Trying out Web Data Connector In Tableau

Having been looking forward to the Web Data Connector from the announcement at last years Tableau conference, I am currently enjoying trying out the Beta. With just some simple JavaScript you can wrap any web data into something directly accessible from the Data connections tab within Tableau. Starting with something I am familiar with, I thought…

Downloading FTSE Data From Yahoo! and Quandl using Alteryx

Following on from another post on downloading Quandl into Tableau via Python and the Data Extract API, I wanted to try downloading the current components of the FTSE 100, and then for each one download the history of prices using Alteryx. Yahoo! finance has a web page with the members of the index: The list…

Getting Started with Alteryx (Part 3) … Reading CSVs

One of the most common data file formats I have to deal with is CSV files. Assuming your file is well formed (i.e. starts in the top row, with or without a header, in a nice continuous table), then there is no difficulty. Drag the file into Alteryx’s designer and it will create an Input…

Getting started with Alteryx (part 1) …

I have been spending a fair amount of my time at work using Alteryx Designer. It is a nice ETL tool and is a great tool for use along side Tableau. I have found myself using it as a proof of concept for a data flow before transitioning back to my traditional Visual Studio C#…

Shortcut Keys and other things on Surface Pro 3…

I’ve been using the Surface Pro 2 since it came out and my work just upgraded me to the 3. It is a fantastic laptop replacement capable of being my one and only device (from tablet to development box). Battery life and weight are awesome. The screen and display are a joy to work on,…

Comments and Whitespace in Excel Formulas

A couple of silly little tricks, but ones I find useful. Far too often I end up trying to decode a complicated Excel formula and wanting to make it easier to read and leave comments behind. The tricks below work in Excel 2010 and 2013. I don’t use 2007 any more but expect they would…

Connecting Tableau to Web Data (part 2) – Quandl

My main goal is to connect Tableau in an easy way to my company’s Asp.Net WebAPI site. We use JSON as our interchange format between server code (C#) and the client code (JavaScript and HTML). While that data is only available within my company network it is easy enough to find some JSON data sources…

Tableau Visualisation of Primary School Places in Bromley

I thought, mostly because I wanted to play, I would put together my first Tableau Public work book showing the distances each of the Primary Schools in my area took. We went through this process last year with our eldest and as distances have contracted so much wanted to see what it looked like. As…