Can't get your blend to work? Not sure why? Try this quick tip:
Your blend fields are dependent on your visualization: use the date aggregation and any dimensions used in the viz or as a filter.
Filtering on country? Make sure you blend on it.
Showing mediums? Use it in your blend.
Date is a little more complicated and generally requires you to create a calculated field. If you're showing by month and year, create a month+year field and blend on it. Year to date? Create a field for YTD and use it in your blend.
For more information on using dates in blending, see my blog post.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Tableau Server Extracts vs Published Data Sources
I got a question the other day asking whether using an extracted data source on Tableau Server is the same as using a published data source. Good question! The difficulty I had explaining this led me to create the following explanation:
- Publishing a data source affects how the data is accessed
- Extracting a data source affects where data is located
The first thing you normally do when you create a new Tableau Desktop workbook is connect to data. You may connect to data in Excel, a relational database like Microsoft SQL, an online data source like Google Analytics, etc. In each case, the information required is different: path, file name, tab for Excel; server, username, password, database, and table for Microsoft SQL; username, password, account, property, profile, date range, dimensions, measures, segment for Google Analytics; etc. If you are providing data access to analysts, this is probably more than you want to manage.
Instead of having your users connect to different data sources, you can instead publish them to Tableau Server. In effect, you are using Tableau Server as a proxy: users connect to Tableau Server and behind the scenes Tableau Server retrieves the data from the original source. This method of providing data access not only simplifies access for the users, it combines and reduces user administration to a single location (Tableau Server), and it allows you as the administrator to present consistent field names and calculations to users independent of the original data source.
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| Publishing a Data Source to Tableau Server |
While publishing a data source makes it easier for users to access data and administrators to manage it, extracts are typically done to make data access faster and reduce database load. When you extract data using Tableau Desktop, it makes an local copy of the data that's optimized for analysis. If the workbook is published, Tableau Server gets a copy of the data which it can refresh from the original data source.
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| Using Data Extracts |
Additional information:
Publishing to Channelmix
For Alight Analytics clients, publishing to Channelmix is easy! Since you've already logged in to Channelmix to access your data sources, select Server -> Publish Workbook from the Tableau Desktop menu bar, complete the entries in the dialog box and click Publish.
- Select the Project you wish to publish to. If you are publishing for one of your clients, you will normally select their company name from the Projects list.
- Enter the name as you want your workbook to appear in Channelmix. If you enter the name of an existing workbook (in the same Project), you will be prompted before it is overwritten.
- Put a checkmark in the boxes next to each View you want to share.
- If you have purchased additional Channelmix licenses and have set up users for your clients, you may need to set the Permissions. If not, accept the defaults.
You can get more help online on the Tableau website or by opening a ticket with Alight.
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