0:00Hey, it's Tim here and in today's video I'm
0:01going to be showing you a new feature
0:03literally released
0:04yesterday that allows you to group sections
0:06of your prep flow very easily. Okay, let's
0:09jump into
0:09the sample workflow here on the bottom left
0:12and you'll see that this workflow is fairly
0:14simple
0:15actually, it's not a very complicated
0:17workflow. The new feature allows you to
0:19group specific items
0:20but there's a little bit of nuance to this
0:22so let's just start with a simple thing.
0:24Let's say
0:25I wanted to group this section of the
0:27workflow here, I can just select those two
0:29items, right
0:30click and if I go to group it you'll
0:32actually see a warning here. Now at the
0:34point of release
0:35this feature is actually not supported on
0:37Tableau Online which is why I'm seeing this
0:39error.
0:39It's also not supported on the dev instance
0:41of Tableau Online so what you can do if you
0:44're just
0:44using Tableau Prep locally is just click
0:46use features and this will allow you to
0:48carry on
0:49and see the feature in full progress but be
0:51aware that if you publish this prep flow
0:53you won't be
0:53able to schedule it. Okay, carrying on you
0:56can see that this item is now nicely
0:58grouped. I'm going to
0:59right click on it and you can see here
1:01there's an option to ungroup it and so it's
1:03a very very simple
1:05sort of workflow and once you've emitted
1:07that warning once you don't see it again so
1:10for every
1:10workflow when you see this warning here it
1:12won't warn you about this when you enable
1:14the grouping.
1:15Okay, the next thing is the ability to
1:18expand the group so if I go ahead and click
1:21on this box
1:22you can see that it expands the group very
1:24nicely and again if I go ahead and collapse
1:26it goes and does the same thing. Now each
1:29group still gets the same benefit as any
1:32step so I can
1:33add a description to this group so I'll say
1:36connect to a new file and when I click out
1:40of
1:40that obviously this applies to the group
1:42and if I expand that description disappears
1:44very briefly
1:45and then if I collapse it the description
1:47comes back again. The other thing you can
1:50do is you can
1:50rename the group so let's just call this
1:52connection and the benefit of naming it is
1:55that that actually
1:55stays with the group when you expand it and
1:58collapse it so you can see that this is
1:59maintaining
2:00the information you want and the
2:02description is actually available just here
2:05and it's not available
2:06when you expand it so that's just something
2:08to be aware of. It would actually be nice
2:10if the
2:10description was available here at the
2:12bottom but maybe that's a future fix or
2:14addition to this
2:15feature. Okay the next thing is when it
2:18comes to grouping things that are not
2:21necessarily
2:22sequential. Well what do I mean by that?
2:25Okay let's try and group these items here
2:27on the left.
2:28When I do that and I go to right click you
2:30'll see that it actually warns me to say
2:32steps must
2:33be directly connected and can't be part of
2:35an existing group. Okay this isn't part of
2:38an
2:38existing group but what it's basically
2:40saying is that I've selected things that
2:43aren't connected.
2:44Okay so they have to be connected for this
2:46to work so there's actually a little bit of
2:48a trick here.
2:49If I go ahead and select these items here
2:51and let's just move these down to this
2:54bottom section
2:55here. What I'm actually doing is isolating
2:58this top section here and I'm now going to
3:01select
3:01everything and include the step ahead
3:04because what this does is it connects all
3:07the previous steps
3:07so now if I right click on any of these go
3:10to group it it actually lets me group it.
3:13Okay I
3:13still get this warning about publishing
3:15this to Tableau server. I can still expand
3:17and collapse,
3:18I can still rename and do all the things
3:20that I'm used to and so the trick here is
3:22that things
3:23must be connected. Now the other thing is I
3:26can't put a group in the group so if I
3:29select
3:29these items here and then I go to try and
3:33group it because the bottom two items are
3:36already in a
3:36group I'm not able to add them to another
3:39group and you can't put a group inside of a
3:41group you
3:42can't do inception on this as it were. So
3:44that's pretty much the feature in a
3:47nutshell. If I just
3:48collapse this top group here and right
3:50click and ungroup you'll see that it
3:52basically gets rid of
3:53the group and it keeps those items selected
3:56. Again what I'll do is I'll collapse this
3:59and I will
4:00ungroup these items and you'll see that it
4:02goes back to pretty much how we opened it.
4:04I've just
4:04moved things around to make it easier. Now
4:08if you want to you can group almost whole
4:10sections as
4:11long as these steps are connected in one
4:13way or another. So let's just go ahead and
4:15highlight those
4:16let's go right click and group and now you
4:18can see that that's grouped and notice that
4:20the connection
4:21that was coming out of this has actually
4:23stayed outside of the flow because
4:25essentially the items
4:26I've grouped do come out of this group but
4:28if I expand it it actually came out of the
4:31first step.
4:32So this is another nice way of cleaning up
4:34your workflow it's a really sort of smart
4:35way of
4:36thinking about this and making it sort of
4:38work really really flexibly. Now the last
4:42thing you
4:42can do is you can take a group and save
4:44them as steps for a flow. So if you right
4:47click on the
4:48group and you can save steps as a flow to a
4:51file or you can publish them to a server
4:53but remember
4:54what I said in this case this isn't going
4:55to work because of the bug that we have. So
4:58instead I can
4:58just save this group to a file on my
5:00desktop and this will now be reusable in
5:03other places. So this
5:05actually makes using steps in your flow a
5:07lot lot easier. Okay that's pretty much it
5:10that's the
5:11feature in a nutshell I hope it's something
5:13that you find useful in your typical
5:15workflow
5:16and again these features were released
5:17slightly out of kilter with 2020.3 so these
5:20became available
5:21yesterday so if you're watching this video
5:23haven't got the latest version of prep I
5:25recommend you to
5:26check the blog actually and it has all
5:27these features listed out I'll put the link
5:29in the
5:29description below so you can go ahead and
5:31check it out and what you always want to do
5:33before you
5:33deploy prep is test it so if you've got a
5:35test machine you can use it on go ahead
5:37test the
5:38upgrade first before turning all your work
5:40flows into the latest release just make sure
5:42there's
5:42no bug or capability that's going to cause
5:44you an issue and especially if you're using
5:47server
5:48as you deploy the products.
5:48that
Tableau | Data prep