TABLEAU

[giulianosua1]

Hi Guys, 

I have been finding this community quite helpful. I would like to know if anyone has a list of "best practices" when starting to work on alteryx with the idea of using tableau to visualize data as the final output? 

I have been trying to do this and I have recently learned that in order to connect my workflow to tableau, it is best practice to create a database of my output. 

Also, when I first made the connection, I realised that only a few fields will be fed to the tableau dashboard and I have recently learned that it is because Tableau doesnt read fields with a size biggest than 255kb, while I believe by default Alteryx uses 2048 as default size. 

I had two questions here: 

- What is the best way to automatically change the size of my data? so far I have been using the select tool, but since I refresh this workflow quite regularly, I have realised the size goes back to 2048 every time I refresh it. Is there any other way to do this?

- Are there more things to consider when working on an alteryx workflow with the idea to apply it to a Tableau dashboard?

Thank you in advance!

Giuliano

[neilgallen · Accepted solution]

A few thoughts:

1) the auto-field tool at the end of your workflow could be a good idea, as this will take string fields and make them the smallest size possible based on the data. One thing to keep in mind here, is if any of the strings have leading or trailing whitespace, then you would potentially want to clean that out.

2) Another option would be to place a select tool at the end with the configuration saved. There's documenation on how to to do this in the community.

3) As far as applying to a tableau dashboard, the answer is 'it depends'. The great secret when it comes to building viz in tableau is that what you're capable of is greatly influenced by the shape of your data (tall vs wide, etc). It's usually best to figure out how you want to visualize the data, determine the best structure of the data to do that, and then work backwards into the workflow.

good luck!