What is Tableau ?
Tableau is a data visualization and business intelligence software that allows users to connect, visualize, and share data in a more interactive and intuitive way. It offers a range of tools and features to help users analyze, visualize, and communicate insights from their data.
It is widely used by organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises, as well as by individuals for personal projects and data analysis. It supports a variety of data sources including spreadsheets, databases, and cloud-based services.
One of the key strengths of Tableau is its ease of use and intuitive interface. Users can quickly and easily connect to their data and start creating visualizations and dashboards without the need for technical expertise. The software also includes a wide range of pre-built templates, sample data, and other resources to help users get started quickly.
Tableau also offers robust collaboration features, allowing users to share their data and insights with others. Dashboards and visualizations can be published to the web or embedded in other applications, and users can collaborate on projects in real-time, with the ability to make comments, ask questions, and share feedback.
Tableau has a rich ecosystem of add-ons, extensions, and community-driven resources, allowing users to customize and enhance their experience. This includes custom calculations, connectors to new data sources, and a variety of visualization and presentation tools.
In conclusion, Tableau is a powerful and flexible data visualization and business intelligence tool that offers a range of features and resources to help users analyze, visualize, and share insights from their data. Whether you are an individual, a small business, or a large enterprise, Tableau offers the tools you need to make better decisions and drive growth based on the data you have.
How does Tableau work?
- The Tableau software connects and extracts data from a variety of locations, platforms, and databases, including Excel, PDF, Oracle, and others.
- In order to begin the process, it is launched. With Tableau’s data connectors, you can now connect to any database.
- After connecting to the databases, the data is extracted and connected live to Tableau Desktop, the Tableau data engine. An analyst or data engineer works on the data and develops the visualization. As part of the final product, Tableau Reader allows users to view dashboards.
Why use Tableau?
Here are some reasons to use Tableau:
- Ultimate skill for Data Science
- User-Friendly
- Apply to any Business
- Fast and Easy
- You don’t need to do any Coding
- Community is Huge
- Hold the power of data
- It makes it easier to understand and explain the Data Reports
Features of Tableau
- Data Blending: Data blending is the most important feature in Tableau. It is used when we combine related data from multiple data sources, which you want to analyze together in a single view, and represent in the form of a graph.
Example:
Assume that we have sales data in a relational database and sales target data in an Excel spreadsheet. To gain access to the data, we must compare actual sales with target sales, and blend the data according to common dimensions. Primary and secondary data sources are the two sources that are involved in data blending. To blend data from the primary and secondary sources, a left join will be performed between the primary and secondary data sources.
- Real-time analysis: Real-Time Analysis enables users to quickly understand and analyze dynamic data, even when the velocity is high and real-time analysis is complex. Tableau can help extract valuable information from fast moving data with interactive analytics.
- The Collaboration of data: Analyzing data is not an isolated activity. That is why Tableau is designed to facilitate collaboration. The members of the team may share data, perform follow-up queries, and share easy-to-digest visualizations with others who may benefit from the information. To achieve success, it is essential that everyone understands the data and is able to make informed decisions.
Tableau Reporting
The purpose of reporting in business intelligence tools is to collect, prepare, visualize, and analyze data. All of these processes enable us to make sense of raw data and convert it into meaningful formats, such as charts, tables, graphs, and maps.
Tableau reporting allows users to:
- See data trends
- Analyze forecasts
- Slice and dice their data at finer levels
Various types of reports are available, including PDFs, tables, spreadsheets, workbooks, and custom dashboards.
Tableau Products Suite –
Tableau’s product suite consists of Tableau Desktop, Tableau Online, Tableau Public, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Server. Following is a breakdown of the division:
- Developer tools – Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public
- Sharing tools – Tableau Online, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Server
Now let’s take an in-depth look at the Tableau products.
- Tableau Desktop – Tableau Desktop facilitates the coding and modification of reports. This includes creating charts and reports, as well as combining them. Workbooks and dashboards can either be saved locally or publicly.
Tableau Desktop can be further categorized into two types. They are:
- Tableau Desktop Personal: In this version, the data has limited accessibility, and the workbook is kept private.
- Tableau Desktop Professional: In this version, you can either save the work created in the Tableau Server or publish it online. There is full access to the data type. If you want to publish your work on the Tableau Server, this version is better for you.
- Tableau Public – This Tableau version is designed specifically for users who would like to save money. Tableau Public saves workbooks to the public cloud. These workbooks are available for anyone to access, view, and download. Tableau Public is a better choice if you wish to share your workbooks, dashboards, and data with the public.
- Tableau Server – Tableau Server is used to share visualizations and workbooks created in Tableau Desktop across the organization. You must first publish your work on Tableau Desktop before sharing it on Tableau Server.
The workbook can only be accessed by authorized users who have login credentials. Tableau Server does not need to be installed on the user’s computer; only their login credentials are required to verify reports. In addition to its high security, Tableau Server facilitates effective and convenient data sharing within the organization.
- Tableau Online – Tableau Online and Tableau Server are similar in their use and functionality. As opposed to Tableau Server, the Tableau group maintains the cloud that hosts the servers that contain the Tableau Online data. In addition to Tableau Online and Tableau Server, Tableau Online and Tableau Server support web applications such as Google Analytics and Salesforce.com.
It is not necessary to worry about storage limitations when publishing data in Tableau Online. With Tableau Online, a direct link is created to over 35 different cloud-based data sources, such as Hive, MySQL, Amazon, and Spark SQL. The workbooks from Tableau Desktop are required by both Tableau Online and Tableau Server in order to broadcast the data.
- Tableau Reader – It is a free tool that allows users to view and filter existing workbooks. Although the data can be filtered, it cannot be edited or modified. Tableau Reader allows anyone to view the workbook, so there is no security level. The reader must have Tableau Reader in order to view or read the documents.
How can Tableau benefit your business?
The number of people using the internet is growing rapidly, resulting in a meteoric surge of data. Imagine, for example, that every time a potential customer goes online, they add to big data. Your business could benefit greatly from this data. To stay ahead of the competition, you need business intelligence, meaningful insights into your potential customers’ behaviors. You will be able to streamline your approach to target them as a result. Big data provides this intelligence.
This bulk of data, however, is unstructured and raw, so it goes unused. In order for everyone in the organization to understand this data, it can be challenging to make sense of it and analyze it well enough. Since not everyone is familiar with data analytics, you need to present your data so that it can be understood even by someone with no technical knowledge. Tableau helps you achieve this.
Tableau is one of the most popular business intelligence (BI) tools due to its unique, exciting features.