Tableau Interview Questions And Answers Pdf - SVR

1. Name the components of a Dashboard?
Answer: The components of a Dashboard are:
Horizontal: Horizontal layout containers allow the designer to group worksheets and dashboard components left to right across your page and edit the height of all elements at once.
Vertical: Vertical containers allow the user to group worksheets and dashboard components top to bottom down your page and edit the width of all elements at once.
Text: All textual fields.
Image Extract: A Tableau workbook is in XML format. In order to extracts images, Tableau applies some codes to extract an image which can be stored in XML.
Web [URL ACTION]: A URL action is a hyperlink that points to a Web page, file, or another web-based resource outside of Tableau. You can use URL actions to link to more information about your data that may be hosted outside of your data source. To make the link relevant to your data, you can substitute field values of a selection into the URL as parameters.

2. Mention whether you can create relational joins in Tableau without creating a new table?
Answer: Yes, one can create relational joins in tableau without creating a new table.
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3. When publishing workbooks on Tableau Training , sometimes an error about needing to extract appears. Why does it happen occasionally?
Answer: This happens when a user is trying to publish a workbook that is connected to an internal server or a file stored on a local drive, such as a SQL server that is within a company’s network.
I hope that these Tableau Interview Questions were helpful to you. I will be coming up with more blogs on Tableau for you all very soon.

4. Explain the integration of Tableau with R?
Answer: R is a popular open-source environment for statistical analysis. Tableau Desktop can now connect to R through calculated fields and take advantage of R functions, libraries, and packages and even saved models. These calculations dynamically invoke the R engine and pass values to R via the Rserve package, and are returned back to Tableau.
1. Tableau Server can also be configured to connect to an instance of Rserve through the tabadmin utility, allowing anyone to view a dashboard containing R functionality. (E learning Portal)
2. Combining R with Tableau gives you the ability to bring deep statistical analysis into a drag-and-drop visual analytics environment.

5. How to create a calculated field in Tableau?
Answer: Click the drop-down to the right of Dimensions on the Data pane and select “Create > Calculated Field” to open the calculation editor.
Name the new field and create a formula.
Take a look at the example below:

6. How to create stories in Tableau?
Answer: There are many ways to create a story in Tableau. Each story point can be based on a different view or dashboard, or the entire story can be based on the same visualization, just seen at different stages, with different marks filtered and annotations added. You can use stories to make a business case or to simply narrate a sequence of events.

In the lower-left corner of the screen, choose a size for your story. Choose from one of the predefined sizes, or set a custom size, in pixels.
By default, your story gets its title from its sheet name. To edit it, double-click the title. You can also change your title’s font, color, and alignment. Click Apply to view your changes.
To start building your story, drag a sheet from the Story tab on the left and drop it into the center of the view
Click Add a caption to summarize the story point.
To highlight a key takeaway for your viewers, drag a text object over to the story worksheet and type your comment.
To further highlight the main idea of this story point, you can change a filter or sort on a field in the view, then save your changes by clicking Update above the navigator box.

7. Mention the different types of Tableau files?
Answer:
Different types of Tableau files include the following:

Workbooks: Workbooks hold one or more worksheets and dashboards.
Bookmarks: It contains a single worksheet and it’s an easy way to quickly share your work.
Packaged Workbooks: It contains a workbook along with any supporting local file data and background images.
Data Extraction Files: Extract files are a local copy of a subset or entire data source.
Data Connection Files: It’s a small XML file with various connection information Tableau-logo.

8. State limitations of parameters in Tableau?
Answer: Parameters facilitate only four ways to represent data on a dashboard (which are seven in quick filters). Further, parameters do not allow multiple selections in a filter.
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9. Explain the difference between .twb and .twbx?
Answer:
.twb is the most common file extension used in Tableau, which presents an XML format file and comprises all the information present in each dashboard and sheet-like what fields are used in the views, styles, and formatting applied to a sheet and dashboard. But this workbook does not contain any data. The Packaged workbook merges the information in a Tableau workbook with the local data available (which is not on the server). .twbx serves as a zip file, which will include custom images if any. Packaged Workbook allows users to share their workbook information with other Tableau Desktop users and let them open it in Tableau Reader.

10. Mention what is the difference between published data sources and embedded data sources in Tableau?
Answer:
The difference between the published data source and the embedded data source is that,

Published data source: It contains connection information that is independent of any workbook and can be used by multiple workbooks.
Embedded data source: It contains connection information and is associated with a workbook.

