Tableau Your Data!. Murray Daniel G.

Murray

      Tableau Your Data!

      Tableau Your Data!

      Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software®

      Second Edition

      Daniel G. Murray

      Copyright

      Tableau Your Data! Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software®

      Published by

      John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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      Indianapolis, IN 46256

      www.wiley.com

      Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

      Published simultaneously in Canada

      ISBN: 978-1-119-00119-5

      ISBN: 978-1-119-00121-8 (ebk)

      ISBN: 978-1-119-00120-1 (ebk)

      Manufactured in the United States of America

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      Library of Congress Control Number: 2015952725

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      About the Author

      Daniel G. Murray has over 30 years of professional experience. Dan has seen firsthand the technical revolution in data that led to the creation of Tableau Software. Prior to starting the InterWorks Tableau/BI practice in 2008, he held a variety of increasingly responsible roles in finance, accounting, sales, and operations for a mid-sized global manufacturing company serving the heavy industry and construction markets. During the late 1990s, his employer acquired over 50 companies. Dan’s role in 2006 as the CFO/CIO led to an assignment to integrate and create a global reporting environment. Uninspired by the high cost and complicated products available from traditional vendors, Dan discovered Tableau Software through data visualization expert Stephen Few. Less than one month after downloading a trial license of Tableau Software, Dan and his team were able to successfully create a reporting platform for less than 15 percent of the cost and one-tenth the time that traditional vendors had quoted. At this point, it was apparent that everyone needed Tableau – they just didn’t know it yet.

      Within months after speaking at Tableau’s first customer conference, Dan went to friend and founder of InterWorks, Inc., Behfar Jahanshahi, to convince him to allow Dan to form a boutique consulting team focusing on providing the best practices of data visualization and reporting using Tableau Software and any emerging or popular database. Since the publication of the first edition of Tableau Your Data! Dan has visited 50 cities across North America and Europe presenting over 70 speeches on data and data visualization.

      InterWorks, Inc. is now the premier Gold Professional Consulting Partner for Tableau Software with clients all over the world and over 35 Tableau consultants providing data visualization, database, and hardware expertise to many of the most significant organizations – spanning business, education, and government.

      Dan is a 1982 graduate of Purdue University’s Krannert School of Business. He and his family live in the metro Atlanta area.

      About the Technical Editor

      Dick Holm is a successful, longtime entrepreneur with expertise in data analysis, statistics, and product positioning and presentation. Dick has been interested in the graphical presentation of information since the age of four when he learned to write his name in the Minnesota snow. He founded his own business based on presenting visual process information to machine operators. It eventually became a $10 million company. He now spends several hours a day with Tableau Desktop on his screen and a smile on his face.

      Acknowledgments

      When I first approached this edition, I mistakenly thought that writing an updated edition would be easier than writing the original book. I’ve discovered that writing a guidebook for Tableau is never going to be easy. Tableau’s product evolution has been consistently aggressive. During the last two years, Tableau added a slew of new features to Desktop and Server. Consequently, nearly every figure in this book has been updated, and there are over 200 pages of totally new content.

      During the last two years, I received lots of feedback from readers of the first edition. That feedback was universally positive and helpful. One individual went out of his way to document improvement ideas by sending me multiple pages of detailed feedback. Dick Holm’s feedback was so good I asked him if he would be willing to provide technical editing on this edition. Dick agreed, and his feedback informed every chapter of Part I. I don’t want to fail to mention Molly Monsey of Tableau Software. Molly’s contribution to the first edition of the book was extensive and invaluable.

      This challenging project would have been impossible without the help and support of the InterWorks team. James Wright provided an excellent first draft of Chapter 9, “Designing for Mobile.” Kate Treadwell drafted the new Chapter 10 on Story Points. Our resident server wizard, Brad Fair, updated the initial draft for Chapter 11, “Installing Tableau Server.” Mat Hughes