Tableau Server resource is a valuable commodity and one of the activities which use this, like no other, is the rebuilding/refreshing of Data Extracts (TDEs). At Atheon, our data (usually) refreshes each day, with many hundreds of extracts to refresh. This uses a huge Continue reading TDE Rebuild using up all your Tableau Server Resource?…Try using the SDK
I recently wrote a 3 part series on my 2 favourite subjects…Data Visualisation and Grocery Retail. As the Data Animators are all about Data Visualisation and the Retail Sector, this seems the perfect place to share it… Continue reading Why Visual Analytics Should Become the ‘New Normal’ in Grocery Retail
It cropped up again last week; the dreaded statement from a BI professional
We must have a single version of the truth…
Anyone working in IT / BI / decision support / enterprise reporting / analytics etc. for more than a couple of months will have heard this, and for those of us working in the field for 20+ years we may wince slightly and wish that we had a pound for every time…
Continue reading Chasing rainbows
The ‘Granularity’ (or ‘Grain’) of the data is the most important thing I consider for any data analysis. When I get a new data-set, my first question What is the Granularity? When designing a new (Tableau) visual model, my first consideration What Granularity do I need? When calculating a measure (or KPI), my first questions: What is the Granularity? and What Granularity do I need?
I’d go as far as saying “Understanding the Grain of your data is 99% of the solution”… Continue reading The Importance of Granularity (…to Blend or not to Blend?)
One of the most common requests from my clients is for Actionable Insight; a desire to receive simple, understandable output from analytical activity which provides a clear indication for what they should do. As a request it’s entirely understandable, reasonable and a great focus for the majority of analysis; after all, analysis is most valuable when it directs action and results in improvement. There are, however, two clear cases when the desire for Actionable Insight oversteps the mark and misses the point:
Continue reading In praise of *unactionable* insight
As the title suggests, this nifty trick has the dual purpose of allowing you to trigger sheet swaps using Dashboard Actions and, when two data sources contain different levels of Granularity, it lets you analyse at both levels (the Granularity of the Primary and Secondary data source). This is the ‘illusion of a Full Outer Join’…All seems a little cryptic and techie. Let’s run through an example…
Data is often perceived as dry, remote, and impersonal – even when it relates to customers, citizens, or friends and family. In the information age, an ever-growing stream of data is stored as digital bits in shapeless clouds of computer storage, processed by a million algorithms which divine our preferences for movies, holidays, and foodstuffs. It’s easy to feel that data has no direct relevance to any one of us and yet…
The Data Animators 