11. What is the benefit of Tableau extract file over the live connection?
Answer: The extract can be used anywhere without any connection and you can build your own visualizations without connecting to the Database.

12. How to combine two excel files with the same fields but different data (different years)?
Answer:
I have 5 different excel files (2007.xls, 2008.xls..2011.xls) with same fields (film name, genre, budget, rating, profitability) but with data from the different year (2007 to 2011). Can someone tell me how can I combine the film name, genre, and profitability so that I can see the visualization of 2007 to 2011 in a single chart?

13. When publishing workbooks on Tableau online, sometimes an error about needing to extract appears. Why does it happen occasionally?
Answer: This happens when a user is trying to publish a workbook that is connected to an internal server or a file stored on a local drive, such as a SQL server that is within a company’s network.
I hope that these Tableau Interview Questions were helpful to you. I will be coming up with more blogs on Tableau for you all very soon.

14. What is the DRIVE Program Methodology?
Answer: Tableau Drive is a methodology for scaling out self-service analytics. Drive is based on best practices from successful enterprise deployments. The methodology relies on iterative, agile methods that are faster and more effective than traditional long-cycle deployment.

15. What is the difference between Quick Filter, Normal filter and Context filter?
Answer:
In Tableau, filters are used to restrict the data from the database. The differences between Quick and Normal/ Traditional filter are:

-Normal Filter is used to restrict the data from database based on selected dimension or measure. A Traditional Filter can be created by simply dragging a field onto the ‘Filters’ shelf.

-Quick filter is used to view the filtering options and filter each worksheet on a dashboard while changing the values dynamically (within the range defined) during the run time.

-Context Filter is used to filtering the data that is transferred to each individual worksheet. When a worksheet queries the data source, it creates a temporary, flat table that is used to compute the chart. This temporary table includes all values that are not filtered out by either the Custom SQL or the Context Filter.

16. What is story Tableau?
Answer: A story is a sheet that contains a sequence of worksheets or dashboards that work together to convey information. You can create stories to show how facts are connected, provide context, demonstrate how decisions relate to outcomes, or simply make a compelling case. Each individual sheet in a story is called a story point.

17. What do you mean by addressing and partitioning?
Answer: When you add a table calculation, you must use all dimensions in the level of detail either for partitioning (scoping) or for addressing (direction):

The dimensions that define how to group the calculation, that is, define the scope of data it is performed on, are called partitioning fields. The table calculation is performed separately within each partition.
The remaining dimensions, upon which the table calculation is performed, are called addressing fields, and determine the direction of the calculation.

18. What is Tableau?
Answer: Tableau is a Business Intelligence software that allows anyone to connect to the respective data, then visualize and create interactive, shareable dashboards.

19. List out some of the new features introduced in Tableau 9.1?
Answer:
The new features introduced in Tableau 9.1 includes the following:

Data: With new web data connector, it makes data accessible from anywhere.
Mobile: The new Tableau comes with high-resolution thumbnails, taking screenshot offline and high-level security for the data.
Enterprise: Easy enterprise deployment with active directory synchronization.
Visual Analytics: View proximity in the radial selection tool, also provides features like creating filter formulas and zoom control on your data.

20. Can you create relational joins in Tableau without creating a new table?
Answer:
Yes, one can create relational joins in Tableau without creating a new table.

21. What are the limitations of the context filter?
Answer: The context filter is not frequently changed by the user – if the filter is changed the database must be recomputed and rewrite the temporary table, slowing performance.

22.  Define a fact table?
Answer: Fact table consists of the measurements, metrics or facts of a business process. It is located at the center of a star schema or a snowflake schema surrounded by dimension tables.

23.  How do you automate reports using Tableau software?
Answer: Steps to automate the reports: while publishing the report to Tableau server, you will find the option to schedule reports. Click on this to select the time when you want to refresh the data.

24.  Can parameters have a dropdown list?
Answer: Yes, parameters do have their independent dropdown lists enabling users to view the data entries available in the parameter during its creation.

