Importing Spatial Data

Before you can use the many capabilities Tableau provides for geographic datasets, it is important to understand the geographic data types that Tableau can utilize. Tableau can ingest geospatial data from many popular formats, including shapefile, GeoJSON, and MapInfo sources. The next section will cover some of the most common spatial formats and how to add them to your workbooks.

Spatial data is unique in how it defines geographic attributes. While typical spreadsheet or database data may contain geographic elements (city, state, country, postal code, and so on), it will not contain additional information about those entities. Most often, you will have a pair of geographic coordinates to work with: latitude and longitude. For common entities such as a country, state, or province, mapping software will recognize the codes and allow the use of choropleth (filled) maps.

Choropleth maps are shapefiles/GeoJSON data sources that not only contain simple latitude...