Navigating the Tableau Interface: Key Features

So let's take a look at the Tableau interface. I'm going to go step by step through this, and we'll take a look at the animations. If you have any questions, let me know.

So this part is going to be pretty simple because it's very visual. So the Tableau interface up here is the data source connection. This is where you'll see what you're connecting to.

And right up at the top, this is the orders table that's connected to the two tables. If you look at your interface, that's exactly what we have up here. I'm just zooming into it.

What else? Over here, you have the data explorer sidebar. This takes the information in your table and breaks it up into two elements or two types of data types. But first of all, you can change data types here.

If you wanted to change a data type, I told you you could do it in the data source. If I click on orders, I can go here, right click, and then choose a different data source. You don't have to do it here.

If you're here, you can also right click, and you can change the data source from here as well. Change data type, and you have the option to do it from here as well. So I'm just mentioning that.

But these are dimensions. They're in blue, and then these are measures. They're in green.

So numerical values are what you want to combine with dimensions. So total sales by region, something like that. Next thing we'll take a look at is the marks card area.

This is very useful. Pages and filters we'll look at later, but marks card does a lot of things. You can control size, color, text is text labels.

That was available in the menu, but it's also available here. Detail can show you a level of detail within any of your bars. We'll take a look at that.

Tool tip, I didn't show you this, but let's say I'll just create something very basic. I'll choose subcategory. I'll move it to rows, and then I'll take sales, and I'll move it over to columns.

If I hover my mouse over any individual element, I can see the tool tip, and it tells me this is interactive. Just hover your mouse over any of the chart types, and you'll see information about that particular bar. This is, I think, something that exists in Excel when you're working with a bar chart.

So you can control the tool tips here because you can add more than just what you see here. You can choose to add different elements. All right, so we'll cover that later.

I'm going to clear this. So this is pages. Mostly it works with animations.

Filters, this allows you to filter your data because you want to be able to filter information. And then the marks card, and the marks card is where you can change the color, the size, choose text labels, create a different level of detail, and add a tool tip. Here are the shelves.

This is where, just like in a pivot table, you drag and drop your fields to create your visualizations. Just like in Excel, if I go into an Excel spreadsheet, and I delete this sheet, this does not delete the data. This is just where I'm playing with, playing with the data.

If I go here and delete this, the information is still here. I can create as many pivot tables as I want. And that's what you're doing with the data in Tableau.

It's still on your computer, but you create a duplicate in Tableau to play around with and move fields into different areas. That's one place to put shelves. You can also, one place to put your fields, but you can also put them up on top.

And this is the view. So when you create your visualizations, this is the area where you'll see the view. It's just like a pivot table.

So again, I'm creating the analogy that this is just like working with a pivot table, but a more visual pivot table. Again, a review of the four main parts of the window. The sidebar.

The sidebar, there are four types. Data, analytic, format, and map. I can only show you three now.

Tomorrow, I can show you map. Let me show you the other two. Data are the fields in the tables, because they're the data fields in the table.

You have analytics. Well, where's analytics? It's a tab. If you click the analytics tabs, you have analytical calculations.

For those of you who like data analysis, these are where you have more complex calculations. And then what's the other tab? Format. Let me show you how format works.

If I wanted to format anything that's in here, again, I'll choose a subcategory. I'll drag it into here. And then I'll choose sales.

And I'll drag that into columns. So what if I wanted to format this information here in this section? I can right click and choose format. What happens if I click format? What happened to my data bar? It's now a format sidebar.

And it's going to be used to format the information that you clicked on. You can format anything here. So this area is also used for formatting.

You can change the font. You can make it a different color. You can make it bigger.

And you can do a whole bunch of things. I'm going to undo. All right.

So that's the data sidebar. It has four different elements. Next thing we'll take a look at is the marks card.

This is where we saw pages, filters, and marks. Then you have the shelves. That's where you have columns and rows.

And then the fourth part is the view. And that's where you view your visualizations. Almost anything you need to do in Tableau can be done with a right click or drag and drop.

The problem is learning all the different features that are available to pick from. It can be confusing because there's a lot of places where you can find things. So let's continue.

Down here is where you can create names for your sheets that you create. You can create multiple sheets. So this is the worksheet name.

How do you create another sheet? Just like you do in Excel. You click that button right there. That creates a new sheet.

In fact, you could try it now. If I go over into Tableau, this button right here, guess what it'll do? It'll create a new sheet called sheet two. And this is where you can create another visualization.

You keep clicking this button, you'll create new sheets. What does this other button do? That creates a dashboard. Dashboard is where you can take multiple sheets and put them together.

Put two charts side by side. Put four charts side by side. Add in images.

Add in controls to filter information in the data visualization. And then stories is like a PowerPoint presentation that uses sheets or uses dashboards. You can put dashboards and sheets together in a story.

