Tableau - Questions and Answers

Tableau is a business intelligence software that allows anyone to connect to respective data, and then visualize and create interactive, sharable dashboards.

A page where you can set up your data source. The Data Source page generally consists of four main areas: left pane, join area, preview area, and metadata area.

A saved subset of a data source that you can use to improve performance and analyze offline.

A pane that contains formatting settings that control the entire worksheet, as well as individual fields in the view.

A syntax that supports aggregation at dimensionalities other than the view level. With level of detail expressions, you can attach one or more dimensions to any aggregate expression.

Normal Filter is used to restrict the data from database based on selected dimension or measure. But Quick Filters are used to give a chance to user for dynamically changing data members at run time.

Tableau Reader is a free viewing application that lets anyone read and interact with packaged workbooks created by Tableau Desktop.

No

There won't be any joins as such but we will just give the column references like primary and foreign key relation.

More Extracts, filters and depends on data sources.

There should be a common dimension to blend the data source into single worksheet.

Tableau treats any field containing qualitative, categorical information as a dimension. This includes any field with text or dates values.

A measure is a field that is a dependent on value of one or more dimensions. Tableau treats any field containing numeric (quantitative) information as a measure.

It is a file which represents Tableau Packaged Workbook, in which the .twb file grouped together with the datasources.

Custom Filters ,Context Filters, Normal Filters.

A card to the left of the view where you can drag fields to control mark properties such as type, color, size, shape, label, tooltip, and detail.

They are Named areas to the left and top of the view. You build views by placing fields onto the shelves. Some shelves are available only when you select certain mark types.

It is a file with a .twb extension that contains one or more worksheets (and possibly also dashboards and stories).

A sheet where you build views of your data by dragging fields onto shelves.

An alternative name that you can assign to a field or to a dimension member.

In a context filter the filter condition is applied first to the data source and then some other filters are applied only to the resulting records.

You can compare multiple measures using dual axes, which are two independent axes that are layered on top of each other.

The Pages shelf is used to control the display of output by choosing the sequence of display.

More Extracts, filters and depends on data sources.

These are inbuilt calculations in tableau which we normally use to calculate Percentange chages.

Data blending is used to blend data from multiple data sources on a single worksheet. The data is joined on common dimensions.

No

It Creates a direct connect to the data source and speed up access.

It Imports the entire data source into Tableau’s fast data engine as an extract and saves it in the workbook.

Parameters are dynamic values that can replace constant values in calculations.

It refers to the file that contains data extracted from external sources like MS Excel, MS Access or CSV file.

A story is a sheet that contains a sequence of worksheets or dashboards that work together to convey information.

It contains connection information that is independent of any workbook and can be used by multiple workbooks.

It contains connection information and is associated with a workbook.

If data resides in a single source,we use Joins but when your data is not in one place blending is used.

You need to publish report to tableau server, while publishing you will find one option to schedule reports.You just need to select the time when you want to refresh data.

Show Me is used to apply a required view to the existing data in the worksheet. Those views can be a pie chart, scatter plot or a line chart.

A pane on the left side of the workbook that displays the fields of the data sources to which Tableau is connected.

A new field that you create by using a formula to modify the existing fields in your data source.

It is a text table view. Use text tables to display the numbers associated with dimension members.

In the menu Data -> New connection drag the table to the data pane to view its meatdata.

In the menu Data -> New connection open the table metadata and click on the column name to create alias.

Use the NOW() function.

BY using the ISDATE() function.

DATEADD('month', 3, #2014-03-12#) = 2004-07-15 12:00:00 AM

The REPLACE function searches a given string for a substring and replaces it with replacement string.

The COUNT() function.

TOP filter.

A Gantt chart shows the progress of the value of a task or resource over a period of time. So Gantt chart a time dimension is an essential field.

Forecasting is about predicting the future value of a measure. There are many mathematical models for forecasting. Tableau uses the model known as exponential smoothing.

Trend lines are used to predict the continuation of certain trend of a variable. It also helps to identify the correlation between two variables by observing the trend in both of them simultaneously.