Tableau Cookbook – Recipes for Data Visualization

Create beautiful data visualizations and interactive dashboards with Tableau

About This Book

• Delve into the features and functionalities of Tableau from the ground up with this step-by-step guide that has over 50 “follow-me” recipes
• Build rich visualizations to effectively highlight the underlying trends and patterns in your data
• Build beautiful interactive dashboards and storyboards to stitch your visualizations together and tell a story

Who This Book Is For

This book is for anyone who wishes to use Tableau. It will be of use to both beginners who want to learn Tableau from scratch and to more seasoned users who simply want a quick reference guide. This book is a ready reckoner guide for you. The book will be such that both new & existing Tableau users who don’t know, or can’t recall how to perform different Tableau tasks can use the book and be benefited from it.

What You Will Learn

• Get to grips with the Tableau workspace and terminologies and understand what data sources you can connect
• Learn to create basic charts like bar chart, stacked bar, pie chart, line chart, area chart, tree map & word cloud
• Go even further with more advanced visualizations such as scatter plot, box & whiskers plot, dual axis, bullet chart, Histograms, Maps, etc
• Use pre-defined calculation and change its scope and direction to affect outcome
• Learn to define Parameters and call them into parametric calculations that provide outcomes based on user inputs
• Build Dashboards and use Actions to link multiple sheets on the dashboard
• Connect to multiple data sources using Data Blending, Multiple Table Join within the same data source as well as across data sources, Custom SQL and learn to work with data Extracts
• Compute statistical trends, build forecasting models and use Reference lines for benchmarking

In Detail

Data is everywhere and everything is data!

Visualization of data allows us to bring out the underlying trends and patterns inherent in the data and gain insights that enable faster and smarter decision making.

Tableau is one of the fastest growing and industry leading Business Intelligence platforms that empowers business users to easily visualize their data and discover insights at the speed of thought. Tableau is a self-service BI platform designed to make data visualization and analysis as intuitive as possible.

Creating visualizations with simple drag-and-drop, you can be up and running on Tableau in no time.

Starting from the fundamentals such as getting familiarized with Tableau Desktop, connecting to common data sources and building standard charts; you will walk through the nitty gritty of Tableau such as creating dynamic analytics with parameters, blended data sources, and advanced calculations. You will also learn to group members into higher levels, sort the data in a specific order & filter out the unnecessary information. You will then create calculations in Tableau & understand the flexibility & power they have and go on to building story-boards and share your insights with others.

Whether you are just getting started or whether you need a quick reference on a “how-to” question, This book is the perfect companion for you

Style and approach

This cookbook takes a step-by-step approach and the text systematically evolves to cover more involved functionalities. Every recipe includes illustrative screenshots which provide a detailed visual resource for each step.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Keep Calm and Say Hello to Tableau
Chapter 2. Ready to Build Some Charts? Show Me!
Chapter 3. Hungry for More Charts? Dig In!
Chapter 4. Slice and Dice – Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering Data
Chapter 5. Adding Flavor – Creating Calculated Fields
Chapter 6. Serve It on a Dashboard!
Chapter 7. The Right MIX – Blending Multiple Data Sources
Chapter 8. Garnish with Reference Lines, Trends, Forecasting, and Clustering
Chapter 9. Bon Appétit! Tell a Story and Share It with others
Chapter 10. Formatting in Tableau for Desserts