Get Started with Tableau Prep
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the benefits of preparing your data in Tableau Prep.
- Describe common use cases and roles.
- List the steps in the data preparation process.
Before You Begin
Before you start this module, you can familiarize yourself with the basic concepts and key capabilities of Tableau Prep in the Tableau Prep: Quick Look.
Turn Raw Data into Insights
Have you ever been analyzing data only to realize that your data is "dirty" with inconsistencies, spelling errors, and extra spaces? Perhaps you’ve wanted to reshape or combine data before publishing it so that it will be easier for others to analyze.
Tableau Prep Builder is a visual data preparation tool you can use to help in those cases. On your desktop or in the browser, Tableau Prep Builder enables you to get to your analysis faster. In this module, you learn the basics of Tableau Prep Builder and why to use it. And you get hands-on practice with some common data preparation tasks.
Use Tableau Prep Builder with other Tableau products in the following workflow.
- Use Tableau Prep Builder on your desktop or in the browser to clean, shape, and combine data so it’s ready for analysis.
- Preview and validate your data preparation in Tableau Desktop.
- Save cleaned and prepared data extracts to a file; publish to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud; or write the output from your flows to an external relational database.
- Save flows or publish to Tableau Server/Online to run on a schedule using Tableau Prep Conductor (requires the Data Management add-on).
Who Prepares Data?
Tableau Prep makes it easier for anyone who needs to prepare data. What kind of tasks do people in the following user roles perform? And how does someone in these roles use Tableau Prep?
| Role |
Tasks |
Common Use Cases |
Example |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Author of visualizations or business owner |
Creates visualizations and dashboards to help users make smarter business decisions. |
Uses Tableau Prep’s visual and direct interface to manipulate data to answer their own analysis questions. |
An author/business user combines data sources, creates calculations, and performs multiple pivots for survey data. |
|
Analyst |
Presents data insights across lines of business to improve decision-making. |
Uses Tableau Prep’s interface to reshape data to avoid complex calculations in Tableau Desktop. Publishes flows to run on a schedule using Tableau Prep Conductor. |
An analyst calculates multiple aggregates for monthly or weekly summaries. |
|
Data steward |
Curates and prepares data sources for the wider organization. |
Uses Tableau Prep to clean data using smart algorithms. Prepares data by adding business rules in calculations, combining and shaping data, and then publishing curated data sources for the wider organization. |
A data steward integrates current and historical data, cleans it, adds calculations, and then shares the data source with the finance department. |
|
Data scientist |
Expertly derives valuable insights for large and varied data sets. |
Uses Tableau Prep Builder to explore data visually and get data ready for their analysis while integrating more complex cleaning, machine learning and predictive modeling using Python/R scripts. |
A data scientist uses a Python script to add a predictive maintenance cost for a manufacturer's supply chain. |
Whatever your role, Tableau Prep helps you transform raw data into an organized, easy-to-interpret format so you can analyze data faster.
Prepare Data for Analysis
Now that you understand who uses Tableau Prep Builder and why, let's explore how to use it.
To transform your data using Tableau Prep Builder, you follow four steps.
- Connect to data.
- Clean, shape, and combine data.
- Output the prepared data.
- Keep data fresh.
Connect to Data
To use Tableau Prep Builder to clean and prepare your data, you first create a flow when you connect to your data. Tableau Prep Builder supports connections to numerous popular data types, including:
- Flat files, including text, Excel, PDF, statistical files.
- Tableau extracts (.hyper files, which are a snapshot of data optimized for in-memory processing).
- Tableau published data sources (on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud).
- On-prem and cloud-based databases (such as Hadoop, SAP, MySQL, BigQuery) using the connectors provided.
- Additional database types using JDBC or ODBC connectors.
After creating a flow by connecting to data, you’re ready to clean and prepare it. The preparation process involves cleaning, combining, and shaping data, as needed. Clean data by using one-click cleaning operations, filters, calculated fields, and more. Combine your data with joins and unions; and shape your data with pivots and aggregates.
Output Your Prepared Data
After you prepare your data, you can publish your flow output to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud as a published data source with the customizations you’ve made. This ensures that users in your organization have access to the data as you’ve prepared it. You can also save your cleaned output to a local file or database. Your flow itself can be published to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, so users with appropriate permissions can edit the flow and create their own flow outputs, for example, with a subset of the data for their department.
Keep Data Fresh
To keep your prepared data fresh, you run your flow to generate updated output. Tableau Prep Conductor is part of the Data Management add-on for Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. With Prep Conductor, users with appropriate permissions can schedule, manage, and monitor flows. These users can create automated schedules for flow runs, manage permissions around data sharing and refreshes to align with an organization's requirements, and monitor the quality of flows with success and failure alerts.
Congratulations! You’ve now learned how Tableau Prep helps you prepare your data for analysis in Tableau. Next, let’s jump in and learn about the Tableau Prep Builder environment.