Tableau Tour To Create And Publish Dashboard
By: Nikhil Awleshiya
Tags: Business Intelligence, Power Bi, Bi Report, Tableau, Bi

Tableau Tour To Create And Publish Dashboard

Tableau is a very powerful and fastest growing data visualization tool which makes life easier in the business intelligence area. It helps to analyze huge data through interactive charts and graphs which are called as worksheets and dashboards.

Data in the interactive charts and graphs are easy to understand rather than having in tabular format. It is also very useful for forecasting the growth of an organization with the help of data. Tableau is very secure and flexible to work but is not an open-source tool.

Tableau has given a facility to its users to connect more than 30 data sources like MS Excel, MySQL, Oracle, Snowflake and many more cloud databases, through the data can import into the Tableau tool that will be used for visualization further.

There is a data integration facility also by which we can connect multiple data sources at a time with Tableau.

Key Features

Here are Some Key Features of Tableau:

Data blending Real-time analysis Collaboration & sharing Live or in memory data Mobile view

The term data defines the information collected time by time which is facts and figures. Every sector has its own type of data where the sectors can be public, private or personal. With the help of these data which we have collected can be used for decision making for the business perspective and this process is known as Business Intelligence.

Business Intelligence is a kind of process by which the raw data converts into meaningful information and by this meaningful information, we can implement the business logic for the organization/company growth, that is why Tableau comes under the Business Intelligence tool and to make better decisions.

Products of Tableau

Tableau Desktop

Tableau Public

Tableau Server

Tableau Reader

Tableau Online

Basically, these products can be categorized into two category -

Developer Tool — The purpose of using the Developing tool is used to develop and to create charts and graphs or the visualization. Tableau Desktop and Tableau public falls in it. Sharing Tool — As the name suggests, the sharing tools are used to share the created visualization from the developer tool. Tableau Online, Tableau Server and Tableau Reader falls under this category.

For the quick overview of Tableau, we will understand the Tableau Desktop and Tableau Online tool. By which we can create the visualization and can share these visualizations with users.

Tableau Desktop

As Tableau is not an open-source tool, we need to purchase it by paying some amount from the official website of Tableau but there is an another option to install it as it has provided a good flexibility to its users that is 14 days of free trial version of Tableau Desktop through which we will have full accessibility of Tableau desktop for 14 days.

The Tableau Desktop of the latest version can be downloaded from the mentioned URL-

https://www.tableau.com/en-in/products/desktop

Once we download the Tableau Desktop file we have to install it on our system by registering ourselves on it.

Remember that the Tableau is a very powerful tool once we install it on our system, it will work only for the next 14 days as trial after that it will not work on that particular system and on that particular given details (e.g. email ID and mobile number).

First Look

Here is the first look of Tableau after installing it -

After opening the Tableau Desktop in our system it’s first window asks for the data source by which we want to connect with. Remember that with the installation process the Tableau has given us a sample excel file in order to hands-on with the tool. The file contains 3 excel sheets like Order, Return and Region. We will select the Microsoft Excel from Tableau and will select the file which is placed at it’s default location

— Documents\My Tableau Repository\Datasources\2019.4\en_US-US\Global Superstore.xlsx

We can connect that file with Tableau by selecting it and drag and drop the Order excel sheet to the drag and drop area. After that, the data will be shown in tabular format which can be used to create worksheets and dashboards by making interactive graphs and charts.

Note: Understand the data which comes in the tabular format which is the part of the sales database.

First Workbook

By clicking on Sheet 1, we are going to create our first worksheet where we will see the column of the table in right side window, which is divided as -

Dimensions — All the columns come under this section which can not be aggregated like City, Order Priority, Ship Date, etc. These columns will have string, date & time, date, map and boolean datatype format.

— All the columns come under this section which can not be aggregated like City, Order Priority, Ship Date, etc. These columns will have string, date & time, date, map and boolean datatype format. Measures — All the columns come under this section which can be aggregated like Sales, Profit, Quantity, etc.

