·         Distribution

·         Box Plot

30. Different types of charts in tableau

·         Highlight Table

·         Heat map

·         Tree map

·         Maps

·         Pie Chart

·         Scatter Plot

·         Area Chart

·         Babble Chart

·         Word Cloud

·         Gantt Bar Chart

·         Bullet Chart

·         Box and whisker plot

31. Dashboards

·         Dashboard design

·         Dashboard size selection

·         Difference between Normal, Fixed width, Fixed height and Entire view

·         Tiled vs Floating

·         Dashboard components (Horizontal, Vertical, Text, Image, Web page, Blank)

·         Managing dashboards and sheets

·         Dashboard Actions

·         Formatting Dashboards

32. Creating Story

suresh.n2008@gmail.com

Scenario 5 Showing inventory for selected day if not selected then show last day inventory by month wise

Scenario 5:

Problem: Showing inventory for selected day, if not selected then show last day inventory by month wise.

See images below:

In the above image showing inventory for 15^th of every month. Because user entered day as 15. suppose if user does not enter 15 and leave that as blank then it will show last day Inventory for every month. See below

Note: If you enter any thing apart from 1 to 31 then the report will become blank.

Solution:

Step 1: Create parameter “Day” with data type as string. See blow image

Step 2: Drag Month, Day columns to row shelf and right click on Day parameter select show parameter control.

Step 3: Create a calculated field as “Max or selected day” using below formula.

If [Parameters].[Day]='' then window_Max(max([Day]))

Else int([Parameters].[Day])

End

Note: In above formula '' is not double quote it is two single quotes side by side with out space in between.

Formula working in this way, suppose parameter [Parameters].[Day] is empty means no value entered by user then it will find the max day of each month other wise it will return user entered day value. As we created parameter as string data type so we are converting that value to integer again in else statement.

Step 4: Drag this newly created calculated field “Max or selected day” to text marks shelf.

In above image you can observe that for month of February it showing max date as 31 which is wrong.

Because we used window_max it's calculating max day across table by default. Window_max is a table calculation.

Step 5: Now right click on “Max or selected day” which is there in text marks shelf and go to Compute using then select pane(down).

Now you will see max day for February as 28^th.

Step 6: Create one more calculate field as “Max day filter” using following formula.

If attr(Day) = [Max or selected day] then "True"

Else "False"

END

Note: [Max or selected day] is an aggregated column which is created in step 3. [Day] is not an aggregated column. We cant mix aggregated and non aggregated columns in calculation. So I applied attr function for non aggregated [Day] column.

Step 7: Now drag [Max or selected day] column to filter shelf and select only “True”.

Step 8: Remove column “Max or selected day” from marks text shelf and add “Stock in Inventory” column to marks text shelf.

Finally the report looks like below. You test report with and without day value in parameter.

Please see the report below:

About Author

About Author:

         I am Suresh Reddy Nallapareddy working as software engineer since 5+ years. Having experience in database designing, Data modeling, Data visualization, Data analysis/statistical analysis, Requirements gathering and client interaction. 3+ years of extensive experience working with Business intelligence data visualization tools with specialization on tableau.

About Blog:

          The main aim of this blog is help the people to understand tableau better and providing all help links at one place. As i am a self learner, i spend lot of time and efforts to learn tableau initially. I don’t want my followers to do same. So i am providing all necessary information through this blog and helping them to reach their goals.

Technical Skills:

• Sql, Pl-SQL
• R-Language
• HTML,CSS, JavaScript, Jquery and PHP
• Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server

Professional Experience:

Bodhtree Consulting Limited

Designation: Software Engineer
Location: Hyderabad

From: 23rd June 2011

To: 12th September 2014

Tata Consultancy Services

Designation: Systems Engineer
Location: Mumbai

From: 24th September 2014

To: 28th April 2015

StratApps Pvt Ltd 

Designation: Senior Software Engineer
Location: Hyderabad

From: 4th May 2015

                                                          To: 26th Aug 2016

Service Now
Designation: BI Developer - Tableau
Location: Hyderabad
From: 29th Aug 2016
                                                          To: Till Date                                                           

Certifications:

Tableau Desktop 8 Qualified Associate
Tableau Desktop 9 Qualified Associate

Contact Details:

Mail Id: suresh.n2008@gmail.com

Facebook Id: www.facebook.com/suresh.n2008

Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/TableauExpert

Feedback:

            Please share your valuable feedback to my personal mail id. If you are interested on sharing information please send to my email i will upload that information to this blog.

