Focus on the most important and most often overlooked factor in a successful Tableau
project-data. Without a reliable data source you will not achieve the results you hope for in
Tableau. This book does more than teach the mechanics of data preparation. It teaches you: how
to look at data in a new way to recognize the most common issues that hinder analytics and
how to mitigate those factors one by one. Tableau can change the course of business but the
old adage of garbage in garbage out is the hard truth that hides behind every Tableau sales
pitch. That amazing sales demo does not work as well with bad data. The unfortunate reality is
that almost all data starts out in a less-than-perfect state. Data prep is hard. Traditionally
we were forced into the world of the database where complex ETL (Extract Transform Load)
operations created by the data team did all the heavy lifting for us. Fortunately we have
moved past those days. With the introduction of the Tableau Data Prep tool you can now handle
most of the common Data Prep and cleanup tasks on your own at your desk and without the help
of the data team. This essential book will guide you through: The layout and important parts of
the Tableau Data Prep tool Connecting to data Data quality and consistency The shape of the
data. Is the data oriented in columns or rows? How to decide? Why does it matter? What is the
level of detail in the source data? Why is that important? Combining source data to bring in
more fields and rows Saving the data flow and the results of our data prep work Common cleanup
and setup tasks in Tableau Desktop What You Will Learn Recognize data sources that are good
candidates for analytics in Tableau Connect tolocal server and cloud-based data sources
Profile data to better understand its content and structure Rename fields adjust data types
group data points and aggregate numeric data Pivot data Join data from local server and
cloud-based sources for unified analytics Review the steps and results of each phase of the
Data Prep process Output new data sources that can be reviewed in Tableau or any other
analytics tool Who This Book Is For Tableau Desktop users who want to: connect to data profile
the data to identify common issues clean up those issues join to additional data sources and
save the newly cleaned joined data so that it can be used more effectively in Tableau
