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Tableau Prep Builder Best Practices

The University has two Tableau Prep products:

  • Tableau Prep Builder: Software downloaded to a user’s desktop that allows Tableau Creators to clean data and create data sources for use in Tableau Desktop
  • Tableau Prep Conductor: A feature of Tableau Server that allows users to schedule outputs.

 

When to use Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep is preferred for the following:

  • Pivoting rows to columns or columns to rows. This is available as a Desktop capability too, but Prep is faster
  • Date scaffolding to handle missing values
  • Row-level calculations, including if the dashboard will use 10+ level of detail (LOD) expressions
  • Joining data
  • Additional advanced cleaning or transformation such as reshaping, reformatting, or splitting fields
 

Helpful Note:

  • Tableau Prep samples data by default, it does not load the entire data source. However, when you run the flow (the entire cleaning and output process) changes are made to the entire data set, not just the sample, so you have clean, ready-to-analyze data
  • If you only need data in a table format or will download it to Excel, consider Tableau Prep instead of Tableau Desktop. Tableau Prep allows Creators the ability to choose a number of output destinations – including databases, CSV files, and Tableau Server

 

When to use Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop is preferred for the following:

  • Visualizing data
  • When working with data sources that are a live connection
  • Calculations, including aggregation and conditional calculations, within reason
  • Enhancing the data model by creating sets, hierarchies, and folders
  • Some data source connection types are only available in Tableau Desktop

 

Best Practices

Tableau Prep

  • Add comments to create basic documentation for the flow. Comments are limited to 200 characters
  • Spot check throughout. It is important to be cognizant of what is happening to your data as you clean and make changes. You do not want to get too far in the process only to realize you’ve joined the wrong fields
  • Visualizing data

Tableau Prep & Tableau Desktop

  • Bring in the right data. The more data, the more computationally expensive it will be
  • Remove columns and filter out data that is not essential to your work

 

Additional Resources

Important Information

  • Tableau Prep Builder is different from Tableau Desktop in both usage and application. Prep Builder is used to clean data and create data sources versus Tableau Desktop which is a data visualization tool used for creating dashboards from the raw data.
  • Tableau Prep should be used when the primary goal is cleaning or transforming data. Tableau Desktop should be used to create visuals, although Desktop has some cleaning and transformation abilities as well.