Tableau
What are the 9 best practices for dashboard building?
- Size the dashboard to fit the in the worst-case available space. - Employ 4-pane dashboard designs. - Use actions to filter instead of QuickFilters. - Build cascading dashboard designs to improve load speed. - Limit the use of color to one primary color scheme. - Use small instructions near the work to make navigation obvious. - Filter information presented in cross tabs to provide relevant details-on-demand - Remove all non-data ink. - Avoid one size fits all dashboards.
What are the different types of shelves?
- Columns shelf - Rows shelf - Pages shelf - Filter shelf
What panes are located on the start window?
- Connect - Open - Discover
What are the three types of joins?
- Inner join (default) - Left join - Right join
How do you use a data source filter?
- Right click on the data source and select "edit data source filters" - Click add and select the field that contains the nulls - Tick null and select exclude
What can you access from the help menu?
- Tableau's on-line manual - Training videos - Sample workbooks.
What kinds of data types are there?
- Text - Date - Date and time - Numerical - Geographic - Boolean.
How do you go back and forth between the Start and Workspace areas?
Click the multi-color pluses (+ + +'s) arranged in a circle. (Logo button)
How do you split data?
Click to open the menu and select split
What do dimensions come out onto the view as?
Themselves
What are the different kinds of Tableau file types?
- Workbook - Datasource - Data extract - Bookmark - Packaged workbook
How can you add a comment to a calculated field?
//
What does a continuous pill on color show?
A color gradient.
What is Tableau?
A data visualization software.
What does a measure on color default to?
A filled map.
How will a 4-pane dashboard design be read?
A four visualizations design style will generally be read from the upper-left to the lower-right in a Z pattern unless you do something to grab attention elsewhere.
What does a discrete pill on color show?
A palette of distinct colors.
What are quick table calculations?
A set of pre-defined commonly used computations
What does a dimension on color default to?
A symbol map.
How do shelves (also known as cards) work?
A view can be built by dragging and dropping fields from the date pane into the canvas directly, or onto the shelves.
How do you create more vizes?
Add more sheets.
What is the advantage of using a crosstab instead of a quick filter?
Additional information is provided in the same amount of space a multi-select quick filter would have required.
What do measures come out onto the view as?
Aggregates
Where are new sheets tabs found and what can we do with them?
At the bottom. We can create sheets, dashboards, and stories with these tabs. We can also do things like rename the sheets, drag to rearrange them, duplicate sheets, copy formatting, and many other things.
What color are discrete pills?
Blue
What is boolean?
Boolean means "yes or no" and is symbolized by 'T/F' icon.
What does filtering on a discrete pill do?
Brings up options related to the specific lists of values for that pill.
What is on the toolbar?
Buttons like save and undo. Many of these buttons are contextual to what's going on in the sheet.
How can you show that text denotes an instruction?
By using a consistent font style and color for the instructions
What can the analytics pane do?
Can bring out pieces of our analysis directly as drag and drop elements. If they're not relevant to the type of view, certain elements will be greyed out.
What are dimensions usually?
Categorical fields such as order priority and city.
What do we do if we want more specifics on what the data interpreter did?
Click "review results". This will open an excel file describing the changes. If we click on the tab we used we see which fields are being used as headers, in red, and which are considered data, in green.
How to use data interpreter
Click turn on - this will strip out headers and nulls so that columns are properly identified
What does both the splitting and custom splitting of data require?
Consistent delimiters
Most of the time are measure discrete or continuous?
Continuous
What are crosstabs?
Crosstabs are useful visualizations for looking-up specific values when you know exactly what you're looking for. Crosstabs are not the best visual style for quickly discovering trends and outliers.
In what window can you change the data type?
Data source window
What window are you brought to when you open a document?
Data source window
What area do you enter when you click 'Sheet1'?
Design area
How do you size the dashboard to fit the in the worst-case available space?
Design your dashboard to fit comfortably in the available space by determining the pixel height and width of the worst-case dashboard consumption environment. Tableau has predefined sizes to help you layout the dimensions of your dashboard. Tableau also makes it easy to define custom size ranges if the default values don't meet your needs.
Left join
Designates the table (tab in spreadsheet) on the left as the "primary" table and adds details from the right table when they appear. Missing data appears as "null".
Right join
Designates the table (tab in spreadsheet) on the right as the "primary" table and adds details from the left table when they appear. Missing data appears as "null".
