Communicating With Your Data
Now that you can make plots with Tableau, it’s time use them to communicate with your data.
First, I’ll cover exploring your data to get a sense of what’s going on. For example, it’s good to know how variables are distributed and if any thing seems wrong with the data. You’ll also want to look for patterns and interesting questions.
You’ll also want to share your data with others. Tableau is great for creating interactive dashboards and stories that let your readers play your data on their own. Dashboards collect views into one idea. Stories are narrated walkthroughs of views and dashboards. With dashboards and stories, your job is to facilitate the interaction with the data story you are trying to tell.
Video + Text: What’s Ahead?
You already can do a ton with Tableau to explore a dataset. The ideas in this lesson will help you with tackling a dataset for the first time and putting your final products together.
There are five purposes of this lesson before you move onto your project and complete your Tableau journey here at Udacity.
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We have been working with a single dataset, but it is important you can feel comfortable with lots of different types of data, so you will gain that practice in this lesson.
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You will learn about dashboards, which allow you to analyze multiple sheets all at the same time. And even build filters that act over all the sheets at once.
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You will combine items 1 and 2 above to create dashboards for some new datasets. Don’t worry, we will do this together to build your confidence. That way you get some practice for you tackle the project.
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You will learn about stories, a feature of tableau that allows you to link together your worksheets in dashboards to give an audience a well rounded grasp of your insights.
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Finally, we will point you to some additional resources for you to continue learning and keep your Tableau skills fresh.
Hierarchies & Filters
All of the information you saw in the previous lesson is important, but two things I find myself using ALL THE TIME are Hierarchies & Filters. These two components wow your audiences, and take the interactivity with your visual to a new level.
Hopefully this video served as a great reminder. You will see both hierarchies & filters used pretty extensively in the next sections on dashboards.
Update all filters to a ll worksheets
Building Dashboards & Stories with Trina
General Notes for Building Data Dashboards
Dashboards Dashboards are used to collect multiple sheets that exhibit one idea. For instance, here is an example of a dashboard about sales opportunities found in Salesforce data. You can see in the dashboard that clicking on one view filters the data on the other views. This is one of the excellent interactive features you can use to let viewers explore your data. Dashboards are also great for building reports from various views that you want to keep track of every day or week.
Tableau has a whole set of great dashboards in their gallery. Check them out for inspiration.
Tableau has a great set of tutorial videos on building dashboards if you want some additional information: