Definition of Tableau Reporting
Tableau Reporting tool is used for data analysis purposes. Tableau is one of the fastest and powerful tools used for visualization purposes. For future forecast and decision-making for a business, it is necessarily needed to analyze the data. This can be done by using Tableau. Tableau is a highly interactive solution for business intelligence. With Tableau, anyone can visualize and understand data without any coding knowledge and advanced skills in data science. Features of Tableau Features are: – Easy to use, Greater Insights, Data Visualization, and so on.
Tableau Software was founded in January 2003 by Christian Chabot, Pat Hanrahan, and Chris Stolte. The company is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States.
How to perform Tableau Reporting?
Before going to the discussion of how we perform reporting in Tableau. Let us discuss the tableau products and the steps about how we can install the Tableau Desktop on our PC.
Tableau Products:
Tableau products that are used to design the workbooks and publish it are as below: –
- Tableau Desktop: – Creating of workbooks, stories, and dashboard will be done in Tableau Desktop. Workbook created in tableau desktop can be shared locally or publically.
- Tableau Public: – Tableau public workbooks or dashboards can be accessed and viewed by anyone.
- Tableau Server: – For a licensed user to access the tableau reports we need a server. Tableau Server is the place where we publish the reports that developed in the tableau desktop.
- Tableau Online: – Tableau online is similar to tableau server. But it is a paid server application hosted by tableau software.
- Tableau Reader: – For users to view the dashboards developed in tableau desktop we use tableau reader.
Installation of Tableau Desktop:
We get a free trial version of tableau desktop. Below is the path to download the tableau software.
https://www.tableau.com/products/desktop/download
Tableau Data Sources that can be connected with:
Tableau can be connected below the type of data sources.
- CSV, Excel, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Windows Azure, Google BigQuery, etc, and Other Sources using ODBC.
Screenshot:
Data types in Tableau: Boolean, Date, Date & Time, Geographical values, Text / String, Number (Decimal), and Number (Whole).
Name the file extensions in Tableau:
- Tableau workbook (.twb)
- Tableau Packaged Workbook (.twbx)
- Tableau Data source (.tds)
- Tableau Packaged data source (.tdsx)
- Tableau Data extract (.tde)
- Tableau Bookmark (.tdm)
- Tableau Map Source (.tms)
- Tableau Preferences (.tps)
Differences between twb and twbx:
- A twb is an XML document which contains all the selections and layout have made in your Tableau workbook. It does not contain any data.
- A twbx is a zipped archive containing a twb and any extremal files such as extracts and background images.
Tableau Architecture
Case study on how to perform reporting in tableau:
Tableau is to connect and extract the data stored from various sources. It can pull the data from any database, Excel, PDF, Oracle, or even Amazon Web Services. Below is the process followed: –
- Connect to the database
- Connection can be live or extracted
- Apply filters on data source level as per business requirement and create worksheets and dashboards.
- Created Dashboards are shared with users in the form of static files.
- Dashboards can be published in Tableau Server.
- Tableau Reader used for the worksheet reading purpose.
Connect to the database:
Now let us consider a case in which we use Excel data as a data source. In order to connect to a data source. We need to the data source page as below and select the data source that we are planning to connect in our case we are planning to connect to ‘Excel’.
Screenshot:
Connection can be live or extracted
Live connection:
A live connection in Tableau basically means that Tableau querying and reading directly from your database.
Extracts:
Extracts are the first copies of the actual data from the original data source. Instead of using a live DB connection if you use extracts, you will get better performance. However, extracts won’t refresh unless users apply a scheduled refresh on the extract. Drag the required table into the space that you want to use in the dashboard.
Screenshot:
Create Dashboards:
A dashboard is a collection of several worksheets and supporting information shown in a single place so you can compare and monitor a variety of data simultaneously.
Components of Dashboard: There are mainly five components available in the Dashboard. Those are
- Horizontal
- Vertical
- Image Extract
- Text and WEB [URL Action]
Marks card:
- Tool Tip: Tool tip is a powerful tool. This will be useful to understanding the values and numbers of the associated graph. This is related to Labels or Text, but here the values are hidden.
- Labels or Text: if you want to see the particular numbers of the associated graph.
- Details: This is related to the color part but here will get as sections.
Discrete: Individually separated and distinct
Continuous: forming unbroken value, without interruption
Screenshot: – Below is the sample dashboard that is meant for ‘SUM(Profit) based on year by category.
How will you publish workbook in Tableau server?
Select the ‘Server’ tab login to the required server and site. Then you could see the option of ‘Publish Workbook’. Click on it and ‘Ok’. The workbook gets publish to the respective server and site.
Screenshot:
Conclusion
Tableau is a BI Tool. By using this tool, we can convert data into Visualization and a meaningful way to understand the business persons take business decision.
It’s a user friendly. Why because we are not using any coding just the drag and drop method but we need to think analytically for calculating fields. Normal user also he/ she can open and understood the visualizations. We will get the reports within a short period of time and we can install them in any OS with no need for any supporting files. We can connect with multiple data sources.
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Diff B/W Excel & Tableau: By using Excel we can see only one report and reports also not much effective but in Tableau, we can see multiple reports in Tableau with different visualizations.
Ex: If you want to see the Category and year wise we can filter and see the reports within a fraction of time. Multiple data we can see on flying but in excel we can’t see multiple reports at a time.
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