Going Beyond the Basics

The assumption behind this chapter is that the you are familiar with basic chart types such as bar, line graph, treemap, pie, and area, and that you have used Tableau to build multiple charts. The intention of this chapter is to focus on how to improve visualization types you may already use on a regular basis, as well as introducing chart types with which you may be unfamiliar but that are, nonetheless, widely useful. I will then introduce you to Tableau Exchange, a platform that contains extensions, accelerators, and connectors, which offer some more exotic chart types.

Perhaps the most useful part of this chapter is not contained in the book at all but, rather, in the workbook associated with the chapter. Be sure to download that workbook (the link will be provided in the following section) to check out a wide range of visualization types.

This chapter will explore the following visualization types and topics:

• Improving popular visualizations...

Improving popular visualizations

Most popular visualizations are popular for good reason. Basic bar charts and line graphs are familiar, intuitive, and flexible and are thus widely used in data visualization. Other less basic visualizations such as bullet graphs and Pareto charts may not be something you use every day but are nonetheless useful additions to a data analyst’s toolbox. And while these are all good, they could do more. In this section, we will explore ideas for how to tweak, extend, and even overhaul a few popular chart types.

Bullet graphs

The bullet graph was invented by Stephen Few and communicated publicly in 2006 through his book Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. Stephen Few continues to be a strong voice in the data visualization space through his books and his blog, www.perceptualedge.com. Bullet graphs communicate efficiently and intuitively by packing a lot of information into a small space while remaining...

Custom background images

Custom background images in Tableau open a world of potential. Imagine the ability to visualize any space. Possibilities encompass sports, health care, engineering, architecture, interior design, and much, much more. Despite this wealth of potential, background images in Tableau seem to me to be underutilized. Why? Part of the reason is because of the difficulty of generating datasets that can be used with background images.

Like the tile grid map discussed before, background images require a grid layout to pinpoint x and y coordinates. In the following section, we will address how to use Tableau to create a grid that can be superimposed on an image to instantly identify locations associated with x and y coordinates, and relatively quickly produce datasets that can be accessed by Tableau for visualization purposes.

Creating custom polygons

Geographic areas for which Tableau natively provides polygons include country, state/province, county, and...

Tableau Exchange

To access Tableau Exchange, go to this website: https://exchange.tableau.com.

Figure 8.81: Tableau Exchange

Accelerators and extensions can also be accessed from within Tableau Server and/or Tableau Desktop. Let us dive right into Tableau Exchange and see what it has to offer!

Tableau extensions

Extensions are the oldest product and are accessible from the Object pane on your Tableau dashboard. Basically, extensions allow you to use third-party tools directly in Tableau. Some selected extensions are available at https://extensiongallery.tableau.com, and the list is always growing.

Please be aware that Tableau does not provide support or guarantees/security measures for extensions. Those APIs are built by external parties and should be treated as such. Check with your IT security team first if you want to use them at work.

Let’s have a look at one example from Infotopics – a Sankey chart extension.

Using an extension

...

Einstein Discovery

We discussed Tableau exchange in the previous section; however, one other similarly beyond-basics feature deserves some attention too. But before we continue, a bit of backstory. In August 2019 Tableau was acquired by Salesforce. Probably most of you know Salesforce and even work with it, but for all other readers, Salesforce is a cloud-native Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Next to that, the company also developed an analytics portion, which allows Salesforce users to analyze data from a CRM system and other data sources.

Connecting Salesforce to Tableau was possible long before the acquisition, but what’s new in Tableau 2021.1 is that the analytics piece of Salesforce is available for integration into Tableau, as an extension and in calculated fields. The Tableau community is very excited about this feature because of the built-in machine learning capability and real-time prediction power. This piece of software is called Einstein Discovery...

Summary

We began this chapter by considering how to tweak popular visualization types. Specifically, we fine-tuned a bullet graph, considered a very different approach to using pie charts in mapping, and ended by tweaking a Pareto chart. Next, we turned our attention to custom background images, where we considered how to build a grid using XML to generate an SVG file, to expedite generated data for use with background images. Then, we completed the chapter by building polygons on a background image and had a quick excursion into the world of Tableau Exchange. We discussed accelerators, extensions, and connectors but also Einstein Discovery, which is a separate product sold by Salesforce.

There are too many options to cover them all in this book but since you are an expert in replicating by now, I added more sheets with other visualizations to the solutions workbook for you to play with. You will find sheets with bar charts, stacked bar charts, diverging stacked bar charts, crosstabs...