What is Tableau Desktop

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What is Tableau Desktop?

Tableau desktop is a very powerful visualization and business intelligence (BI) software application used to analyze, visualize, and share insights of your data. Which you can connect to a variety of data sources (like Excel, SQL, Oracle, Web etc..) and start visualizing data.

It is designed to help individuals and organizations both to create interactive, visually appealing reports and dashboards, without extensive technical or programming knowledge.

You can build a view and analyze your data, you must first connect Tableau to your data. Tableau supports connecting to a wide variety of data. Example, your data might be stored on your computer in a spreadsheet or a text file, or in a big data, relational database, database on a server in your enterprise. Or, you might connect to public domain data available on the web such as to a cloud database source, such as Google Analytics, Amazon, Redshift, or Salesforce.

And you can create nice visualization dashboards for your organizations, you can build almost all kind of charts and graphs only with the drag-drop option available in tableau Desktop.

There are Key Features of Tableau Desktop:

  • Easy Data Connectivity: Tableau Desktop can connect to various data sources, including spreadsheets, databases (like SQL, Oracle, etc.), cloud services (such as Google Analytics, Salesforce), and big data platforms (like Hadoop).
  • For Non Programmer Drag and Drop Interface: You can quickly create reports and dashboards by simply dragging and dropping fields onto a canvas of Tableau sheet. This type of interface makes it easy for non-technical users to start creating visualizations.
  • Data Blending: Tableau allows you to combine data from different sources, clean & prepare data for analysis, and create calculated fields or custom metrics, all without writing complex code.
  • Interactive Dashboards: You can create dashboards that allow you to interact with the data. For example, filters, drop-downs, or drill-down capabilities can be added to give users a more interactive experience.
  • Advanced Analytics: Tableau supports statistical modeling, trend analysis, forecasting, and more. It also allows you to add reference lines, trend lines, and custom calculations to enhance the analysis.
  • Visualization Options: Tableau supports a wide variety of charts and visualizations (e.g., bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, maps, heat maps, etc.), which can be customized and fine-tuned to present data in the most effective way.
  • Collaboration & Sharing: Once you have created a dashboard or report, you can share it with others using Tableau Server or Tableau Online. Alternatively, you can export visualizations as images, PDFs, or interactive web links.

Connect with Data Source:

When you launch Tableau Desktop from your system, the data connectors that are available to you are listed on the Connect pane, which is the left pane on the Start page. Under Search for Data, select Tableau Server to find data using Tableau Server or Tableau Online.

Once you connect with data source, you will see all character as Dimension and Numbers values as Measures in your left side panel of Tableau Desktop. and you can use these dimensions and Measure to design the data visualization based on your requirements and needs.

Few image examples, how Tableau Desktop look like

Example 1: The blank sheet of Tableau Desktop

Image from Tableau site

Example 2: The Bar heat map chart in Tableau Desktop sheet

Image from Tableau site

Example 2: Dashboard layout in Tableau Desktop

Image from Tableau site

Use Cases:

  • Business Analytics: For executives and managers to track key metrics like sales, marketing performance, customer satisfaction, etc.
  • Data Analysis: Analysts can use Tableau to explore datasets, identify trends, outliers, or correlations.
  • Reporting: Creating detailed, interactive reports for sharing insights with stakeholders or decision-makers.
  • Data Exploration: Users can quickly experiment with different ways of visualizing data and identifying patterns.

In short, Tableau Desktop is a powerful, user friendly tool for data analysis and visualization, widely used across various industries for making data driven decisions.

What are different kind of Charts available:

In tableau desktop you will se Show Me option on top right side of panel. where you will see all charts option available with what dimension and measures need to drag in column and rows, so that you can design the chart.

Show Me:

Types of Charts Available in Tableau Desktop

And many others chart can be created which need more complex calculation and mathematical formulas, you will learn more in this tutorial please go through the right side index option to see all tutorial pages.

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