At the heart of Tableau are worksheets and Dashboards. Worksheets contain individual visualizations and Dashboards contain one or more worksheets. Additionally, worksheets and Dashboards may be combined into stories to communicate particular insights to the end user through a presentation environment. Lastly, all worksheets, Dashboards, and stories are organized in workbooks that can be accessed with the Tableau desktop, Server, reader or the Tableau mobile app. In this section, we'll survey creating worksheets and Dashboards, with the intention of communicating the basics, but we'll also provide some insight that may prove helpful to more seasoned Tableau users.

At the time of writing, Tableau's data connection menu includes 70 different connection types. And that's somewhat of an understatement since some of those types contain multiple options. For example, the selection choice, Other Files, includes 34 options. Of course, we won't cover the details for every connection type, but we will cover the basics.

Upon opening a new instance of Tableau Desktop, you'll notice a link in the top-left corner of the workspace. Clicking on that link will enable you to connect to the data. Alternatively, you can click on the New Data Source icon on the toolbar:

Although in future chapters we'll connect to other data sources, here we'll limit the discussion to connecting to the Microsoft Excel and text files.

Connecting to Tableau Server is perhaps the single most important server-connection type to consider, since it's frequently used to provide better performance than may otherwise be possible. Additionally, connecting to Tableau Server enables the author to receive not only data, but information regarding how that data is to be interpreted; for example, whether a given field should be considered a measure or a dimension.

The following are the steps for connecting to Tableau Server:

1. To complete this exercise, access to an instance of Tableau Server is necessary. If you don't have access to Tableau Server, consider installing a trial version on your...

Connecting to a saved data source on a local machine is very similar to connecting to a data source published on Tableau Server. Metadata definitions associated with the local data source are preserved just as they are on Tableau Server. Of course, since the data source is local instead of remote, the publication process is different.

Let's explore the following steps for creating a local data connection using an example:

1. In the workbook associated with this chapter, navigate to the Local Data Connection tab.
2. In the Data pane, right-click on the Superstore data source and select Add to Saved Data Sources.
3. Using the resulting dialog box, save...

I've observed the following scenario frequently, wherein a new Tableau author creates a worksheet and drags a measure to the Text shelf. The author does this in order to create another row to display a second measure but doesn't know how. They drag the second measure to various places on the view and gets results that seem entirely unpredictable. The experience is very frustrating for the author since it's so easy to accomplish this in Microsoft Excel! The good news is that it's also easy to accomplish this in Tableau. It just requires a different approach. Let's explore the solution with an exercise.

Measure Names and Measure Values are generated fields in Tableau. They don't exist in the underlying data, but they're indispensable for creating many kinds of views. As may be guessed from its placement in the...

The road to mastering Tableau begins with three essential concepts. We'll discuss each of the following concepts:

• Dimensions and Measures
• Row Level, Aggregate Level, Table Level
• Continuous and Discrete

Tableau categorizes every field from an underlying data source as either a dimension or a measure. A dimension is qualitative or, to use another word, categorical. A measure is quantitative or aggregable. A measure is usually a number but may be an aggregated, non-numeric field, such as MAX (Date of Hire). A dimension is usually a text, Boolean, or date field, but may also be a number, such as Pay Rate. Dimensions provide meaning to numbers by slicing those numbers...

Once a Dashboard looks as it's expected to, the developer has different choices of sharing the work. An upload to the Tableau Server is the most likely option. The end user might not look at the results on just a laptop; they could use a tablet or cellphone, too.

While developing a Dashboard, the Tableau Creator has the option to take a look at Device Designer or Device Preview. You can find it here:

Please be aware that you can only use the sheets that are in the default layout of your Dashboard. Once you're in the Device Designer mode, select a Device type and you'll get choices of the most common Models:

A cellphone is usually designed...

In this chapter, we covered the basics of Tableau. We began with some basic terminology, then we looked at the basics of creating worksheets and Dashboards. We focused on default behavior, how to override that behavior, and we considered best practices. Then we reviewed Measure Names and Measure Values.

After that, we explored three essential Tableau concepts: Dimensions and Measures, Row-, Aggregate-, and Table-level, and Continuous and Discrete. Of particular importance is understanding that row- and aggregate-level calculations are computed by the data source engine, while table-level calculations are handled by Tableau. Finally, we saw how to adjust your Dashboard for other devices, such as a cellphone or tablet.

In the next chapter, we'll continue our Tableau exploration by looking at data. We'll explore how to prepare data for Tableau by looking at joins...