Tableau Tutorial for Beginners

Let us start to learn a new Business Intelligence technology; Tableau. This

chapter is an introductory chapter providing the fundamental knowledge of
Tableau. In our complete Tableau tutorial for beginners, you can gradually
progress towards learning the software fully, starting from topics of low
difficulty and moving on the expert level chapters. However, for now, let’s
focus on the basis so that you can have a solid foundation to lay your further
knowledge on.
This Tableau tutorial for beginners starts from data visualization because data
visualization plays a major and important role in a Tableau. Moving on we will
discuss features, advantages, and architecture of Tableau to know it well. In
addition, we will explore the list of companies using Tableau with different
applications of a Tableau.

What is Data Visualization?

Data visualization plays a crucial role in the entire business intelligence
dynamic. In simple terms, data visualization is a pictorial representation of a
given set of data. A text-based data is visualized graphically in charts, graphs,
tables, infographics, maps etc. So that new insights and hidden patterns can
be detected in it. The motive of data visualization is to detect patterns, trends,
and a correlation between different data sets and attributes which can’t be
otherwise studied in data in a simple (non-graphic) form.
It helps users gain a better understating of the market’s current situation and
evaluate customer needs. This helps an enterprise to evolve through new
strategies and techniques to enhance and foster their business. And this is
precisely why all the data science software companies focus on making
their BI tools best in data visualization capabilities as it helps in unveiling the
hidden information in the huge reservoirs of raw data.

What is Tableau?
Tableau is a new age data analytics and business intelligence platform which offers
flexibility and ease-of-use ensuring a smooth experience to the users. Tableau pillars
of strength are interactive dashboards, quick responsiveness, and real-time data
analysis. Also, it offers eye-catching and simple graphics (visualizations) to represent
your data set pictorially.
Fundamentally, Tableau provides all the necessary capabilities for data
extraction, processing, representing and sharing the final
reports/dashboards/worksheets with others.

Tableau’s Popularity
Tableau proves its efficiency and potential, which cannot deny as it has made
users curious and drawn enough attention towards it ever since it was
launched. It is currently one of the leading business intelligence tools as
per Gartner’s magic quadrant for analytics and business intelligence platform
(2019).
7 Years a leader – 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant is here
The key factors behind its enormous popularity is its easy drag-and-drop
functionality, it is faster than other BI tools, high scalability as it adapts to
individual as well as enterprise needs easily, it has mobile compatibility, an
online version, connectivity to a huge number of data sources without needing
to buy connector license, big data analytics capabilities etc. Also, Tableau
specially designs for all kinds of users and does not require any specific skill
set or knowledge to work on it. Users from all over the enterprise can easily
perform all the data analysis and visualization capabilities.
Tableau Features
In this section of the Tableau tutorial for beginners, we will discuss all
the available features and capabilities of Tableau. Some features like “ask data”,
“Tableau prep connector” and “new mobile app design” are added in the 2019
version of Tableau.
1. Ask data: This is a very unique feature of Tableau, where the user can
type a query in a natural language (English) and the system will respond
immediately with the search result. Ask data can be used in data sorting,
filtering, and aggregations.
2. Tableau prep conductor: It is an add-on feature for especially for
Tableau Server and Tableau Online. The conductor helps in delivering
prepared data in a secure, scalable and reliable server environment.
3. Tableau mobile for iOS and Android: A redesigned mobile app
compatible for iOS and Android platforms with better functionalities of
searching, favorites, offline previews etc.
4. Connectors and connections: The latest Tableau version comes with a lot
of data connectors like Google Ads, Microsoft Azure SQL data warehouse,
snowflake connector, etc. Also, you can establish secure connections with
Dropbox, OneDrive, Google drive, Google Big Query, Secure RServe etc.
5. Data sharing: You can export the Tableau reports, visualization and
dashboards as presentations on PowerPoint. You can also share the
Tableau results with a link redirecting the user to the source workbook.
Also, improvements for Okta integration are done.
6. Install and deploy: Features such as mobile layout preview on the web,
nested sorting improvements, tableau mobile for Workspace ONE, etc.
enhance the efficiency of Tableau.
7. Design view and visualization: Heat map, vector map, set actions,
transparent worksheet backgrounds, navigation buttons for dashboard
and Tableau navigation actions are all latest additions.

Tableau Products
This part of the tableau tutorial for beginners cover all the products offer by
Tableau:

Tableau offers a range of products specific to user groups and the purpose of
use. The products offered by Tableau can be classified into two or three main
categories i.e. the products that are used for preparing data for analysis like
Tableau Prep. The products that are used for the creation of dashboards,
reports using graphs, charts etc. Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public fall into
this category. The third category is of the tools that are used to share the
reports and workbooks created using developer tools with other users.
Tableau Online, Tableau Server and Tableau Reader fall in this category.

1. Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is the ultimate data analysis and visualization tools used to
create analytical dashboards and conduct self-service analytics. You can use all
sorts of visualization tools like charts, graphs, maps, and tables to create
dashboards using the prepared data in Tableau. Also, using Tableau Desktop
you can get fast actionable insights, connect to many data sources like Google
Analytics, big data sources, SQL databases, Salesforce etc, use advanced maps
for visualizing geographic data, share and collaborate securely, etc. There two
versions of Tableau Desktop; Tableau Desktop Personal edition and Tableau
Desktop Private edition. The personal edition is for personal use and offers
limited data access and sharing capabilities. Whereas, the professional edition
is made for enterprise use and allows full data access and sharing capabilities.
2. Tableau Online
Tableau Online is primarily a data sharing tool deployed on the cloud. Users
can connect to about 40 data sources online like Spark SQL, Hive, Amazon
Aurora and MySQL etc. Also, the workbooks and reports create on Tableau
Desktop can share via the cloud to others. In Tableau Online, the data store on
cloud servers and maintained by Tableau groups. This tool requires no
hardware installation and thus, no maintenance costs. It offers functionalities
such as ask data, interaction, editing and authoring via the web, data access,
and analysis anywhere, anytime, data management capabilities etc.
3. Tableau Server
Like Tableau Online, Tableau Server is also a workbook and dashboard
sharing tool. Basically, any workbook/report/dashboard that is required to be
shared must first be published on the Tableau Desktop. Once it is published
there, it automatically gets loaded in the server. From the server, any
authorized user or licensed service can use the uploaded report. It is not
necessary for the user, on the other hand, to have a server installed, as the
workbooks can be accessed just by a simple login on any Tableau platform.
The Tableau Server can be centrally managed from the admin of the
organization.

4. Tableau Prep
Tableau Prep is a unique product of Tableau. Using Tableau Prep, one can
prepare the raw data and make it ready for presenting and analysis. It
provides interfaces and tools to combine, filter and transform raw data from
data sources into a usable form. All kinds of users across the organization can
easily use this tool. There are two editions of Tableau Prep; a Tableau Prep
Builder that helps you build your data flows and Tableau Prep Conductor
which manages, schedule and shares the flows built in Prep Builder.

5. Tableau Mobile
Tableau Mobile is for using Tableau on mobile devices such as mobile phones
and tablets. It is scalable and adjusts to the screen dimensions. You can
interact using touch gestures with the workbooks and dashboards created on
Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and shared via Tableau Server and
Tableau Online. You can select, filter, drill-down and draw insights instantly
with the data on your fingertips on your mobile device. Along with this,
Tableau Mobile is loaded with dashboard designing, security, sharing,
searching and alerts capabilities.

6. Tableau Public
Tableau Public, as the name suggests is a public platform where anything a
user creates (a workbook or a dashboard), it will share publicly on a public
cloud sever from where it is accessible to everyone and anyone. Thus, there is a
huge Tableau Public community where anyone can view and analyze any piece
of information shared across the globe. Users are providing a storage space of
10GB where they can save their dashboards and workbooks.

Advantages of Tableau
Let us now shine some light on all the advantages of Tableau –
1. Deployment
You can deploy Tableau on many platforms, on-premise or on-cloud. It
supports Hosted, multi-tenant deployments as well as platforms like Linux,
Windows, and Mac.

2. Collaboration
Data collaboration is a smooth experience in Tableau as it allows the
integration of data from a wide range of data sources. You can fetch data from
an Excel worksheet, a PDF file, a database like Microsoft SQL Server,
Microsoft Azure SQL database, data warehouses like Oracle, or big data
sources like Cloudera Hadoop, or cloud data sources such as
Salesforce, Amazon Web Services etc. Also, you can easily connect to live data
sources and do real-time analysis.
3. Analytics
Tableau offers one of the best analytical functionalities with a state-of-the-art
visual interface, statistical capabilities, advanced analytics, calculations,
intelligent search capabilities like Ask data.

4. Content discovery
Content discovery is made easier by functionalities like revision history, ask
data that search relevant data and shows an association, recommendation of
relevant data, resource organizing by a project.

5. Governance
Data management, monitoring and security provisions are intact and
improves with every new version of Tableau. In tableau data manage centrally,
along with this, licenses and certifications, user authorization, row-level
permissions, usage analytic make working in Tableau environment well-
organized and proper.

6. Data prep
Tableau wins good points for its data prep capabilities as a user can prepare
data for analysis by transforming and manipulating it according to one’s
requirement. An interactive user interface makes the process easier. Along
with this, smart grouping algorithms help in organizing the data. You can use
the prepared data in dashboards and workbooks.

7. Data interaction
You can interact with your data, analyze data on dashboards and
shared/published workbooks on any type of device. The devices supported are
a desktop, mobile, browser, and web-based or embedded platforms.

Architecture of Tableau
The Tableau tutorial is incomplete without the Tableau architecture. Behind
any efficient tool, is its well-designed architectural framework and services.
Same is the case with Tableau which proves to be one of the best BI tools by
the virtue of its architecture. The architectural components of Tableau are so
deployed that they ensure scalability, availability, governance, security, and
management of data and reports created using Tableau. It is a multi-tiered,
multi-user, multi-thread and multi-process architecture which you can run on
both physical and virtual environments/machines. The architecture has got
components which efficiently manages data flow (in any form) between the
data sources and the clients. The core component is the Tableau Server which
hosts different services working in tandem.

Tableau Applications
Tableau finds its applications in a broad range of industries such as,

 Healthcare analytics
 Education analytics
 Government sector
 Marketing analytics
 Insurance analytics
 Hight technology analytics
 Loan risk analysis
 Public sector
 Communication, media, and technology
 Energy and resources
 Retail and consumer goods
 Financial services
 Manufacturing