MAcc Orientation

Please see the following Tableau trainings and support materials: 

The O'Reilly for Higher Education database contains our recommended Tableau course: Hands-On Visual Analysis with Tableau 10.X with Govind Acharya. Ben Darling suggests following the links below for the individual chapters and following his notes for things that may have changed since this course was created. Ben points out moments where there are strange edits or the instructor goes over things too quickly. These notes are intended to save you the time of having to rewind and figure out what just happened so you can make swift progress through the videos.

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Tableau

The Business Case for Visualizations 7m 20s (optional, but interesting)

Deep Dive into Tableau File Types 4m 6s

Chapter 2: Connect your Data in Tableau

Understanding the Ways to Connect to Data 5m 20s (@2:34 he right clicks on Sales, chooses Default Properties, and then “Number Format” and chooses “Currency (Standard)”)

Planning and Saving Data Sources 7m 8s

Choosing Live or Extract Data Sources 6m 14s

Calculations in the Data Source Page 5m 37s

Data Shaping and Data Quality 6m 8s

Working with the Data Interpreter 6m 39s (When he does the right-click and Split @4:47, the new column appears at far right of the table in newer Tableau versions)

Chapter 3: Tableau Prep: This chapter deals with Tableau Prep, a separate program that is used for cleaning up your data prior to using it in Tableau and is beyond the scope of this series. You are welcome to follow along, but I have not checked these videos for accuracy or taken notes for them. This chapter is not needed to complete the Problem Sets.

Chapter 4: Building your first Visualizations

Using the “Show Me” Function to Create Horizontal, Stacked, and Side-by-Side Bar Charts 6m 26s

Using the “Show Me” Function to Create Line and Area Charts 3m 25s

Using the “Show Me” Function to Create Scatter Plots 5m 6s (When dropping “Category” into the Shapes Mark @4:03, newer versions of Tableau will have a dialogue box appear. Just select “add all members” and carry on)

Using the “Show Me” Function to Create Tree Maps and Packed Bubbles 4m 19s

Working with the Analytics Tab 6m 35s (goes a little fast with the constant lines @4:22. He left-clicks on the constant line and chooses “Set Value” to change the value. You can also right-click and choose Edit to open a dialogue box where you can set the value among other things)

Chapter 5: Enhancing Your Data with Filters and Groups

Working with Filters 8m 10s (The way the Sort box displays @1:50 is different, but the functionality is still there. Just select Field from the dropdown and Sales for Field Name, then follow from there. There is also a weird edit @4:34 where he seems to get rid of the Country filter and put in the Region filter, just keep the Country filter and right click on the Country Pill in the Filters Shelf and select “Show Filter” and make sure All countries is selected on the right, then follow along from 4:47 where he has just clicked the down arrow next to Country on the far right.)

Using Sets 6m 45s (@3:28 when the set is created it will appear in newer versions of Tableau under Dimensions in blue. @5:04 he uses the back arrow in the upper-left to reinstate Profit as a color Mark and changed the Shape mark to a solid circle – click on Shapes in the Marks shelf and change from an empty circle to a filled circle)

Advanced Usage of Sets 7m 59s (You will notice the Dimensions/Measures display differently for you. They are all in their individual folders rather than having all Measures appear at the bottom. You should still be able to follow along. The formula he uses for the Concatenated Set is [Country/Region]+ "-" + STR(YEAR([Year])). Again, you will notice that newer versions of Tableau do not have a separate section for sets. They should appear along with other blue Dimensions. @4:29 when he creates the Health Expenditure Set he creates it as <=1000 even though he says 10,000. You may also notice he creates a combined set and then doesn’t use it, he uses the Health Expenditure set instead)

Creating Groups 8m 27s (@6:57 you may notice that you lose the sorting. If you sort by the second Customer Name Pill in rows (Field->Descending->Sum of Sales) it should be restored)

Creating Hierarchies 3m 46s (He has altered the visualization from where we left off last time. To get what he has, remove the Arbitrary List Pill from Rows and replace it with Customer Name.

Chapter 6: Creating Artful Analytics with Calculations

Calculated Fields and Visualizations 6m 6s

Table Calculations and Visualizations 4m 25s

Using Ad Hoc Calculated Fields 2m 26s

Understanding Aggregations 6m 8s (@2:34 he right clicks on Sales, chooses Default Properties, and then “Number Format” and chooses “Currency (Standard)”)

Everything after this starts getting into more advanced topics, but might prove useful when creating your own visualizations so feel free to continue your Tableau Journey with Govind!