[MUSIC] In previous lessons we focus on preparing your data for import. Connecting to different types of data using Tableau Public and distinguishing between a live data connection and a data extract. In this lesson we will cover preparing your data for Tableau Public. We will identify and demonstrate the different types of data that Tableau Public can and cannot connect to. And we will also demonstrate ways to get around some of the limitations of Tableau Public. When you first open Tableau Public you will be directed to the Tableau Public homepage. On the left side of the screen, you will notice that Tableau Public gives you the option to connect to an Excel file, a text file, an Access file, or a statistical file located on your computer. Or the option to connect to OData or web data connector server. The Excel, text, Access, and statistical files will be local databases, while the OData connection will allow you to connect to an online database To connect to your Excel, text, Access or statistical data, click on the file type. So for example, when you click on Excel, you will notice that you have the option to connect to a .xls, .xlxsx or xlsm file. When you click on text, you will have the option to connect to a character delimate file.csv tab delimate files .tab or .tsv, or text files.txt. When you click on Access you will have the option to connect to a Microsoft Access database .mdb or .accdb. And when you click on Statistical file, you will have the option to connect to a SAS file .sas7b.spsfile.save or our files .rdata or .rda Let's take some time and use Tableau to connect to a data file. For this example, we will use data that is stored in a Microsoft Excel file. From the Open file window, navigate to where the file is stored and click Open. Tableau Public will import every sheet that resides within the Excel Workbook and each sheet will appear under Sheets here at the bottom of the worksheet. Similar to tab worksheet file management, people come to expect from Excel. Click on the sheet that contains the data you would like to analyze and drag it to the Drag Sheets Here area. You now have a visual representation of your data and it should look very similar to the original Excel data. As you can see, each column has a header name and the data type is automatically identified by Tableau through the use of icons. An ABC icon represents string data. For example data that includes names. A globe icon represents geographical data. For example data that includes states,cities, ZIP codes et cetera. A calendar icon represents dates and the pound icon represents numeric data. If Tableau incorrectly assigned a data type, you can click on the associated icon and choose a correct data type. If everything looks correct you can click on Sheet One and begin analyzing your data. [BLANK AUDIO]. If your data resides online you can make a connection through an OData or web data connector. A Tableau web data connector gives you a way to connect to data that doesn't already have a connector. Using a web data connector, you can create and use a connection to almost any data that is accessible over HTTP. This can include internal web services, JSON data, XML data, Rest APIs and many other sources. Because you can control how the data is retrieved, you can even combine data from multiple sources. You create a web data connector by writing a webpage that contains JavaScript and optional HTML. Please visit your resources section for more information on web data connectors and JavaScript. After you've written a web data connector you can share it with other Tableau users by publishing it to the Tableau server. To help you create web data connectors, Tableau has created a software development kit that concludes templates, example code and a simulator that lets you test web data connector. This documentation also includes a tutorial that walks you through how to create a web data connector from scratch. At this time Tableau Public can only connect to Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, multiple text file formats, statistical files and Web Data Connectors. All other data sources such as Tableau servers, SAS servers, MySQL servers, Amazon Redshift servers, etc at this time are not supported by Tableau Public. If you currently have data in a data source that is not supported by Tableau Public, I would recommend transferring your data into one of the data sources that is supported by Tableau Public for analysis. Another limitation of Tableau Public is that currently it is limited to working with 10 million rows of data per workbook. If your data exceeds this limit, I would suggest trying to break it into smaller data sets so Tableau Public is able to analyze your data. Before we conclude this session, I would like you to practice connecting to different data sources and importing your data into Tableau Public for analysis. In part four of this module, we will use Tableau to connect to different data sources and connecting different data sources together. Good luck.
