Prepare Your Data for Tableau

Focus on the most important and most often overlooked factor in a successful Tableau project―data. Without a reliable data source, you will not achieve the results you hope for in Tableau. This book does more than teach the mechanics of data preparation. It teaches you: how to look at data in a new way, to recognize the most common issues that hinder analytics, and how to mitigate those factors one by one.

Tableau can change the course of business, but the old adage of "garbage in, garbage out" is the hard truth that hides behind every Tableau sales pitch. That amazing sales demo does not work as well with bad data. The unfortunate reality is that almost all data starts out in a less-than-perfect state. Data prep is hard.

Traditionally, we were forced into the world of the database where complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) operations created by the data team did all the heavy lifting for us. Fortunately, we have moved past those days. With the introduction of the Tableau Data Prep tool you can now handle most of the common Data Prep and cleanup tasks on your own, at your desk, and without the help of the data team. This essential book will guide you through:

• The layout and important parts of the Tableau Data Prep tool
• Connecting to data
• Data quality and consistency
• The shape of the data. Is the data oriented in columns or rows? How to decide? Why does it matter?
• What is the level of detail in the source data? Why is that important?
• Combining source data to bring in more fields and rows