Presenting With Tableau

By: Anna Cave

What is Tableau and how can we use it to effectively present?

If you have experience in analytics, you've probably already heard of Tableau. Tableau is a desktop application for analyzing data sources thats entire focus is on visual analysis. Normally, when we think of analyzing data we think of Excel. Excel is an incredibly strong platform for organizing data, but it doesn't have the visually pleasing power that Tableau has. Tableau focuses on creating data visualization that are interactive and aesthetically pleasing, which makes them an ideal platform for building presentations. If you would like a quick overview on what Tableau is, check out this quick video before learning more about its power for presentation. 

Tableau has a very simple interface that makes it easy to connect to data and build graphs to help you gain insights. Tableau allows you to bring together multiple data sources to give you a full picture, and all the graphs you build are interactive, meaning you can dive deeper into the displayed data just by dragging your mouse across different data points. Tableau sports a filter feature that allows you to ask questions about specific parts of the data without limiting you from still seeing the entire overview. For example, you may have data that shows profits across different states for your online business. If you're only interested in looking at what states you are losing profit in, you can filter the data to only show you what fits, and once you've answered the question you can filter back to the full view. 

Tableau allows you to analyze different parts of your data in different worksheets. Worksheets focus on one graph and give you a view over a specific part of data. When you're ready to bring together a view different graphs, you can pull them into a dashboard, which allows you to view the graphs from multiple worksheets at once, giving you a full picture of what you have been analyzing. If one dashboard is not enough, you can create a story that creates a sequence of dashboards and worksheets. 

Story points allow you to lead a guided presentation over a narrative. Once you pull out key insights from your worksheets and see how they connect in your dashboard, you can develop key points that will take your audience through your data. The great part about Tableau, is that even though you're showing your audience what you think is important, it continues to stay interactive. If someone you are presenting to finds a specific aspect of a graph interesting, you can still hover over that point to get more information without having to exit to a different view or worksheet. Tableau's interactivity allows for all the information to exist within a worksheet, dashboard, or story without taking away from the overall image. It is only there so you can find it if it is needed. 

Tableau is great for presentations in the moment and after they are over. Tableau makes it easy to share presentations with people who have Tableau with Tableau Server, but they can also be shared using Tableau Online for people who don't have the app installed. Presentation can easily be analyzed afterwards by looking at and beyond the story points with a full view of the data.