My presentation from Setpember's Austin Tableau User Group.

1. Tableau Tips & Tricks
Austin Tableau User Group
November 5, 2014
Cory Jez
Global BI Reporting Developer

2. Purpose
To show some “quick-win” opportunities to leverage Tableau’s capabilities in day-to-day work
Topics to Cover HomeAway Tableau Environment Tableau Server Distribution Easy Branding Dashboarding Hacking Tableau

3. Looking to others who use Tableau

4. Tableau DataSources
New Way
Old Way
-Custom SQL driving Tableau Server datasources
-Messy and hard to edit
-No help from DBA’s
-Many CASE statements and transformation logic
-Redundancies on our Tableau Server
-Tableau Server datasources pull directly from a SQL view
-Views are named with “TAB” preceding so their use is clear
-Perform transformation logic at the datasource level

5. Benefits of the “New Way”
•Put processing on SQL’s shoulders
•More options with optimization
•Adding fields, no risk of “breaking” things

6. Tableau Server - Navigation
•Problem
–The user interface within TS can be “fun” to navigate
–Several clicks required to get where you want to go

7. Tableau Server - Navigation
Solution - Chrome plugin that lets you see thumbnails of dashboards and click straight into them

8. Tableau Server - Navigation

9. Tableau Server - Navigation
Here is the link for the plugin https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- chrome-extension-f/kfnclbnbnhglklkpdlhfaopofekmckfe?hl=en-GB

10. Tableau Server - Datasources
•Problem
–You open up a datasource in Tableau desktop, and when you drag in a field, you only see a few items
–You need to know what SQL (or other datasource) is driving the tableau server datasource

11. Tableau Server - Datasources
Solution
- Leverage Tableau Server API to download the datasource and see its underlying SQL and logic
https://SERVERURL/datasources/eCommMonthlyCounts.tds?no_extract=true

12. Distribution - Static
•Problem
–My VP wants to grab a screenshot of a dashboard to drop into a PowerPoint deck
–The export functionality is not very obvious in Tableau Server and can even be deactivated with permissioning
•Solution
-Add a file extension to the end of the URL
-.pdf
-.png
-.csv

13. Easy Branding
•Problem
–But Cory, the HomeAway Color Palette isn’t available in Tableau, and always changing those RGB’s is a pain
–And even though we have a formatting guide, I can’t save those colors in Tableau!

14. Easy Branding
•Solution
–Add default colors into your Preferences document located in My Tableau Repository
=

15. Easy Branding
•Here is the code to paste into your preferences document
<?xml version='1.0'?> <workbook> <preferences> <color-palette name=“My Color Palette" type="regular" > <color>#2A6EBB</color> #repeat this for any other colors </color-palette> </preferences> </workbook>

16. Dashboarding
•Problem
–Those little things that pop up when you hover over a data point are really ugly and what does that even mean?

17. Dashboarding
•Solution
–Always remember to build out your tooltips, you can have them read very clean, and even add bar charts!

18. Barcharts inside of Tooltips

19. Dashboarding
•Problem
–I’m running out of room on my dashboard, but have a whole list of details I want to show about a view.

20. Dashboarding
•Solution
–Utilize “on demand” details that act as a pop-up, which saves space but provides additional info

21. Hacking The Tableau XML
•Problem
–Someone has sent you a workbook and you get the following error message

22. Hacking The Tableau XML
•Solution
–Open the workbook in your favorite text editor (right click “open with”, and change the underlying version of the workbook

23. Hacking The Tableau XML
–You can also do a lot of other things in the XML like
•Change colors
•Change datasources
•Delete sheets from a workbook
•Move a workbook from a dev server to a production server

24. Questions?
cjez@homeaway.com