Top Tableau Interview Questions and Answers

It doesn’t take an expert to say that Tableau rocks. Without any coding, and with mere dragging and dropping, Tableau allows you to create the visualizations. At the same time, without much fuss, Tableau allows you to connect with Python and R.  Listed below are the top Tableau interview questions and answers for those who are looking for exciting career options.

What is Tableau?

Tableau is one of the most powerful data visualization and Business Intelligence (BI) tools that can be used to perform Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) or Data Wrangling, data blending, creating dashboards and stories, making presentations, etc. It essentially provides insights into data to share and manage data.

Who can benefit from Tableau training?

From absolute beginners to experienced professionals from IT/non-IT background can learn Tableau as it doesn’t require any coding experience. Tableau makes all the visualizations possible from a simple click of the mouse.

So, who is the targeted audience?

• Statisticians
• Software Developers
• Product Managers
• Team Leads
• ETL developers
• Beginners

Top 10 Tableau Questions and answers

Here are the top interview questions and answers which can help you become a Tableau expert and test your level of skill post the completion of the Tableau course.

1. What are the different data types supported in Tableau?

• Strings
• Date
• Date and time
• Boolean
• Geographical values
• Numerical values

2. Explain Dimensions and Measures in Tableau.

Dimensions

Dimensions are the qualitative data such as names, dates, geographical data, etc which can be classified into different fields.

Example: Postal code, cities, names of customers, states, countries, customer ID, and product ID, etc.

Measures

These are the quantitative data, which means these fields have numerical values in them. They can be aggregated and can support mathematical calculations.

Example: Profit, Sales, Total orders, Sales per customer, et

3. Explain ‘Discrete’ and ‘Continuous’ fields.

All the fields in the Measures and Dimensions can be either discrete or continuous. The blue color represents discrete Measures/Dimensions and the green represents continuous Measures/Dimensions.

• Discrete (Blue) – distinct and separate.
• Continuous (Green) – unbroken and without interruption

4. Name the different kinds of joins in Tableau?

Different types of joins in Tableau are

• Inner – The result table has the values that contain common matches in both the tables.
  

• Left – The result table has all the values from the left table and the corresponding matches from the right table.
  

• Right – The result table has all the values from the right table and the corresponding matches from the left table.
  

• Outer – The result table has all the values from both the tables.
  

• Union – The result table has the rows of one table appended to the other table.
  

5. What is the difference between the Live connection and an Extract?

A Live connection is the real-time data, where any update in the database gets reflected in Tableau.

Data processing in live connection tends to be slower.

Example: To track the records of incoming patients in the hospital needs a live connection

The Extract is the snapshot of the data. It is essentially a local file in the system and hence, Tableau doesn’t need database connection for visualization.

The extract needs to be refreshed to be able to receive the updates from the actual data source.

Example: To create visualizations of the patients’ records for daily, weekly, or monthly trends.

6. What is the difference between .twbx and .twb files in Tableau?

.Twbx is a packaged Tableau workbook. It has the visualizations along with the data source or any other file like images used in the visualization, bundled together.

.Twb is an XML file that has the entire Tableau workbook comprising the sheets, stories, and dashboard. In order to share the .twb file, you need to send the data source file separately as it is not included with the visualization.

7. What is the latest version of Tableau? And what are the different Tableau Products?

The latest Tableau version is 2020.2 which was released in May/2020.

The different Tableau products are:

Tableau Desktop

This is the paid version available for everyone. The user requires a subscription post the 14 days free trial. You can connect to data residing in your data warehouse for a live connection.

Tableau Server

This is an enterprise-level software

Tableau Online

This is the hosted version of Tableau server, where the visualization is faster and easier.

Tableau Reader 

This is free software that can be used to view the visualizations prepared in Tableau Desktop; however, it doesn’t allow editing or performing any interactions.

Tableau Public

This is a free software to make visualizations, however, the saved worksheets can be viewed by everyone.

8. How many maximum numbers of tables can be joined in Tableau?

At a maximum, 32 table joins can be performed.

9. What are shelves in Tableau?

The shelves in Tableau are the various panes for dragging and dropping the fields.

10. What are the groups in Tableau?

Grouping in Tableau means putting together various dimension fields to create a higher category of dimensions. To create a group, you select all the required fields under dimension by pressing ‘ctrl’ and select the paperclip symbol that shows up in the dialog box. By this, Tableau doesn’t change the original dimension but creates a new dimension group.