Tableau Assignment

Create a Tableau File as required.

Tableau

1. Use the data file includedfor the Tableau 2 assignment.
2. Familiarize yourself with this data. One good way to do this is to use Excel filtering to check out what is in each field.  For example, if you turn filters on and then filter on year, you can see how many years the data spans.  You’ll be analyzing the data with Tableau to see what sales / marketing recommendations you can make for the future but getting an overview with Excel can be helpful. Page 2 of these instructions has notes on analyzing data.
3. When you open Tableau, go to the Connect pane (left) and click on Microsoft Excel and browse to the data file.  TIP: Look at your data in the data pane and be sure your fields are the
   correct data types.  If you find some that aren’t, you can right-click the field and set the data type or to a ‘geographic role’.  To change the data format (currency or percentage), right click the field in the data pane and click ‘Default Properties’ and ‘Number Format’

Tableau Workbook Analysis

Save yourTableau workbook as a Tableau Packaged Workbook (.twbx).  USE ‘SAVE AS’.Name it your lastname_Tableau2.twbx.

Your tableau workbook should include:

• The Data
• At least 4 worksheets / visualizations (3 different formats, at least one map). Include filters, colors, and labels in your charts.
• At least 1 dashboard (made up of at least 2 visualizations)
• One story – the panes of the story should include all worksheets / visualizations and your dashboard(s).
• Comments on each story pane briefly explain what you are showing

For notes on how to analyze the data, see page 3 of these instructions:  “Analyzing Data– Tableau 2.pdf”

Create your Word Documentation   – Name your Word document yourname_Tableau2.docx.  Include the following sections:

Part 1) The Data – A paragraph describing the data – what’s included in the columns and rows and how you approached the analysis of this data. This should include: 1) what you did to initially analyze the data, 2) how the initial data analysis influenced the types of visualizations you included, 3) any problems you had and 4) any changes in your thoughts about the data as you worked through the project.

Part 2) Workbook Sheets – Screenshots of the (at least) 4 sheets that you’ve created. Do not use cell phone pictures.  Below each screenshot, include a detailed paragraph (more than a few sentences) describing:1) what you are showing, 2) what led to this visualization and 3) the relevance / importance in relationship to the data.  Also include 4) why you chose the particular visualization format and 5) a response to the question, “Why is this analytic / visualization meaningful?”

Part 3) Workbook Dashboard – Include a screenshot (not a cell phone picture) of at least 1 dashboard and below the dashboard a detailed paragraph describing: 1) what the components you included, 2) why you included them and 3) what’s the point of this collection of sheets – why did you include them together, what’s do they show as a group?

Part 4) The Story– 1) Describe a narrative of how your worksheets and dashboard(s) tell your analysis ‘story’.  2) Include the points you are making by including them in the ‘story’ and 3) your specific recommendations going forward.

Part 5) Conclusions – A detailed paragraph describing what you learned about 1) your data and 2) Tableau

Analyzing Data – Tableau 2   1.       Look at the source data to get an idea of what it’s all about (you can do this either in Tableau or look at it in Excel).  If you are using Excel, you can do some filtering or pivot tables to see what is in each field – looking for any outliers or interesting trends. 2.       In Tableau, create an initial broad visualization (sheet #1) and again, notice some outliers or some trends that may be interesting 3.       Create sheet #2 to further explore either the outlier(s) or the trends.  For example, depending on your data, this could lead to geographic questions, questions relating to years, specific items, sales, profits, etc.  You can do this by duplicating sheet 1 and filtering / drilling down. 4.       Create sheet 3 to explore the questions in sheet 2 in more detail – by filtering again and /or showing some different attributes (fields) and using a different visualization format.  This will lead to more questions about the trend / outliers that you can further drill down to analyze 5.       Sheet 4 (or more) will let you keep looking at the data in more detail until you figure out what triggered the outlier or is most responsible for the trend.  Depending on your data, this could be product sales in a specific year or a specific product or a combination of products, years, locations. 6.       When you have figured this out – come up with one or more recommendations.  Depending on your data, it could be something like –  don’t sell xxx in this state, or this was a bad year for product xxx in state yyy, but they recovered, or… whatever you discover.  Create a dashboard or two to illustrate this. 7.       Then go back and create a story with your sheets and dashboard(s), be sure to include all of the required Tableau features (see the instructions on this) .