What is Tableau Prep? Explained in under 10 mins!

hey it's tableau tim and i'm back with another sketch note this time explaining tableau prep builder yes that's right this will be the first of many sketch notes explaining products in tableau's platform and i couldn't think of a better place to start than tableau's newest product tableau prep if you haven't had a chance yet check out my 10 minute explainer about the whole tableau platform we briefly touched on tableau prep and more importantly we talked about how tableau prep fits into the entire tableau platform so it's great context for this video check it out in the pop-up on the top right of the screen right now in that video we talked about the core innovation that applies across all of tableau's products visual analysis and whilst that might seem obvious when we talk about data visualization data prep on the other hand is a bigger challenge how do you make data prep more visual okay buckle up while i walk you through tableau prep and the fundamental concepts behind how it tackles data prep in a visual way and empowers everyday business users to cleanse and transform their own data the first thing we should do is step back and explain what we mean by data prep if you think back to the analytical cycle in my tableau explainer businesses store data in lots of different places and as a result when it comes to retrieving it you might encounter a range of problems you might have some static data sources such as files on your desktop that you need to bring together with data from your database in other cases the data might all come from the database but they're stored at different levels of aggregation making it hard to make the accurate comparisons you need for the decision making process in other cases you might just need to do some grouping to create a new product or business category in your organization generally speaking common issues like the ones i just mentioned are documented and even taken care of in your data warehouse in other cases well you just don't notice the mistakes until you start visualizing it in tablet i can't tell you how many times desktop users have been the bearers of bad news when they start visualizing data that's not traditionally been visualized before add to this the explosion of data from digital systems and iat and it's pretty clear that businesses can't rely solely on data warehousing teams to handle data cleansing and transformation challenges especially when the analytical needs for that work is actually generated by the business users tableau is not the first to recognize this problem there are plenty of well-established tools in the market sql which is used by nearly all traditional databases was specifically designed to take on this challenge of standardizing how we store and manage data in databases visual tools such as all tricks already exist and you can do pretty advanced statistical computing in languages such as r and for programmers python so what problem is tableau prep actually solving well instead of telling you let me show you let's take a simple example let's say i want to compare two lists and find the matching items in excel you'd start with your two datasets in two sheets at this point even though you've done vlookups lots of times you're probably heading to youtube to remind yourself how the function is named and used yes i did the same to make this video some lookup values table arrays and column indexes later you have a formula that looks something like this not too bad right in sql well at least you just write something simple like this simple right for some yes this is simple but for others this looks like a foreign language and how many data problems are actually this simple more complexity and in excel you'd be calling your vba or macro guru and in sql well you're probably sending off a support ticket to your dba and data warehousing team who might as well be called hieroglyphicists at this point because have you seen the complex stuff they write to solve basic problems now you're probably thinking hey tim quit stalling get to the point how is tableau prep different okay okay i hear you tablet prep takes the process of cleansing and transforming data and makes it simple and easy to use for everyday business users it imagines data prep as a journey with data inputs as the start and outputs at the end along the way you carry out a series of steps you might want to do cleansing aggregation pivoting joins unions and so much more all of these are codified using visual indicators and when you work with them they stay visual all the way through tableau prep is always showing you your data in a clean and summarized interface and the summary explaining how the operation you're doing affects your data so to summarize in prep you'd take your two inputs connect them in prep you then use a join operation and prep would show you how many matched and how many don't alongside a table view showing you the result of your join you can then of course save the output to a file simple okay instead of sketching it let me just actually show you in tablet prep okay so we grab our files and we drop them onto the canvas and we bring our two lists onto tableau prep now that we've done that we add two clean steps just to check our data is correct and you can see here i get a summary of the lists in the view below now i'm ready to join the files by just dragging one of these steps onto the flow above and we automatically get a join notice how it shows us which type of join we're doing and it shows us the result here on the bottom left along with a summary on the right showing us the unmatched rows and the matched rows very very clearly with color coding to tell us which side of the data they're coming from to finish off we'll add a few clean steps just to do some basic data prep in this example i'm going to create a new total combining amount 1 and the amount field from both lists to create a total amount and then now that i'm done i'm going to bring that column over to the right hand side then i'm going to remove the three columns i no longer need just to clean this data set up and perfect now we're ready to output this and we have our data set ready to go i'm just going to name some steps here so it's easy for someone else to follow when they open up this file i can even add descriptions to some of the steps in case the name isn't enough to describe what's going on in this case i'm going to describe the total calculation that i did and the column cleanup that i did great now we have a very clean flow it's well documented and we're ready to export this notice that we have several file types here i can publish to the tableau server or i can publish to a database but for static files we're just going to export this to a csv all the way through tableau prep focuses on always being visual giving you a clear and instant picture of your data at every step it builds in smart tools to help you fix complex problems such as fuzzy matching to make grouping a one-click operation whilst keeping true to its tableau heritage and using a familiar interface to make a relatively young tool feel similar to established tableau users new data sources you can connect to are continuously being added and whilst we're on the topic of data sources you can of course share your prep data sources to your tableau server as files or fresh in 2020.3 you can write to databases allowing you to stay in the flow of your analysis and share your insights across the enterprise if that's not enough with the data management add-on and tableau prep conductor you can share your flows on tableau server or tableau online and schedule your flow so they run in the background with all the same oversight security and governance you've become used to in tableau server and tableau online all this makes it easy for everyday business users to transform and prepare the data they need not only to answer questions but to keep up with the fast pace of asking and answering questions in a world where data combined with fast-paced analytics is increasingly becoming a core part of decision making as a consultant who's worked in the business intelligence base for the last seven years i personally really enjoy using tableau prep yes it might be new and need some polishing around the edges it's constantly changing with features and patches nearly every month it's got a truly innovative approach to some of the most common data challenges everyday users face and you can of course expect the same vibrant and helpful community you've come to know in the tableau and now salesforce community if you're just getting started be sure to head to the tableau website and check out their getting started videos and their video explaining tableau prep of course i have my own videos in the playlist on this channel for you to check out alongside new feature releases and updates as they get released every month if you're looking for a bit more head to the tableau forums and feel free to ask questions or ask for help if something is vexing you and if you're looking for something a little bit more structured there's even a book written by my colleague and tableau zen master carl orton titled tableau prep up and running check it out link in the description below okay that's your lot hopefully you know a lot more about tableau prep and i'd love to hear what you use it for and how you find it be sure to let me know in the comments below and as ever if you found this video useful share it then subscribe so you don't miss out on my next sketchnote video about tableau desktop tableau server or tableau online and some of the other feature updates that i'm always covering every single week here on the channel thanks for watching

Channel: Tableau Tim

Views: 15,298

Rating: 4.9878421 out of 5

Keywords: tableau prep, tableau prep builder, tableau prep training for beginners, tableau prep tutorial, tableau prep overview, tableau prep tutorial, tableau prep tutorial for beginners, tableau prep tutorial videos, tableau prep conductor, What is tableau prep, tableau software, introduction to tableau, tableau prep download, tableau prep vs desktop, tableau prep 2020.3, how tableau prep works, how to use tableau prep builder, how to use tableau prep with tableau desktop, alteryx, sql

Id: 1tpgs5hCr2o

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020