What is Tableau Prep Builder?
Tableau prep builder tool is offered as part of the Tableau product suite and is designed for easy and intuitive data preparation. Using this tool, you can effectively combine, clean, and shape your data for analysis purposes in Tableau. It is a desktop application and integrates seamlessly with other Tableau products. With Tableau prep builder, you can create a data extract and publish data source or flow to the Tableau server or cloud to enable flow editing on the web or schedule data refresh. Tableau prep builder allows you to open the Tableau desktop directly within its interface thereby enabling data preview.
The prep builder can be very useful especially when you want to analyze the company financials data spread across different regions by collating the required information, cleaning the dataset to a common format, and then shaping them to the required visuals. Its interface looks like the one highlighted below.
Table of contents
Key Takeaways
- Tableau prep builder tool is a powerful application designed for easy and intuitive data preparation and offered as part of the Tableau product suite.
- The tool enables you to combine, clean, and shape your data for analysis purposes. You can also save a flow and share your work with others
- It is a desktop application and integrates seamlessly with other Tableau products.
- Tableau prep builder supports many capabilities including data connectivity to multiple sources, the ability to apply filters, data cleaning and shaping, calculations, pivots, use of scripting language, aggregation, join, and unions.
- You can also schedule incremental refreshes, publish a flow, and apply AI-based predictions.
- Be aware of some of the limitations before you recommend the use of the Tableau prep builder.
- Prep builder allows you to perform advanced data transformations, automate data preparation tasks, and data governance and seamless integration to other Tableau suites of products.
Capabilities?
The critical capabilities of the Tableau prep builder feature include:
- Data Connectivity to a wide range of data sources in Tableau such as File, Server, Databases, cloud services and many more
- Ability to examine your data, apply filters, exclude any duplicates, data validation, and create or use parameters in your flows
- Data cleaning and shaping, data calculations, applying data pivots, and using scripting language such as R or python
- Data aggregation, combining data using joins or unions.
- Einstein Discovery-powered models to predict the bulk score for the data in your flow
- Ability to save a flow, share your work with other users, and schedule incremental refreshes of the flow data.
- Schedule flow tasks, manage the flow, publish a flow, and monitor the flow health.
How do I get started with Tableau Prep Builder?
To get started, follow the instructions below:
Step 1: Install Tableau prep builder on your machine. You can also use the web version provided it’s enabled on your server version 2020.4 or later.
Step 2: Launch the prep builder on your machine and connect to your data using the Connect to Data feature.
Navigating the Tableau Prep Builder Interface
Once you have launched the Prep Builder Interface, you will see the following screen. The key features in the prep builder interface include:
- Connections – This feature helps you to connect with numerous data sources from the Prep Builder interface.
- Recent Flows – Any flows you have created will be displayed in this section
- Sample Flows – It displays pre-loaded flows to view a flow and get familiar with processes
- Discover – This section serves as a quick guide on the Tableau Prep Builder
Once you click on Connect to Data, you will be presented with an interface showcasing various data source types supported in prep builder. These include files (Excel, PDF, CSV, etc.), the server (including cloud, database, and many more), and many more.
Choose a data source (for example, Microsoft Excel) and then select the file from the respective source.
When the data is imported to the prep builder interface, you will see different settings such as Header Options, Incremental Refresh, File location, data preview, etc.
You can also specify the choices around the Data Sample, such as the Number of Rows and Row Selection.
Now, let’s look at the following steps to manipulate your data in the prep builder.
Cleaning, Shaping, and Combining Your Data
Step 3: Click on the + icon next to your dataset in the workspace and choose the Clear Step option.
Step 4: As you can see, there are lots of rows with null values across different columns. Also, the Property column contains? mark. In this step, you can choose to exclude the null values.
Similarly, you can also opt to exclude any records with the ‘?’ marks.
Now, your cleaned dataset is ready for the next round of processing. You can also see the list of changes under the Changes section.
Step 5: Click on the + icon next to your dataset in the workspace and choose the Clear Step option.
Step 6: In the Aggregate screen, drag the locality to the Grouped Fields segment and Sale Price under Aggregated Fields.
Step 7: Change the SUM to AVG to reflect the average sale price in the locality.
Step 8: Now click on the + icon next to the Clean 1 and choose Pivot.
The builder will display a new pane for Pivoted fields and Pivot results.
Step 9: Change the Pivot from Rows to Columns.
Step 10: Once completed, publish the changes by clicking on the Publish button.
Note: You need a prep builder Tableau license to start using the features mentioned above. You can use a trial license which is valid for 14 days. For pricing and licensing details, refer to the prep builder documentation.
Examples
In this section, we will demonstrate using Tableau Prep Builder with a few examples for your visual understanding.