Are text and categories discrete or continuous?
Discrete
Most of the time are dimensions discrete or continuous?
Discrete
Inner join (default)
Each table (tab in spreadsheet) is compared for common fields (keys). Only records present on both now appear.
What does filtering on a continuous measure pill do?
Filtering on a continuous measure pills asks first if we want to filter at the row-level or aggregate level, then brings up options for continuous ranges.
What color are continuous pills?
Green
What colors are visible to most color-blind people?
Grey scale and blue/orange color pallets
When are numbers continuous?
If they can take any value in a range.
When do you want a dual axis map?
If you want to put multiple data fields onto your map.
Where do we build visualizations?
In sheets
How can legends be removed?
Legends can be removed by clicking on the menu, and selecting hide card.
When are legends created?
Legends will automatically be created when a field is placed on the color, size or shape shelf.
What load time should you work to achieve?
Load times of less than 10 seconds.
Does Tableau automatically save your work?
No
Is there a limit to how much you can undo?
No
What type of data are usually measures?
Numerical data such as shipping costs.
How should you incorporate small instructions near the work to make navigation obvious?
Placing instructions in the title bard of the worksheet that triggers the action is a good way to remind people of the availability of the action. Another alternative is to place the instruction in tooltips that appear when hovering over marks. This method offers the advantage of having the instructions appear in more complete text without crowding the dashboard space.
What does remove all non-data ink mean?
Remove any text, lines, or shading that doesn't provide actionable information. Remove redundant facts. If a company logo isn't required for promotion purposes - remove it. Ruthlessly eliminate anything that doesn't help your audience understand the story contained in the data.
What does the ZN function do?
Returns a zero whenever there is a null.
How can you bring a legend back?
Right click anywhere off the canvas itself, select legend and choose the one you want, or use the analysis menu.
How can you create a calculated field?
Right click in the data window and select create calculated field.
How does pivot work?
Select all the columns needed. Click on the first, scroll if necessary, then shift click on the last. Open the menu and select "Pivot"
What if I want the entire dashboard to update based on my selection?
Select the menu on the segment filter, select apply to worksheets.
What does the status bar the the bottom show?
Shows the number of marks in the view as well as other summary information
What is data interpreter?
Tableau's built-in tool for preparing your data for analysis. (used for poorly formatted data)
What is the preferred format for analysis?
Taller, with more rows, rather than wider, with more columns.
What replaces the data pane on a dashboard?
The dashboard pane that lists all of the available sheets.
Why should you use actions to filter instead of quick filters?
The dashboard will load more quickly and employing multiple quick filters in a dashboard is also potentially confusing to the audience.
What does the data pane show?
The data pane lists all open data sources, and within those sources there applicable fields. The pane is broken out into dimensions and measures. The data pane will also show any set of parameters we may have.
What will happen if the date icon is blue in the data window?
The default when we bring out the pill will be discrete, otherwise it will be brought out as continuous.
How can you tell that something is a table calculation?
The delta symbol on the pill.
What do dimensions set?
The granularity, or the level of detail in the view.
What indicates a calculated field?
The little equal sign in front of the field.
What is the marks card?
The marks card is made up of several other shelves, each of which can have fields placed on them and can be clicked on to edit their characterisitics. Depending on the composition of the view, there can be multiple marks cards, one for each measure.
Continuous vs. discrete dates
The options on top are discrete dates, the lower section are continuous dates.
What is achieving fast load times dependent of?
The size and complexity of your data as well as the type of datasource you are using.
What does the toolbar do?
The toolbar makes the most commonly needed functions readily accessible
What is Tableau's purpose?
To create visual representations of raw data.
What is pivot used for?
To put multiple columns of data into a single column.
What does limit the use of color to one primary color scheme mean?
Try to limit the use of color to expressing one dimension or one measure. You can effectively add a secondary use of color in the same dashboard if that secondary use of color employs a more muted color scheme.
What do we do if we want to exclude the rows with nulls from our analysis?
Use a data source filter.
When is a custom split needed?
When not all of the data is the same (example: some employees have extra identification at the end of their employee number)
When can numbers be discrete?
When they take one of a limited set of distinct, separate values.
When does Tableau create a pill?
When we bring a field into the view from the data window.
What does the pill color indicate?
Whether the pill is continuous or discrete.
What area are you brought to once you connect data?
Workspace area.
What can you do in the workspace area?
You can work with sheets, dashboards, and stories.