We will create the first workbook as -

1. Suppose we want to know the category wise sales in bar chart then, we will-

Select and drag Category from Dimensions and drop to columns. Select and drag Sales from Measures and drop to rows. Click on the sorting button from the toolbar.

If we want to change the graph then we can select and change by clicking on the Show Me button.

Rename sheet by right click on Sheet 1 and rename it as Category Wise Sales.

2. Suppose we want to know the category & Subcategory wise sales in bar chart then, we will-

Go worksheet > new worksheet or Ctrl+M. Select and drag Category from Dimensions and drop to Columns. Select and drag Sales from Measures and drop to rows. Select and drag subcategory from Dimensions and drop on Mark Shelf on color. Click on the sorting button from the toolbar.

If we want to add label of subcategory and sales then -

Select a subcategory from Dimensions and drop on Mark Shelf on Label. Select Sales from Measures and drop on Mark Shelf on Label.

Rename Sheet 2 to Subcategory wise sales.

3. Suppose, we want to know the month-wise sales Vs profit inline chart then, we will-

Select Order Date from Dimensions and drop on columns. Right click on Order Date from column and select month. Select profit & sales from Measures and drop on rows. Click on Show Me and select the dual line.

Rename Sheet 3 to Month Wise Sales Vs Profit.

4. Suppose, we want to know the region-wise profit in pie chart then, we will-

Select and drag profit from measures and drop on rows. Select and drag region from dimensions and drop on color or mark shelf. Select Show Me and click on the pie chart. Select region from dimensions and profit from measures and drop on label on mark shelf.

Rename Sheet 4 to Region-wise Sales.

First Dashboard

The dashboard is nothing but the collections of worksheets. To create the dashboard we have to select Dashboard > New Dashboard. Which looks like -

There are two types of object on dashboard creation -

Tiled Object — If the object is set on the tiled object then the worksheets and objects will arrange as standard format of Tableau like vertically or horizontally. Floating Object — If the object is set on the floating object then it will overlap to the other object and can be resized in a very good manner.

Just drag and drop all four worksheets one by one and arrange in tiled object mode and enable show dashboard title. Rename the dashboard by right click on Dashboard 1 to Sales Dashboard. The dashboard will look like -

We can preview the dashboard in presentable mode by pressing “Key-F7” or click on presentation mode from the toolbar.

We can also customize the dashboard by -

Changing the color of the dashboard, worksheets

Applying border the worksheets from layout

Align the dashboard title to the center

Rearranging the worksheets.

Drag and drop the other objects like button, image, text, web page, etc.

Applying interactive filters to get the filtered data.

Applying top 10 records to get the top records which could work on all the worksheet.

Finally, the dashboard will look like -

Publish Dashboard

Once the dashboard is created, we have to publish it on Tableau Online in order to share it with the team or with the end-user.

Tableau Online is a web-based service provided by Tableau where the dashboard can be published and the registered user can access it depending on the given permission by the admin. For that, the user has to register themselves by entering their details on the Tableau Online official mentioned website and can become an admin for his site -

— https://sso.online.tableau.com/public/login

Remember that the Tableau Online is also a trial version of Tableau for 14 days after that it will be discontinued.

Set up Tableau Online-

Sign up and login on the Tableau Online. There are two default projects (1. Default, 2. Sample), create another as “First” Create a user temp1234@gmail.com as site role — a viewer. Who will see the dashboard with permission only view.

This is how Tableau Online home page look like -

Once the Tableau Online set up, Go back to Tableau Desktop

Go to > Server > Publish Workbook Click on connect Sign in to Tableau Online (Once it gets signed in, it will show under Server menu ) Select Project as First, Name and other details then click on Publish.

It will take some time and will redirect to the Tableau Online web interface with a success message. This is how the dashboard gets published.

To view, log in on the same interface with the created user credentials, created user needs to approve from their email address which is used. This is how users can view and interact with the dashboard and can get an idea about the data which we have, which could be very useful to make business decisions.