COFHE-IR Tableau Training I
Marin Clarkberg and Deb Fyler, Cornell University
Session I: Tableau Basics
April 7, 2013
http://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/cofhe-chicago
What is Tableau?
Tableau is a “business intelligence” tool useful for making “interactive data
visualizations.” According to Wikipedia, Tableau “traces its roots to academic research
in Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science between 1997 and 2002.”
It is not a spreadsheet; you do not use it to enter or edit data. It is not a statistical
package; you cannot run a regression.
It is a very efficient way to produce mountains of beautiful bar charts. It is a great tool
for putting data on a website so that selected others can find the data they need, even
when their needs are somewhat unique.
Why Tableau?
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Interactive data visualizations can greatly reduce the need for IR staff to produce endless
variations of reports (e.g. a report for each department)
Sophisticated Tableau reports can be designed by existing IR staff who know the data
well and understand executive reporting needs… but who are not IT experts
Tableau is beautiful. Not only are the visualizations elegant, but it is easy to place
reports into a webpage so that users do not have to access a special portal or receive
special training.
If you spend the money, you can have total control over who sees what kinds of reports.
It’s easy to set up repositories of information that can be accessed by different groups
(e.g. the public; IR staff; the group of academic deans; etc.)
Examples of Tableau
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Cornell IRP public Factbook: A handful of Tableau visualizations have replaced scores
of individual difficult-to-navigate PDFs. (Supported by Tableau Public Premium.)
Cornell Strategic Metrics: A compilation of cross-functional data from many sources
pulled together into one set of dashboards. (Supported by Tableau Public Premium.)
Executive Diversity Dashboard: Sensitive information available to a selected group of
executives and diversity professionals. (Supported by Tableau Server.)
Salary analyses for the academic deans: Highly sensitive information available to one
dean and not the others. (Supported by Tableau Server.)
Ad hoc reporting: Tableau server gives you a place to put stuff (Supported by Tableau
Server.)
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Vocabulary
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Workbook. A Tableau document with the suffix .twb. It may contain
worksheets and dashboards.
o A packaged workbook, .twbx, is a Tableau workbook integrated with
the data source and compressed.
Worksheet. Like in Excel, one ‘tab’ within a workbook.
Dashboard. Also a ‘tab’ within a workbook, a dashboard is a presentation
space for one or more worksheets. It may be linked to multiple or many
datasets.
Data. As with SPSS or another statistical software package, the data is
generally a separate, independent file. In Tableau, we start by “connecting” to
a data file, such as a .xls file or a .csv file.
Data Extract. Sort of similar with the .sav file with SPSS, you can save the data
in a format that will improve the performance of Tableau. This is a data
“extract”, .tde.
Viz. The hip Tableau way to say “graph” or “chart.”
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Getting Ready
1. Get your data into shape:
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Format as raw data (Tableau can manage aggregations and calculated fields)
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Single first row as a header with column names
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Make each row a single ‘instance’ (single person, single class enrollment)
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2. Open Tableau
Select ‘Connect to Data’ and ‘Text File’ and migrate to the dataset. We most often use
simple .csv text files or Excel (.xls preferred; .xlsx is sort of a pain).
Workbooks can contain multiple connections to data sources. Further, within Tableau
you can create “joins” like you might do using a database query tool.
The Excel file we prepared has two spreadsheets. For now, we’ll stick with one thing at
a time: just select ‘Class Size TEST’( .xls).
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When you ‘Connect live’ the data will be refreshed whenever you open the workbook.
This is useful if you expect that the file you are connecting to will change, but it can be
slow if you are working with a large dataset.
‘Import all data’ will create a Tableau Extract (.tde file). Tableau extracts are optimized
for the software to run very quickly. You can still refresh a data extract, but it is an extra
step.
Since this is a small data set, let’s “Connect live.”At last, we are in Tableau; it should
look something like this:
Question:
Where are the data?
Answer:
Tableau connects to the data, but you won’t really edit it within Tableau.
If you want to see the data, you can click on the little grid icon, here:
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You can create new calculations and aggregations within Tableau, but
you don’t fundamentally alter the underlying data to which you have
connected.
Notice the column headings in the Excel spreadsheet have been sorted into Dimensions
(like “Academic Term Sdescr”) and Measures (like “Class Enroll Tot”).
Vocabulary
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Dimensions. Roughly speaking, these tend to be categorical variables that you
might want to use to break the data into groups (e.g. sex, race, major). You
could also think of dimensions as your “independent variables.” Tableau starts
by assuming that all your non-numeric data is data that might want to use for
breakouts. You are not stuck with this designation.
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Measures. Tableau starts by assuming that all numeric data is something that
you might want to sum, average, or trend. You might think of measures as your
“outcomes” or “dependent variables.” Of course it is not always appropriate to
take an average of a variable stored numerically (like, say, race stored as
numeric codes). Therefore, you may want to change some of your “measures”
into “dimensions”… a very easy task: just drag them.
In our case, several of the numeric fields or variables are really “dimensions”; they can
be dragged from Measures to Dimensions.
3. Arrange your variables into Dimensions and Measures as appropriate. In our example,
you have something that looks more like:
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Making a Table
Vocabulary
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Shelf. You will use the “Columns” shelf and the “Rows” shelf in Tableau.
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Card. Cards are just containers for the controls in Tableau. You will see the
“Pages” card, the “Marks” card, the “Filters” card and so forth.
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Pills. The little blue and green rounded rectangles that contain the names of
your variables are called pills. For example, you might refer to the “Ssr
Component” pill or the “student id” pill. Blue pills are dimensions; green pills
are measures.
1. Drag one of your dimensions onto the Rows Shelf
2. Drag one of your measures into the cells (where Abc is shown, above):
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Making a Graph
1. Select the blue horizontal bars on the “Show Me” Wizard.
2. If you prefer a line graph, choose Line from the Marks “card”.
3. If you want to reorient your line graph, use the transpose function at the top of the
window:
If you don’t like it….
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Right-click on it. Many features in Tableau are easily accessed by right-clicking.
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Go back. The “back” arrow in the upper left (right under File) will “undo.”
You can use it to undo a whole string of stuff.
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Getting Rolling
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Back button/right clicking
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Make an extract
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Duplicate a field
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Rename a field (Units)
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Do a calc function (Subj Cat Num, Count of Class, Foundation Course
Foundation courses are CHEM-2080, 2090, 2510, 3580
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Create a group (Class Enroll Tot (group))
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Create a hierarchy (Foundation- Sub-Comp)
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Field Properties (Ssr Component)
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Do a sort
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Aliases
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Duplicate Sheet
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Make it interactive: Quick filters
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Make it a chart:
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Format quick filter (single value)
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pin axes (edit axis>fixed)
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show empty columns (Analysis>Table Layout>Show empty columns)
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Title (Undergraduate Chemistry Courses, Spring 2013)
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Edit colors (Color Box>Edit Colors>use palette “Color blind – 10”)
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Add Another Data Source
1. Right click on data > Edit Connection> Select Multiple Tables and then Add Table
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2. Highlight “Enroll Test” and then go to Join Tab. See below join and then select OK.
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3. Save as a Tableau Workbook… or save as a Tableau Packaged Workbook if you need to
share with other users.
Sharing:
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Publish to Tableau Public (free) to post on the web for all to see… and for all to
download!
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Publish to Tableau Public Premium ($$) to post to the web but disallow downloading
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Send packaged workbook via e-mail to someone who has Tableau Reader (free)
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Publish to your Tableau server (if you have one)
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