Story sounds like it's supposed to be special, but it's pretty simple. It's just like a PowerPoint presentation. So those are the four elements of the interface.

Let's talk about the menu. Here in this section, undo, redo, replay animation. When it's available, save to Tableau Public.

You don't want to click this button because it's going to ask you to sign in and publish your visualization. If you want to save your visualization, which is something I should do now, I'll go to file and I'll choose save. Not save as.

Well, actually, I think I could do. Well, if I do save, it takes me to save as. So I haven't saved anything yet.

If my computer crashed, I'd have to start all over. So let's do a basic save and save this somewhere. I'll click save, and I'll talk about saving later.

You have the Tableau extension. I'm going to save it to Tableau level one, and I'm going to call this day one Tableau. You can call it whatever you want.

You can enter your name, but this puts us on the board. We're saving stuff that we can come back to. So I'll call this day one Tableau, and then I'll click save.

So now the file has a name, just like any document you work with. Connect to a new data source. You know how to do that.

If you want to connect to a new data source, if you click this button, which you can click, it opens up this, and then you can go and connect to a new data source. You don't necessarily have to go all the way back to this other view. While you're in the sheet, you can click this button, and it opens up this little menu here where you can select another data source.

Okay, the next section, new worksheet. You already know that. You could do it from the bottom.

You could do it from the top. Duplicate a sheet. If you create a chart and you want to duplicate it and make some changes, you can do that.

Clear your worksheet. We've already started to use that. Swap rows and columns.

What is that? Well, let me show you what that is. I'm going to go over here to an Excel spreadsheet, and I'm going to go over here to charts. I'm going to select this.

I'll choose insert, and I'll choose this column chart. I'll zoom in. Switch row columns.

That's what swap rows and columns is, except they use the word swap instead of switch. So when you have a chart, you can do that. I'll show you an example.

I know it's kind of early, but why don't I show you because you probably want to see it now anyway. So I'm going to go over here, and we're going to use subcategory in sales a lot. Subcategory, I'm going to bring this over into rows, and then I'll take sales, and I'll move it into columns.

Now, when I do that, this little button, swap row and columns, this is what it does. Depends on how you want to see the information. Do you want to see it as a column or a bar? One click, switch row, switch columns, and that's where it's going to be most useful.

It's very similar to what you do in Excel, except it doesn't change the columns and rows. It changed the values that you see here. Mac, iPhone, and TV are represented by the colors.

If I choose switch row column, well, now this represents the week for each of the products. It's just a different way to look at the information. All right.

Sort, ascending, descending. We already learned about that. Let's do ascending, descending, ascending, descending.

I'm doing this on a subcategory level. If I click this little button here, I can also sort right from here as well. When I click this box, I can choose what I want to sort by.

I'm sorting by sales ascending or descending. I'm going to close this. I'll just click away from it.

There it is. Just click that X. If I select sales, I can also click sort ascending and descending. I was doing it by subcategory.

All right. So, going over the interface. Highlight, you can highlight specific parts of your data visualization, group members, show marks labels.

So, if I click this, that's going to show me the labels for any chart. Fix axis. I can lock the axis, the X or Y axis.

Group members, we'll talk about later. Show and hide marks card. You probably don't want to turn this off.

Presentation mode. Presentation mode is pretty simple. It's PowerPoint.

Okay, boss, I'm ready to show you my presentation. I just created it. Okay.

So, just click this button. And then if you have a big screen projector, you can show your presentation of your data. When you're done, you press escape.

You don't have to publish it. You just have to connect your laptop to a big screen projector and then click this. It's like a PowerPoint presentation and then you can show your information here.

It's going to be much more interesting when you have a dashboard because then you can navigate to different sheets. You can still navigate to sheets here. I have a sheet on the bottom.

If I click this button, I just click between the sheets, sheet one and sheet two. All right. I'll press escape.

I'll come out of that. So, that's most of the menu that's available here. So, the toolbar.

So, we're pretty much going over the whole interface. That's the top menu. Of course, you have the file tabs.

Here's a simple, you'll have to use the program to get used to them, but here's a very simple thing. These three buttons, they're available right up here. What do you mean? This is easy to show you because this takes no effort on my part at all.

If I want to insert a new worksheet, click worksheet, click new worksheet. I want to insert a new dashboard, click dashboard, create new dashboard. I want to insert a new story, click story, click new story.

And so, the same three buttons that we have here are up here as well. And then, just some of them are here. This is just creating a new worksheet.

I want to rename the sheet. I could rename the sheet by double-clicking on it. If I don't want to see a title, I can hide the title.

I can right-click here and say hide title. By default, the title is the name of the sheet. But how do I get it back? I can go to worksheet and I can choose show title because I want to show the title for the worksheet and then bring it back.

Or I can hide it. So, you can hide elements and you can also bring them back. And that's what I'm showing you here.

Worksheet, show title.