Example #1
In this example, we will demonstrate using the prep builder using the Global Cargo Ships Dataset. The Global Cargo Ships Dataset contains Comprehensive Insights into Ship Specifications and Characteristics such as Built year, Gross Tonnage, Deadweight Tonnage, Length, and Width of the ship.
To use the Prep Builder for creating a flow, follow the steps outlined below:
Step 1: Connect the Global Cargo Ships dataset from the prep builder interface using the Connect to Data.
You can view the imported dataset below.
Step 2: Click on the + icon next to your dataset in the workspace. Select Clear Step.
It will open the clean pane displaying all the columns and their values.
Step 3: Click on Identify Duplicate Rows. Tableau will add a column, Is Duplicate Rows, with values as Unique/Duplicate, as shown below.
Step 4: Right-click on the Duplicate value and choose Exclude.
All the duplicate values will now be excluded from the data.
Step 5: Now remove the column by selecting the Remove option.
Step 6: Click on the ellipsis (… dots) and choose Create Calculated Field.
Step 7: In the Calculation Editor window, define the Field Name and specify the calculation logic as shown below. Click on Save once the changes are done.
You will see the calculated field added to the dataset.
Step 8: Create data aggregation by choosing the +icon available next to Clean1. In the aggregation pane, drag the shipping category to the Grouped Fields and dwt and gt to the Aggregated Fields.
Step 9: Click on the + icon next to Aggregate 1 and select Output.
The prep builder will display the output values along with the option to Run Flow.
Once you click on Run Flow, it will run the sequence of actions and display the output as shown below.
Example #2
In this example, we have demonstrated another use case of how to use Prep Builder using the Coursera courses dataset. The Coursera courses dataset contains various course details such as course title, course partner, course review, skill gain, course rating, etc.
Follow the step-by-step guide provided below:
Step 1: Connect the Coursera courses dataset to the Tableau prep builder interface using Connect to Data.
Step 2: Click on the + icon next to your data and select Clean Step.
Step 3: In the Clean pane, clean the columns you want to prepare. Here, we have excluded any null values.
Step 4: Click on …dots next course_rating and then select Clean – Selected Values.
Step 5: Specify only the course_rating values four and above.
Step 6: Click on the Create Calculated Field option.
In the calculation editor window, specify a meaningful name and the logic to populate the field value.
The calculated field, along with the populated values, will now be included in the dataset.
Step 7: Click on the + icon next to Clean1 and select Output.
Step 8: In the output pane, click on Run Flow to produce the results.
Limitations
- There is a limitation to Tableau prep builder features to support data transformation, especially for large and complex datasets as compared to other transformation tools available such as ETL or any other programming languages.
- You may observe performance issues for large or complex datasets in your flow.
Tableau Prep vs. Tableau Desktop
The critical differences between Tableau Prep vs. Tableau Desktop are highlighted below:
| Parameters | Tableau Prep Builder | Tableau Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Objectivity | Primarily used for data preparation such as data cleaning, shaping, aggregations, combining, and applying joins, unions, or pivots. | Primarily used for data visualization in Tableau, interactive dashboards, and analysis of your dataset. |
| Interface interaction | You can use the prep builder interface to prepare data to create a flow for your dataset. | Tableau Desktop provides a drag-and-drop interface to create interactive visualization. |
| Usage phase | It is used during the data preparation phase before it can be used for data visualization. | Tableau Desktop works on prepared data for data visualization and interactive dashboards. |
Important Things to Note
- Always ensure that you use the latest version of the Prep Builder to avoid any compatibility issues that you may encounter while opening a flow if you are using an older version.
- Similarly, if you are using a data connector version that is not supported, then consider upgrading to the latest version. Otherwise, you may encounter errors or fail to run the flow.
- If you are using a MySQL-based connector for your data connection, note that it doesn’t support custom certificate-based SSL connections.
- Consider referring to the Tableau prep guide for troubleshooting any errors you may encounter while using the prep builder.
- Follow the best practices while using the prep builder to ensure efficient flow creation.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, you can perform advanced data transformations such as data aggregation, data pivot, data join, union, prediction, split columns, or apply scripting languages in Tableau prep builder.
Yes, you can automate data preparation tasks in Tableau prep builder by creating a flow. You can run the flow once completed which will execute the steps defined such as cleaning, shaping, aggregating, pivoting output, etc. Similarly, you can also schedule the flow to execute the steps as well.
Yes, Tableau prep builder supports data governance and auditing by
• Creating the documentation of the flow involving the different data preparation tasks.
• Maintaining the version control of the changes applied to the flow with an option to restore previous versions.
• Performing the activity logging, and authentication for access management.
Yes, you can integrate the prep builder with other Tableau products such as Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, or Tableau Cloud.
Download Template
This article must be helpful to understand the Tableau Prep Builder, with its formula and examples. You can download the template here to use it instantly.
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