Tableau Tip: All about Leading and Trailing Zeros

Handling numbers as text for the first time in Tableau  is a frustrating experience. Depending on your requirements, you might have to add /remove  trailing/ leading zeros, modify number of decimal places etc. This post is an attempt to address the  most common scenarios. Note:  If the final result required...

Running Tableau Prep Flows From Windows Context Menu

In a previous post, we discussed about enabling drag and drop execution for Tableau Prep flows, but what if you can run the flow from any folder by simply right clicking and selecting “Run Flow” ?   This is done using  a simple registry trick. Save the below lines in...

Tableau Prep – Running multiple flows with drag and drop

In the last post, we discussed about drag and drop execution of Tableau Prep flows. But what will happen if you dropped multiple files?  The previous version will only run the first file, but we can easily modify it to run any number of files.   Here is the modified...

Tableau Prep – Enabling drag and drop execution of flow files

How good it will be if you can simply drag and drop a flow file to run it? Actually it can be achieved with a single line BAT file.   How to achieve this? Here is the code inside FlowRunner.BAT file

  Explanation: line 1:  Extract the dropped file’s...

Tableau Prep – Creating Timestamp based output files

As of version 2018.3, Tableau Prep’s output file name field is static and this will cause the output data to be overwritten  when rerunning the flow.  We can fix this by creating a bat file with following content.

  Explanation: Line 2: A simple batch trick to generate our...

Creating unique Row IDs in Tableau Prep

Creating unique Row IDs in Tableau Prep is not something that is available out of the box, but you can  use below workaround for the same effect. This is an extension to the ranking trick in Tableau Prep. Lets see how we can get unique row ids for below data....

Automatically loading the latest file from a folder in to Tableau

If you have a folder where files are added daily, how do you load the latest file automatically in to tableau? I recently answered a stack overflow question  and this post is an attempt to explain the other aspects that is not covered on that answer. Basic Setup If you...

Using Open StreetMap in Tableau

The default map in Tableau is good for showing overall locations, but it cant be used to zoom in to specific streets or buildings in your locality. But dont worry, you can use Open StreetMap for that. Download this file and save it under Mapsources folder in your Tableau repository.  Default location...

Predicting Dam Water Levels Using Tableau

My home state is going through a crisis right now as the largest arch dam in Asia , Idukki Dam is reaching its full reservoir capacity due to unprecedented monsoon rains.  All 5 shutters were opened on 10th August and is still releasing water at a rate of 0.75 million liters ...