Important notes in Tableau Desktop

• Multidimensional data sources do not support aggregations and binned data.
• Multidimensional data sources supports only in windows.
• You can use tableau to aggregate measures only with relational data sources, multidimensional data sources contain aggregated data only.
• Null values are ignored in median, count, sum, avg and countD.
• Median does not work on live connection.
• Median was not there before 8.2 version.
• Percentile required extract data. Percentile works with only extracts.
• When all measures are disaggregated you see a mark for each row in the view, you can't select marks to keep only, exclude or create a set when all measures are disaggregated.
• A dimension can be aggregated as a measure using minimum, maximum, count and count (distinct)
• Count (Distinct) is not support for Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and text files data sources. These data sources requires extract to work with CountD
• Dis-aggregating the data can result in a performance degradation.
• When you are writing formulas, any part that displays in bold indicates that it will be computed locally with in tableau on the aggregated results. Any normal weight text will be computed at the database level.
• Functions are displayed in Blue color while creating calculation field.
• Data window fields are displayed in Orange color while creating calculation field.
• Operators are displayed as Blank color while creating calculation field.
• Parameters are displayed as Purple color while creating calculation field.
• Comments are colored as Green color while creating calculation field.
• Grand Totals cannot be applied to continuous dimensions.
• The view must have at least one header to apply Grand Totals.
• If row headers are displayed you can calculate Grand Total for row, If column headers are displayed you can calculate Grand Total for column.
• Forecasting is not supported for multidimensional data sources.
• Forecasting doesn’t work if the view contains:
  (a) Table calculations
  (b) Disaggregated measures
  (c) Percent calculations
  (d) Grand Totals or Sub Totals
  (e) Date values with aggregation set to exact date
  (f) A time series contains null values also imposes constraints.
• The smaller the p-value, the more significant the model.
• If your data contains negative values tableau cannot plot them on a logarithmic scale. All values with a negative value will be displayed at 1 on the axis.
• The pattern match is not case sensitive in filters wild card match.
• If we are using multidimensional data source wild card match option is only available when filtering single level hierarchies and attributes.
• Filters cannot be applied across multiple data sources.
• In previous versions of tableau desktop, the All using this data source option was called make global and the only this worksheet option was make local.
• Sorted fields are identified by a sort icon on the right side of the field.
• You cannot nest inner joins within left or right joins. These joins will cause a "join expression not supported" error.

Scenario 4 (Applying filters only for numerator, not for denominator using FIXED( ) in Tableau 9)

Scenario 4:

Problem: Applying filters only for numerator, not for denominator using FIXED function in

Tableau 9

Description:

Lets take sample super store data set. I want to see count distinct of “Order Id” Group by “Customer Segment” and “Region” as my Denominator. Here is the tricky thing that I have two filters on filter shelf “Container” and “Department” But when I am calculating count distinct of “Order Id” only one filter should apply to Denominator that is “Container” See below:

Before applying filters:

See above if I did not apply filter then it showing Denominator and nominator both are same values.

Now I am changing “Container” filter. The filter will apply to both Denominator and Numerator.

Now I am applying “Department” filter. Now Only numerator will change. The “Department” filter wont apply to Denominator. See Below:

How we can restrict filters on denominator?

Solution:

Step 1: Create a calculate field for “Numerator” using below formula.

Countd([Order ID])

Step 2: Create a calculate field for “Denominator” using below formaula.

{FIXED [Customer Segment], [Region]:countd([Order ID])}

Step 3: Drag columns to respective shelves like shown below, make Container filter as context filter.

• Drag “Customer Segment” and “Region” to row shelf
• Drag “Container” and “Department” to filters shelf
• Right click on “Container” column in filter shelf and click on “Add to Context”
• Drag “Numerator” and “Denominator” to text shelf
• Go to Show me and select text table

Now you can change filters and observe that “Container” filter is applying only for Denominator.

You can see that “Container” and “Department” filters are applying to numerator.

See the report below:

Scenario 3 ( Removing Subtotals for unwanted columns)

Scenario 3: (Simple)

Problem: When we add subtotals by default it will add subtotals for each dimension in cross tab report.

Description:

Lets take sample superstore dataset. I made one cross tab report with following columns in same order.

Region, Category, Department, Container, Consumer Segment and Sales.

After adding subtotals report look like this:

In above report I don't want totals for Category and Region.

How to remove subtotals for unwanted columns?

Solution:

Step 1: Build cross tab report using following columns.

Drag Region, Category, Department, Container, Consumer Segment Columns to row shelf. Drag sales column to text Self.

Step 2: Add Subtotals to report. Go to Analysis tab, select Totals and click on Add All Subtotals

Now the report looks like this:

Step 3: Right click on Region column which is there in row shelf to remove subtotals. By default it is selected, Click on Subtotals to remove subtotals.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 for Category column to remove subtotal.

After removing subtotals for Region and Category the report looks like this:

See the report below: