Preppin' Data

Our solution for this week can be downloaded from the Preppin' Data Tableau Forum . This week we focused on improving our IT department performance by having a better understanding of SLA rates. We were given two sets of data, the Ticket Information from Jan-Mar and also the SLA agreements with various departments. Our task was to manipulate the data so that we could answer some questions as a result. Step 1 - Input Ticket Information Data Our first step was to input the three files of ticket information. As these all have a similar naming convention, we are able to use the wildcard union to input all three files whilst only using one input tool. It has the following setup:  Wildcard Union - Exclude all sheets starting with 'SLA' Step 2 - Clean Ticket Field Within our original data source the Ticket field contains information about the Ticket ID, Department, and also who submitted the ticket. We want to separate these out into different fields, ...

As mentioned in multiple 'How to...' posts to date, databases are designed as powerful, performant and secure locations to store and work with data. One concept at the heart of the majority of the databases that you will use in organisation, are Keys and Identifiers (IDs). These databases that utilise these concepts are called Relational Databases as relationships are created between the tables of data through Keys and ID fields linking the various tables together. In this post we will look at ID fields, how they can be used as Keys between tables, and how to create ID fields in Tableau Prep. What is an Identifier in data? When using databases, like most computing software, numbers are processed more efficiently than other characters. When working with data, there is often the need to process large volumes of data and therefore, any efficiency in that processing can make a significant difference in the time it takes to prepare your data or form your analysis. This is where ...

With Tableau Prep version 2019.3, the product's development team added the ability to call Programming Scripts to enable users to use functionality in Prep that is not natively available. The Script step allows the user of Prep to enter either Python or R scripts which may already exist, utilising others logic, or you can write your own. This post will look at what situations you may want to connect a script into Prep, how to set up your computer to allow you to use the Script functionality and a short example. When to use the Script step in Prep? The simple answer is when Prep does not have the functionality you require to achieve your data preparation needs. Programming is a very flexible means to instruct computers to complete the tasks you require. Python and R are two languages that many are taught in universities due to the number of packages available. A package utilises a programming language to complete common tasks saving the user from having to write all the instr...

When Tableau Prep Builder was first released, it meant many people finally had the chance to build data preparation flows to remove the tedious repetitive task of cleaning and merging data sets to enable great data analysis. Once a flow is created, the process is re-run each time a user pressed the 'Run' icon in Prep Builder. For a single flow, this is simple but for those with vast and differing data source, data preparation often involved multiple preparation jobs and not just one. This is where prep Conductor comes into play as Prep flow can be built in Prep Builder but then scheduled on Conductor to run when needed. This post looks at when you might need to use Conductor, how to get capabilities offered, and finally how to use Conductor. When to use Prep Conductor? As mentioned in the introduction to this post, Prep Conductor is primary used to run an uploaded flow on a set schedule. This has many benefits: The flow doesn't need to be opened each day and run by...