Flashcard Questions - Silver
If I copy the image to PPT, does it update automatically?
No. Tableau Server provides a great way to deliver interactive – On-Demand analysis to the masses. If you want to embed the interactive Server views in PPT, you can do this via a free 3rd party app called LiveWeb.
Can I change the lines to have patterns? My boss is color blind.
No. The best practice is to label the lines by putting the same field on both the color and label shelves and changing the color palette to gray or ideally our “color blind” color palette.
How do I share these results with others? (What are all my sharing options?)
This question is best followed with another question asking more about their specific scenario and requirements.Save the file and share it with other Tableau usersRight click on a view and copy the image or cross-tab and pasteFile Print, Export the image, cross-tab or PDF and distribute.Share it with Tableau Reader so users can interactPublish it to the Tableau Server so people can run it on demandUse the ‘Share’ button in Server to generate a URL or HTML to paste in e-mail, CMS’s such as SharePoint, or Blogs
Is Tableau a BI platform or an Analytics tool?
Yes. Tableau can be both, choose wisely how you position this with customers. Tableau provides rich functionality for ad hoc reporting, analytics, dashboarding and visualization. All the content created in Tableau can be easily shared via interactive graphical displays in a web browser. Due to the fast, easy nature of Tableau, companies can achieve quick ROIs with anything from a small deployment to an enterprise roll-out
Is Tableau 64 bit?
Yes, the Tableau data engine is 64 bit (or 32 bit if you only have a 32 bit machine). Tableau’s User Interface and the VizQL engine are 32 bit – but they only contain the result set caches, not the raw data so they uses a relatively small amount of RAM.
Does Tableau do 3D Charts?
3D charts provide very eye catching visuals however, they typically hinder or skew the analysis being presented. For example, when dealing with volume or surface area such as a pie chart, a 3D chart can make certain slices seem bigger than they actually are. Because of these problems and they face that they don’t improve the story of the data, pundits do not consider 3D charts to be a best practice visual.
Can I integrate Tableau with other applications?
Yes, Tableau provides both the ability to embed tableau visuals inside applications as well as to call other applications through URLs
Who defines the measures and dimensions?
For relational – Tableau determines this automatically. By default, all numeric fields (that are not keys in the database) are measures, everything else is a dimension. The names of the fields are simply the names of the columns in the database. To change their placement, just drag and drop.For Cubes – These are explicitly defined by the author of the cube.
Can I convert a measure to a dimension? Can I convert a dimension to a measure?
Yes. Drag a measure to the dimension pane.For Dimensions, either drag it to the measures pane if you are trying to count the dimension, or change its data type to number if it is the wrong type (right click and choose Data Type) and drag to the measures pane.
What is a cube? Does Tableau support Cubes?
It’s a ‘multi-dimensional’ way to store data. The main benefit over relational databases used to be performance – typically a value is already calculated and stored for every combination of dimensions. Another benefit is increased structure such as hierarchies and predefined relationships.Tableau can connect to cubes generated by Microsoft Analysis Services or Oracle Essbase (Hyperion)
What’s the difference between using the generic ODBC connection to connect to my data and the connections listed in the ‘connect to data’ dialog window? Are there drawbacks / benefits that I should be aware of?
The connections listed in the ‘connect to data’ dialog window are optimized and tuned by Tableau to assure performance and full functionality of the Tableau feature set. ODBC connections will rely on the driver (likely provided by your database vendor) and may have limited support for the SQL standard. The result is that performance and functionality in Tableau may be degraded.
How do I join together sheets from two excel workbooks?
This is a trick question – but common. Tableau can only join sheets that are in a single workbook. You can use the ‘Edit Move or Copy Sheet’ command in Excel to get all the sheets into a single workbook.Data Blending will also work, but in many cases this will provide limited capabilities. If possible, joins are preferred.
Is Data Blending within a single database the same as using Multiple Tables in the connection dialog?
No, joins (in the multiple tables’ scenario) happen in the database with the raw data as part of one universal query. Blends happen in Tableau with the already summarized (aggregated) data. This means that Data Blending sends a separate query to each database. These queries aggregate the data to the same level of detail – regardless of the level of detail of the raw data. Then the results of the separate queries are blended together by Tableau.
Does Tableau always import the data?
No, this is actually a big differentiator between us and some of our competitors.You have the option to use Tableau’s fast data engine or maintain a live connection to your database, all without any scripting. If your data is already fast, or changes very often, then a direct connection is probably best.
Is any functionality in Tableau dependent on having my data in the data engine?
No. Blending, calculations, table calculations, parameters, actions and all analytics are the same. However, some data sources will get extra capabilities when imported into the data engine (e.g. excel files will be upgraded to have count distinct and median)
What is a packaged workbook?
Packaged workbooks collect all the files related to the workbook and compress them into a single file. This package can then be delivered to other Tableau users without having to separately include data, images and other files referenced by the workbook.
Does packaging automatically save all the data?
No. If your data is on a server, Tableau will not automatically extract the data. The reason is that the database could be zillions of records which is impractical to pull down to the local machine (time and size come to mind). If you want to include data from the server (for example to share with Tableau Reader) you must first extract each data connection separately.
How do I schedule an extract to be refreshed?
Extracts can only be scheduled when using the Tableau Server. During the publish process, choose ‘Schedules & Passwords…’ on the publish dialog. Choose a schedule and then ‘Publish’. If the button is not available, then you are either not currently using an extract (so go create one) or the administrator of the Tableau Server has not enabled this functionality.Schedules are created and managed on the server by a system administrator.
Name at least 8 ways that Tableau makes dates shiny. Be able to demo all of these.
(relative date filtering, hierarchy, reorder hierarchy, choose any level of the hierarchy, different parts on different shelves, continuous dates, discrete and continuous, fiscal year, continuous dates vs. discrete dates and their respective hierarchies…)
How do I make a monthly trend line span 2 years?
Use the new Continuous Date Hierarchy
How do I display ranks or line numbers?
Create a calculated field: index(). Convert it to ‘discrete’ and add it to your sheet. Right click on the field pill to change its indexing behavior (calculate using….)
When should I use ‘Add to Context’?
The basic recommendation is to use a context filter when a) the filter doesn’t change often; and b) when the data will be reduced to less than 1/10th the number of records. A context filter creates a temp table that contains just the records that match the filter. All subsequent interactions are run against the small subset of data which greatly improves performance.Note: The ‘context’ is created as a temporary table on the database. It is rare, but some users might not have permission to create temp tables. In that case Tableau will extract the data that matches the filter.
Are my calculations written back to the database?
No. Tableau is a very safe environment – it never changes your data. The calculations are computed on the fly based on the current values in the database
Are calculations performed locally in Tableau?
Tableau pushes most calculations back to the database. All aggregations are performed on the database (which includes the data engine). Table Calculations, most reference lines, and some types of filters are performed locally.
I want the top ‘n’ products for each region. How do I do this?
Add a quick filter for region and set it to ‘Single Value List’. Then add the Region filter to the context and add a top ‘n’ filter for products. The reason you need the context is that the top n filter is applied before any other filters are applied. Setting the context means that the top filter is applied after the data has been limited to the single product.Note: ‘Top’ filters are dynamic – they are computed when the query is run. This means that if the data changes, the top n list might also change.For more complex scenarios, you can create a calculated field: index() and then filter this to the top 10.
