Week two of getting to grips with Tableau Prep and I decided to countinue with #PreppingData. The team of Carl Allchin, Jenny Martin and Tom Prowse do a great job of picking challenges that gradually introduce you to functionality. This week covered unions, aggregation and reshaping data using pivots. I was particularly interested in pivots, as that’s a frequent challenge people have on the Tableau forums where we talk about data prep being a good option.
A more complex flow this time, and it probably took around 45-60 minutes. Below is my finished flow. And following that I share some more thoughts on this weeks use of Tableau Prep in the form of a quick “I like, I wish, I wonder” retro. Spoiler alert, there was a wow moment for me this week!
Week 2 solution:
I like:
- I liked that I could copy and paste the first aggregation step and then change the type of aggregation and the description on the copy.
- And there was a moment of genuine delight when I realised I could copy the pivot step and paste against a different input (with the same pattern). I loved that!
I wish:
- The fields didn’t reorder between steps. This is probably my OCD talking though!
- I could define a sort order for the output. It would make it easier to sense check the output (granted it is easy to open in Excel and sort though).
I wonder:
- If I needed to aggregate before pivoting, as the pivot step allowed me to pick an aggregation?
- if it would be valuable to have a quick create option for pivot “rows to columns”? It took me a while to spot the option to change the pivot direction (screenshot below), when my brain was looking for an “unpivot” option instead.
