Working with extracts

This section will discuss what a Tableau data extract is as well as how to efficiently construct an extract. A colleague of mine recently consulted with a relatively small mobile phone service provider. Even though the company was small, the volume could be in excess of 1,000,000 calls per day. Management at the company insisted on the ability to interface with detailed visualizations of individual calls in Tableau workbooks. The performance of the workbooks was, understandably, a problem. Was such low-level detail necessary? Might less detail and snappier workbooks have led to better business decisions?

In order to balance business needs with practical performance requirements, businesses often need to ascertain what level of detail is genuinely helpful for reporting. Often, detailed granularity is not necessary. When such is the case, a summary table may provide sufficient business insight while enabling quick performance. In the case of the mobile phone...