Austin Tableau User Group Presentation
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Transcript of Austin Tableau User Group Presentation
Tableau Tips & Tricks
Austin Tableau User Group
November 5, 2014
Cory Jez
Global BI Reporting Developer
Purpose To show some “quick-win” opportunities to leverage
Tableau’s capabilities in day-to-day work
Topics to Cover
HomeAway Tableau Environment
Tableau Server
Distribution
Easy Branding
Dashboarding
Hacking Tableau
Looking to others who use Tableau
Tableau DataSources New Way Old Way
- Custom SQL driving Tableau Server datasources
- Messy and hard to edit - No help from DBA’s
- Many CASE statements and
transformation logic
- Redundancies on our Tableau Server
- Tableau Server datasources pull directly from a SQL view
- Views are named with “TAB” preceding so their use is clear
- Perform transformation logic at the datasource level
Benefits of the “New Way”
• Put processing on SQL’s shoulders
• More options with optimization
• Adding fields, no risk of “breaking” things
Tableau Server - Navigation
• Problem
– The user interface within TS can be “fun” to navigate
– Several clicks required to get where you want to go
Tableau Server - Navigation
Solution
- Chrome plugin that lets you
see thumbnails of dashboards
and click straight into them
Tableau Server - Navigation
Tableau Server - Navigation
Here is the link for the plugin https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-chrome-extension-f/kfnclbnbnhglklkpdlhfaopofekmckfe?hl=en-GB
Tableau Server - Datasources
• Problem
– You open up a datasource in Tableau desktop, and
when you drag in a field, you only see a few items
– You need to know what SQL (or other datasource) is
driving the tableau server datasource
Tableau Server - Datasources
Solution
- Leverage Tableau Server API to download the datasource
and see its underlying SQL and logic
https://SERVERURL/datasources/eCommMonthlyCounts.tds?no_extract=true
Distribution - Static
• Problem
– My VP wants to grab a screenshot of a dashboard to
drop into a PowerPoint deck
– The export functionality is not very obvious in Tableau
Server and can even be deactivated with permissioning
• Solution
- Add a file extension to the end of the URL
- .png
- .csv
Easy Branding
• Problem
– But Cory, the HomeAway Color Palette isn’t available in Tableau, and always changing those RGB’s is a pain
– And even though we have a formatting guide, I can’t save those colors in Tableau!
Easy Branding
• Solution
– Add default colors into your Preferences document
located in My Tableau Repository
=
Easy Branding
• Here is the code to paste into your preferences
document
<?xml version='1.0'?> <workbook> <preferences> <color-palette name=“My Color Palette" type="regular" > <color>#2A6EBB</color> #repeat this for any other colors </color-palette> </preferences> </workbook>
Dashboarding
• Problem
– Those little things that pop up when you hover over a
data point are really ugly and what does that even mean?
Dashboarding
• Solution
– Always remember to build out your tooltips, you can
have them read very clean, and even add bar charts!
Barcharts inside of Tooltips
Dashboarding • Problem
– I’m running out of room on my dashboard, but have a
whole list of details I want to show about a view.
Dashboarding
• Solution
– Utilize “on demand” details that act as a pop-up,
which saves space but provides additional info
Hacking The Tableau XML
• Problem
– Someone has sent you a workbook and you get the
following error message
Hacking The Tableau XML
• Solution
– Open the workbook in your favorite text editor (right click “open with”, and change the underlying version of the workbook
Hacking The Tableau XML
– You can also do a lot of other things in the XML like • Change colors
• Change datasources
• Delete sheets from a workbook
• Move a workbook from a dev server to a production server
Questions?