You know the drill (down)… It's time for my weekly reflection.
Monday - Practice with Tableau
Monday morning got started straight away with how to use and create parameters in Tableau Desktop. For those who don't know what a parameter is - it is basically a fancy tool a Dashboard/worksheet creator can build and apply, in order to give the user the ability to filter data based on the options they have been given by the creator. This gives the user a level of control over what they are seeing. As an example, this might be giving the user the option to change the chart type given in a dashboard, or it could be changing the number of customers they want to be included in a graph.
I'm excited for my next Makeover Monday challenge in which I'm going to try out my new-found parameter skills.
Tuesday - Tableau Server
Tuesday was probably the toughest day I have had at The Data School so far. We spent the day talking about Tableau Server. I didn't really know what a server even was before Tuesday so it took me a while to get my head around it. I'm still not entirely sure I've grasped some of the finer details we discussed, but luckily we have several more days on Tableau Server coming up in the calendar, so I'm sure by the end of my training it'll all make sense.
Wednesday - Containers (and How to Make them Look Nice)
Wednesday was a particularly fun day at the DS. Dashboard design is where I get to release my creative side, and it made a nice change after a theory heavy day on Tuesday.
We talked about the differences between Explanatory and Exploratory dashboard design. Basically, Exploratory dashboards give the user the capacity to explore the chart and gain insights for themselves, whereas in Explanatory dashboards the creator does most of the work for the user, allowing the user to draw insights at a quick glance. This plays into planning our dashboards, when we want to think about how much data to include. Take a look at my dashboard meta-plan here:
Finally, we moved on the subject of containers. If you have tried building a dashboard in Tableau Desktop and uploaded it to Tableau Public, finding that your dashboard looks very different, it may be because you haven't used containers.
Containers allow us to control and regulate where and how we put things into our dashboard, better than just adding elements as tiled, and mean that your dashboards transfer to Tableau public a lot smoother. Check out this video by
Curtis Harris for more info about containers.
Thursday - Tableau Data Model
Today was another intense day, but it's helped me make sense of a lot of things. We had a good delve into how to combine data - how we join or union datasets etc.. This was useful in allowing me to understand some of my previous mistakes (if you've read my blog on my application viz re-do, then you'll know what I'm referencing to).
Joining multiple datasets requires a lot of care, to make sure that you aren't accidently excluding data you want to keep, or expanding your dataset beyond the number of rows that you know you should have. I made both of these mistakes in my Viz application re-do, and now thanks to today, I should be able to fix them.
Friday - Alteryx Core Exam
Tomorrow will be my first attempt at the Alteryx Core Exam. I'm feeling pretty nervous and whilst I'm not expecting to pass first try, at the very least it will highlight which areas I need to focus on in the future.