Reusing flows for Repeating Cleaning Processes with Tableau Training

It is a tough task to prepare data effectively and recurring work can be worthless and completely disturbing. Imagine that you need to clean multiple data sets that have the same patterns, and you don't want to make the same calculations repeatedly for each new data set. Joining in Tableau Advanced Training will help you understand various new aspects that will ease your working on Tableau even more.

Here, you can learn how to reuse flows in Tableau Prep Builder to reduce repeatable tasks and make your data prep more competent.

Use Case for Reusing Flows: Preparing Survey Data

To understand the complete process, take an example that you have complete debt details of a few people for a specific time interval or a specific number of years. All the data of various people lies in the same format. Columns represent the data for different years and rows represent data of people from different states. The table encloses the debit amount for each state.

There are four different sheets, which contain the debt amount on the basis of the type of debt, and the other four sheets hold the population percentage that comes under those debt categories.

This means there are two sets of values in this different sheet, one for average debt amount, and another one for the relating people percent. So here you have to merge these data sets to let the users contrast and the distinction between the debt amount and the people percentage.

The diagram below shows the flow that you need to follow for creating one set of data. And repeat the same process twice to generate two sets of data and then join them together.

Copy and Paste Nodes

In that example, you needed to repeat the complicated flow, which consists of union and pivot, twice earlier than joining the resulting data set. Tableau Prep Builder has an enhanced way to handle this possible repetition.

You have to select multiple nodes and then copy the selection to the clipboard and then choose paste options.

A portion of the flow contained a pivot. Choose a wildcard pivot so that the copy and paste work by avoiding extra tweaks to every pivot node.

Reuse Flow Steps acrossDifferent Tableau Prep Flows

There may be some cases when you want to reuse part of your flow between different Tableau Prep flows.

For example:

• When you have a survey data set having the same format and a similar cleaning flow
• When you have a complex calculation that you need to use repeatedly
• When you need to join multiple flows collectively into a single flow to manage at once

These all small snippets of flow are called "Saved Steps" that you can save and reuse. You can keep parts of your flow as a local file or on Tableau Server and then transfer them into your custom flow for reuse.

These small enhancements in Tableau will considerably lessen the amount of time you spend in data preparation for analysis. Upgrade to the latest version of Tableau Prep Builder to try all the improved features of the software. You can join Tableau Training Classes to learn more specific use cases and practical implementations of Tableau to win over the data analytics! ExistBI offer onsite or virtual classes in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.