Tableau: Definition, Product &Features.

What is Tableau:

A tableau is a powerful tool that is used in the Business Intelligence Industry. It is the fastest-growing data visualization tool that combines various data sources such as databases, spreadsheets, and even big data and cloud data into a single program to perform analysis.

It is an easy tool for preparing reports only by dragging and dropping. Without prior programming knowledge, anyone can learn Tableau. With Tableau, Data analysis is very fast and the visualizations created are in the form of dashboards, storyboards, and worksheets.

Tableau Product:

Tableau Desktop:

Tableau Desktop is a paid version that helps to create reports, dashboards, and stories using different charts and graphs. The workbooks and the dashboards created using Tableau Desktop can be shared locally or publicly.

Tableau Server:

Tableau Server is a paid version, mainly used in organizations to share workbooks and reports that are created using Tableau Desktop applications across different teams. Ask questions with natural language, and it will receive AI-driven explanations for your data.

Tableau Online:

Tableau Online is a paid version of that analytics platform that is hosted on the cloud, and it helps users publish dashboards and share discoveries with anyone. You can connect to cloud databases, like Amazon Redshift and Google Big Query. It automatically refreshes data from web apps, like Google Analytics and Salesforce.

Tableau Public:

Tableau Public is a free version, but the workbooks created cannot be saved locally. They can be saved to Tableau's public cloud, which anyone can access and view. Due to the lack of privacy options, any user can download and access the files saved to the cloud.

Tableau Reader:

Tableau Reader is a free version desktop application that enables users to open and interact with reports built using Tableau Desktop.

Tableau Mobile:

Tableau Mobile is a free version that provides interactive previews where users can check data and reports anytime from anywhere. You can select, filter, and fine-tune the data with a tap of your finger using the mobile app.

Features of Tableau:

1. Tableau Dashboard:

Tableau Dashboard is a collection of multiple worksheets, that help compare a lot of data, turn insight into action, decrease the analysis time & help everyone, into the change behaviors of data- drive in business. Dashboards also contain very informative, as they present data in the form of stories, the addition of multiple views and objects, provide a variety of layouts and formats, and enable users to deploy suitable filters.

2. Collaboration & sharing of data:

Tableau allows team members to securely share data from various data sources such as on-cloud, on-premise, etc., follow up on queries, and easy visualization to gain value from data. Tableau makes easy collaboration around data and makes sure everyone understands the data and can inform decisions is critical to success.

3. Live& in-memory Data:

Tableau connects both live data sources and data extraction from external data, which is used for real-time data analysis. Data can use directly from the data source by establishing data connections as per their requirement. It also provides additional features to support data connectivity such as automatic extract refreshes, notifying the user upon a live connection failure, etc. Tableau can also process data in memory and not be connected to the source anymore while analyzing the data, with a limit to the amount of data cached depending on the availability of memory.

4. Data Sources & Data Blending :

Tableau offers a variety of options to connect and fetch data. The connection to file options such as MS EXCEL, MS Access, JSON, etc. In addition to this, data sources ranging from on-premise files, spreadsheets, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data are all available on Tableau. Everyone can easily establish a secure connection to any of the data and use that data along with data from other sources to create a combinatorial view of data in the form of visualizations. Different kinds of data connectors such as Presto, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Cloudera, Hadoop, Amazon Athena, Salesforce, SQL Server, Dropbox, and many more also support.

5. Visualizations (Basic and Advanced charts) :

Charts are key features of Tableau, which is a wide range of visualizations. In Tableau, you can make visualizations as Basic charts such as -

• Bar Chart

• Area Chart

• Line Chart

• Table

• Text Chart

• Pie Chart

• Scatter Plot

• Funnel Chart

Advanced charts such as:

• Histogram

• Gantt Chart

• Bullet Chart

• Motion Chart

• Tree Map

• Box Chart

• Bubble Chart

• Waterfall chart

select and create any kind of visualization easily by selecting the visualization type.

6. Map:

Tableau is the map, it has a lot of pre-installed information on maps such as cities, postal codes, administrative boundaries, etc. Different kinds of maps are available in Tableau such as Heat maps, Flow maps, Choropleth maps, Point distribution maps, etc.

7. Robust Security:

Tableau has a robust security system capable of authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols such as Active Directory, Kerberos, etc., and helps protect data, users, and content from the outside world.

8. Trend Lines and Predictive Analysis:

An extremely useful feature of Tableau is the use of time series and forecasting. Creating Forecast trend lines and forecasting is easily possible in Tableau only by drag-and-drop operations using the required fields.

9. Mobile View:

Mobile phone is very much essential in today's world, so Table provides a mobile version of the Tableau app, which creates dashboards and reports that are compatible with mobile. Creating customized mobile layouts for dashboard options gives users a lot of flexibility and convenience in handling their data.

10. Miscellaneous Features:

Along with the list of key features, Tableau is loaded with a lot of other important useful features listed:

• Cross-database join, Drag-and-drop integration, Data connectors

• Text editor, Revision history, Licensing views, Web Data Connector

• Split function, Tooltip editing in the browser, Access Control

• Active Directory Integration, Activity Dashboard

• Content Library, Custom Fields, Customizable Reporting

• Data filtering, import/export, mapping, storage management, visualization.

• Database Integration, Drag & Drop Interface

• Metadata Management

• Permission Management, Role-Based Permissions

• Real-Time Analytics, Real-Time Data, Visual Analytics.

Summary

Here we covered what is a tableau, tableau products, and the features of Tableau. This information helps beginners to use Tableau features and functionalities which helps us extract valuable information from raw data and analyze it using visualizations.

References

1. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tableau/tableau_data_sources.htm#:~:text=Tableau's%20native%20connectors%20can%20connect,Azure%2C%20Google%20BigQuery%2C%20etc.

2. https://data-flair.training/blogs/tableau-data-types/

3. https://www.guru99.com/what-is-tableau.html

4. https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/tableau-tutorial/what-is-tableau.