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00:00Next up, we'll be diving into the visual dictionary found within TableauPrep.
00:05TableauPrep uses visual indicators to represent steps, field types, and notifications within a flow.
00:12It's a good idea to familiarize yourself with these indicators, as they will help you interpret exactly how a flow functions.
00:21Now, these visual indicators can be found all over the TableauPrep workspace.
00:26They can be found in your steps, in your profile pane, in your changes pane, and in your main flow diagram.
00:33The good news is, is that the visual indicators are the same no matter where they're located.
00:38So once you learn what a visual indicator means, you'll automatically know what's happening in each step and each field.
00:45Let's take a quick look through all the visual indicators that you'll be seeing inside your TableauPrep flow.
00:51First, let's take a look at the input steps.
00:55These icons will show in the flow pane, and they'll tell you which type of data source you're connected to.
01:00For databases or published data sources, you'll have a cylinder or a cylinder with a plus sign.
01:06Anytime you see the plus sign on any of your input step icons, that means you're performing a wildcard union in addition to connecting to a particular source.
01:16Excel will show up as a spreadsheet, CSV will show up as a document,
01:20and a TableauExtract will have the very familiar two sources with an arrow between them.
01:25Your aggregate step will have the familiar sigma icon, which you might remember from your calculus class.
01:31Anytime you see this icon, you'll know that you're aggregating data in some way.
01:36Now there are some common visual indicators which will go across steps.
01:40Here we can see different visual indicators for your clean steps, your changes pane, and your toolbars.
01:46These icons track changes made to your data.
01:49They can tell you if your data is a calculated field, if you changed your data type, excluded your values, filtered, hid your profile pane, merged fields, renamed fields, and more.
02:02In addition to modifying your fields and values, you'll also have icons for your pivot step.
02:07This icon represents pivoting data from columns to rows or rows to columns.
02:13Note that pivoting can be done inside the profile pane or in your flow pane.
02:17Something that you might already be familiar with are your join step icons.
02:22These icons define which join types are happening between your data sources.
02:26There are many combinations here, but there are some familiar join steps that you likely already know from the other tools that you use in your regular business life,
02:35such as inner joins, left joins, and outer joins.
02:39In addition to our join step icons, we'll also have a single icon denoting a union step.
02:45This icon will show where we're appending our data together.
02:49The profile card will have its own set of icons that will identify data types and field transformations happening inside each of your profile cards.
02:58Note that your profile cards represent modifications to specific fields.
03:03Again, you'll see some familiar faces here with your icons, including those calculated field icons, filtering values, removing and adding fields,
03:12but you'll also see some new types, such as boolean data types, date data types, numeric data types, and text data types.
03:21You'll also see some additions specific to values, such as grouping and editing values themselves.
03:26Your output step will have a simple set of icons for your various outputs.
03:31These include CSV, published data sources, local Tableau data extracts, and the run flow arrow.
03:38These icons identify data output types and how to run your flow.
03:42Your profile pane itself will have some very important icons that will appear depending on how your data is being displayed.
03:49If your data is being sampled, you'll have a sampled icon appear.
03:53This will typically happen in your input step, and you'll also be able to get a row count summary at the top left part of your profile pane.
04:01If you hover over, you'll be able to see the entire row count of the data set that you're connected to.
04:06And finally, you can also see important notifications that will identify problems, errors, or alerts within your flow.
04:14This includes no notifications, a notification alert, and an error within the step.
04:20Now at this stage in learning Tableau Prep, this probably seems like a lot.
04:24There's a lot of icons, there's a lot to remember.
04:27But honestly, you don't really need to remember these icons off the bat at all.
04:32You'll be able to hover over any of these icons and click into them to see exactly what's happening with your data.
04:38So what you should concentrate on is what you want your data to look like, and then work on transforming it.
04:43Once you need to go back to your data and see exactly the changes that you performed, you'll see the icons and you'll remember what they mean.
04:51If you really have trouble, you can always print this out and put it in your home office or in your cube.
04:56Now that we've gone through the visual dictionary for Tableau Prep, we're going to dive into a flow diagram example
05:02to cover the different steps and pieces that you'll see within this training course.