25.  What are the similarities and differences between Tableau software and Palantir?
Answer: Palantir and Tableau are very different. Palantir has its roots in large data computer science problems involving security, payments, fraud detection, and the likes. Customers/Investors include Paypal, CIA, and others.
Tableau is a visualization player – with roots in Stanford U research. It’s Visual Query Language (VizQL) allows users to build visualizations on top of standard data warehouses or spreadsheets. (Company)

26.  How to create cascading filters without a context filter?
Answer: have filters and filter2.Based on filters I need to filter2 data
Ex: Filter as Country and Filter 2: States
I have chosen the country as INDIA and filter2 should display only INDIA states
Choose options of Filter2 states :
select option of “Only relevant values “

27.  What are the Filters? How many types of filters are there in Tableau?
Answer: The filter is nothing but it is restricted to unnecessary, it is showing exact data. Basically filters are 3 types.
1. Quick filter
2. Context filter
3. Datasource filter

28.  Design a view in a map such that if the user selects any state the cities under that state has to show profit and sales?
Answer: If you want to show the Sales and profit in each and every city under the states in the same worksheet. According to your question, you should have State, City, Sales, and Profit filed in your dataset.
1. Double click on the State filed.
2. Drag the City and drop into Marks card (under the State field)
3. Drag the sales and drop into size.
4. Drag the profit and drop into color.
5. Click on Size legend and increase the size. (75%)
6. Right-click on the State field and select show quick filter.
7. Select any state and check whether you got the required view or not. In this view, size indicates the number of sales and color indicates the Profit values.

29.  What is the purpose of using page shelf?
Answer: The Pages shelf lets you break a view into a series of pages so you can better analyze how a specific field affects the rest of the data in a view.

30.  Difference between scatter plot vs Treemap?
Answer: Tree Maps – Display data in nested rectangles. We use dimensions to define the structure of the treemaps and measures to design the size or color of the individual rectangle. We cannot add trend lines in Treemaps.

Scatter plot – provides an easy way to visualize relationships between numerical variables. We can add trend lines.

31.  How To remove the All options from a Tableau auto-filter?
Answer: Edit the quick filter from the pull-down arrow. Go to “Customize” and uncheck the “Show “All” Value” checkbox. 

32.  How do you optimize the performance of the dashboard?
Answer: Minimize the number of fields based on the analysis being performed. Use the hide all unused fields option to remove unused columns from a data source.
Minimize the number of records. Use extract filters to keep only the data you need.
Optimize extracts to speed up future queries by materializing calculations, removing columns and the use of accelerated views.
Remove unneeded dimension from the detail shelf
Reduce the number of filters
Use context filter
Use Boolean calculations. 

33.  How to use group in calculations field?
Answer: By adding the same calculation to ‘Group By’ clause in SQL query or creating a Calculated Field in the Data Window and using that field whenever you want to group the fields.
• Using groups in a calculation. You cannot reference ad-hoc groups in a calculation
• Blend data using groups created in the secondary data source: Only calculated groups can be used in data blending if the group was created in the secondary data source.
• Use a group in another workbook. You can easily replicate a group in another workbook by copy and pasting a calculation.

34. What are the limitations of context filters?
Answer: Tableau takes time to place a filter in context. When a filter is set as context one, the software creates a temporary table for that particular context filter. This table will reload each time and consists of all values that are not filtered by either Context or Custom SQL filter.

35. What are the differences between twb and twbx?
Answer: A twb is an xml document which contains all the selections and layout made you have made in your Tableau workbook. It does not contain any data.

A twbx is a ‘zipped’ archive containing a twb and any external files such as extracts and background images.

36. What is Page shelf?
Answer: Tableau provides a distinct and powerful tool to control the output display known as Page shelf. As the name suggests, the page shelf fragments the view into a series of pages, presenting a different view on each page, making it more user-friendly and minimizing scrolling to analyze and view data and information. You can flip through the pages using the specified controls and compare them at a common axle.

37. How to use group in a calculated field?
Answer: By adding the same calculation to ‘Group By’ clause in SQL query or creating a Calculated Field in the Data Window and using that field whenever you want to group the fields.

Using groups in a calculation. You cannot reference ad-hoc groups in a calculation

Blend data using groups created in the secondary data source: Only calculated groups can be used in data blending if the group was created in the secondary data source.

Use a group in another workbook. You can easily replicate a group in another workbook by copy and pasting a calculation.

38. Define parameters in Tableau and their working?
Answer: Tableau parameters are dynamic variables/values that replace the constant values in data calculations and filters. For instance, you can create a calculated field value returning true when the score is greater than 80 and otherwise false. Using parameters, one can replace the constant value of 80 and control it dynamically in the formula.

39. What are Quick Filters in Tableau?
Answer: Global quick filters are a way to filter each worksheet on a dashboard until each of them contains a dimension. They are very useful for worksheets using the same data source, which sometimes proves to a disadvantage and generate slow results. Thus, the parameters are more useful.

40. How do you add custom color to Tableau?
Answer: Tableau offers three types of color palettes: categorical, sequential, and diverging. You can create your own custom color palette by modifying the Preferences.tps file that comes with Tableau Desktop. The Preferences.tps file is located in the My Tableau Repository. The preferences file is a basic XML file that you can open in a text editor to modify. In tableau 9.0 version there is a color picker option.

41. What is Assume referential integrity?
Answer: Referential integrity is a concept which ensures that relationships between databases/tables remain consistent, i.e. it ensures that the references to data are valid. You can improve query performance by selecting this option from the Data menu. When you use this option, Tableau will include the joined table in the query only if it is specifically referenced by fields in the view.

42. What is the difference between the context filter to other filters?
Answer: Whenever we create context filter

Tableau will create a temporary table for this particular filter set and other filters will be applied on context filter data like cascade parameters… suppose we have created context filter on countries >> we have chosen the country like USA and India
Tableau will create a temporary table for these two countries data and if you have any other filers >> others will be applied to these two countries data if we don’t have any context filter
Each and the individual record will check for all filters.

43. What is the difference between discrete and continuous in Tableau?
Answer:
There are two types of data roles in Tableau – discrete and continuous dimension.

-Discrete data roles are values that are counted as distinct and separate and can only take individual values within a range. Examples: number of threads in a sheet, customer name or row ID or State. Discrete values are shown as blue pills on the shelves and blue icons in the data window.

-Continuous data roles are used to measure continuous data and can take on any value within a finite or infinite interval. Examples: unit price, time and profit or order quantity. Continuous variables behave in a similar way in that they can take on any value. Continuous values are shown as green pills.

44. How do you normalize data for use in Tableau?
Answer: When an Excel data source (other than a cube) is already formatted as a cross-tabulation or is otherwise aggregated, options for viewing, aggregating, and grouping in Tableau are limited. Tableau cannot see underlying data points that have already been summarized into a higher-level group or order. To take advantage of Tableau’s full functionality, you need to normalize the data before connecting to it from Tableau.

Explain and implement the serialization of a binary tree.

You can write serialization for leaf nodes, and then for parent nodes.

Recursive map: {value: [serialize(left), serialize(right)]}, where serialized leaf is null.

45. Can parameters have to the drop-down list?
Answer: Yes, parameters do have their independent dropdown lists enabling users to view the data entries available in the parameter during its creation.

46. What are the differences between Tableau’s Desktop/Online versions?
Answer: Tableau Desktop is used to visualize and analyze data, create workbooks, visualizations, dashboards, and stories.

Tableau Desktop Professional (but not Desktop Personal) can then publish these to Tableau Server, Tableau Online and Tableau Public.

Tableau Server and Tableau Online allow you to safely distribute the interactive workbooks to the right people. You can edit workbooks, visualizations, dashboards, and stories in Server or Online, but you can’t produce new ones. The editing options are limited compared to the Desktop.

Server and Online can be used as high-performance data repositories for Desktop users.

Tableau Public is a free tool that is intended for people who want to publish information, accessible to anyone. There are both a Desktop and Online components.

47. Who are the founders of Tableau?
Answer: The company was founded in Mountain View, California in January 2003 by Chris Stolte, Christian Chabot, and Pat Hanrahan.

48. What is Tableau Software?
Answer: Tableau is a business intelligence software that allows anyone to easily connect to data, then visualize and create interactive, shareable dashboards. It’s easy enough that any Excel user can learn it, but powerful enough to satisfy even the most complex analytical problems. Securely sharing your findings with others only takes seconds.

49. What is the five main product offered by Tableau company?
Answer: Tableau offers five main products: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Reader and Tableau Public.

50. How Does Tableau Work?
Answer: While Tableau lets you analyze databases and spreadsheets like never before, you don’t need to know anything about databases to use Tableau. In fact, Tableau is designed to allow business people with no technical training to analyze their data efficiently. Tableau is based on three simple concepts: ( Tableau training in hyderabad ).

Connect: Connect Tableau to any database that you want to analyze.

Note that Tableau does not import the data. Instead, it queries the database directly.

Analyze: Analyzing data means viewing it, filtering it, sorting it, performing calculations on it, reorganizing it, summarizing it, and so on. Using Tableau you can do all of these things by simply arranging fields of your data source on a Tableau worksheet. When you drop a field on a worksheet, Tableau queries the data using standard drivers and query languages (like SQL and MDX) and presents a visual analysis of the data.

Share: You can share results with others either by sharing workbooks with other Tableau users, by pasting results into applications such as Microsoft Office, printing to PDF or by using Tableau Server to publish or embed your views across your organization.

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