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Tableau software is a powerful tool for people who analyze retail data. It allows you to
connect to almost any common data source or database, create interactive visualizations,
and then combine them onto powerful dashboards that you can share with other people on your
team. In this case, as a retail product manager, I have created this dashboard which allows
me to see the effect that price changes have on the supply that I currently have in my
stores and the quantity that I am going to need to have in the future. As you can see,
if I enter a lower price the amount of units that I am selling increases and the amount
of units I am going to need to store on my shelves also increases. I can select individual
products to view my supply chain over time. If I see that there is a problem ,I can address
it and ensure that I will always have enough product for the customers that are going to
be in the store. Although this analysis is extremely interesting, no one exists in a
vacuum and I’d like to share it with other people on my team that might find it valuable.
Luckily with Tableau sharing the work that I’ve done is extremely easy. I can simply
log onto my server. Once I have done that I can set individual permissions for all the
people on my server. I can even set it by group. That way I can ensure that only the
people that I want to view this visualization have the ability to do so. Once I’ve finished
setting my permissions I can publish the workbook up to the server. Now that I’ve published
the visualization I am seeing a preview of it but I can also log onto the server online.
I simply navigate to a URL that’s dedicated to my server, log on using my credentials,
and then I can view all of the workbooks that I have permission to access. Let’s take
a look at the one I just published.
One of the powerful things about Tableau Server is not just to use and interact with a visualization
in the same way that I would on Tableau Desktop, but also save individual changes. For instance,
if I see that we have way too much quantity on hand in recent months, I can simply remember
this individual view. Once I have done so I can share that URL with anyone in my organization
who might be interested. In that way it’s easy to share and pass findings between individual
people and make sure that all of the problems and opportunities you see in your data are
taken care of. In summary, Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server are a powerful tool for
people who analyze retail data. They allow you to quickly connect to the data that you
already have, visualize it, create a powerful analytical dashboard, and then share it with
the people in your organization who might find it useful.