How Tableau Works

shreyansh

Member
Staff member
Below is the short explanation of how Tableau Works.

Useful Link : A Comprehensive Guide to Installing / Accessing Tableau for FREE

1. Data Connection and Integration

Tableau can connect to a vast number of data sources, including:

Flat files (Excel, CSV, etc.)
Databases (SQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc.)
Cloud platforms (Google Analytics, Salesforce, AWS, etc.)
Web data connectors (APIs, websites).

After you have connected, Tableau will import your data into the application where you can begin to build visualizations.


2. Data Preparation and Transformation


Before a data is visualized, it requires some clean-up and transformation. Tableau offers tools called Tableau Prep to be used in tasks such as:

Removing duplicates
Handling missing values
Merging datasets
Aggregation

The data is further cleaned and transformed and then uploaded to Tableau for visualization.


3. Creating Visualizations

Drag-and-Drop Interface:

Tableau's drag-and-drop interface enables a user to build visualizations by just dragging fields, also known as columns in the data, to rows, columns, or mark shelves and then build charts, graphs, and maps.

Kinds of Visualizations:
Bar and line charts
Pie charts
Scatter plots
Heat maps
Geographic maps
Histograms and distribution plots

Tableau automatically selects the best visualization, depending on data types involved but allows changing visualizations with a few clicks only.


4. Dashboards

Dashboards are interactive, multi visual displays that can combine various visualizations (charts, maps, filters, etc.) into one unified view.

Dashboards can be tailored with:
Filters: enable users to drill down through data.
Actions: Inter-active links where one visualization's rendering is dependent upon and changes with another.
Story Points: A number of visualizations that together tell a data-driven story.


5. Sharing and Collaboration

After you create a visualization, you can share it with others through:

Tableau Server or Tableau Online (for collaboration across teams and sharing within organizations).
Tableau Public (for publicly sharing visualizations).
Exporting in PDF or image file format.
 
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