Tableau Overview

Tableau Software Stack

  • Tableau Desktop : Create workbooks, visualizations, dashboards and stories. Save workbooks in your local computer. The Desktop family: https://public.tableau.com/s/download
  • Tableau Server : Save workbooks securely on your servers
  • Tableau Online : Save workbooks securely on cloud servers
  • Tableau Public : The Free version in Desktop family. Data source connection must be local. Data and workbook must be free to public, as it must be published to Tableau public servers.
  • Tableau Reader : Read Tableau Desktop files for free.
  • Tableau Mobile : Mobile app, view workbook from Online and Server

Tableau Public Review

Pros

  1. Load xlsx, csv easily. can have multiple data source
  2. Fluent drag-n-drop interaction
  3. Auto-assign data column as String, number, geo, etc. You can change them manually if you want to specify otherwise
  4. Geomapping with latitude and longtitude: openstreetmap
  5. Legend is good, and can be used as filter
  6. Timeline can be recognized as discrete (year) or continuous (slider range)
  7. Multi-level data grouping/nesting and subgraph support are very good
  8. Nice selection highlight, tooltip (can also customize), can be used as filter
  9. Basic chart types are available: text table, heat map, geomap, barchart, piechart, treemap, circle, line, area, scatter, bump(parallel coordinates), box-and-wisker, bubble, gantt, histogram, bullet
  10. Dashboard layout is flexible
  11. Served at tableau public and embed code are easy, good for public data

Cons

  1. Don’t handle hierarchy data such as json directly, need flatten first
  2. Don’t have network chart style (with connections)
  3. Analytics is less intuitive than directly use python, numpy and pandas.

More Tutorials

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