0:00In 23.2 Tableau have added another boatload
0:03of spatial enhancements. I'm only going to
0:05cover one
0:05of them, that one is going to be outline.
0:07The outline feature I think is a super
0:09powerful one,
0:10let's get stuck into it and find out more.
0:12So I want to start here on the page where
0:15it outlines
0:15a whole group of geospatial features. Out
0:17line is what we're going to cover in this
0:19video but it's
0:20important to note there's actually a couple
0:22of others and they're very easy to miss. So
0:24shape
0:24type enables new pivots based on geometry
0:26types, so essentially you can treat roads
0:29and regions
0:29in a different way because those would be
0:32different geometry types, so lines versus
0:34polygons. And then length allows you to
0:36calculate routes and journeys, so if you've
0:39got a path and
0:40you want to figure out how long that line
0:41is, you can do the length calculation, it
0:43will give you a
0:44return sort of response. So you can
0:46actually start to do some analytical work
0:49on maybe GPS traces and
0:50a bunch of other things that are going to
0:52be super useful. But let's get stuck into
0:54the outline
0:55feature. If we go over to Tableau Public, I
0:57'm just going to start on a new viz, go
1:00ahead to create
1:01a web altering session. We'll go over and
1:04upload a shape file. Now a shape file is
1:06just essentially
1:07a zip file with a bunch of files inside of
1:09it. You can actually see a good example of
1:12those right
1:12here below, you can see I've downloaded
1:14some London borough information. I'll go
1:16ahead and
1:17open that and what Tableau will do is it'll
1:19actually upload the zip, it will decompress
1:22it
1:22and do whatever it does and you'll see that
1:24it recognizes it's a shape file. And shape
1:26files come
1:27with a geometry column, the geometry column
1:29essentially gives you the information about
1:31either a path which is a line which could
1:34represent a road, a river, a walkway,
1:36whatever
1:36you want it to represent, points which are
1:39x and y coordinates essentially of specific
1:42points and a
1:43specific location. And then last one is
1:45polygons, polygons are just shapes so you
1:48can just imagine
1:49that as the boundary of a region or the
1:50boundary of a country. And so once you've
1:53connected to our
1:54data, we'll go ahead go into sheet one and
1:56we'll let this load. Now this does take a
1:59bit of time,
2:00it's got to create an extract, it's got to
2:01do whatever it does. I don't know if it's
2:03me,
2:03but Tableau Public has been slower than
2:05Tableau Cloud, maybe that's intentional.
2:07And but here we are, it's loaded and you
2:09can immediately see that there's a geometry
2:11column
2:11right there. Now what we're going to do is
2:14with this geometry column, we're actually
2:15going to just
2:16visualize it straight away so you can see
2:18what it is. And I'm just going to double
2:19click geometry,
2:20you'll see that I get every single ward in
2:22London. Now when I hover over one of them,
2:24you'll see that
2:25all of them highlight we don't want that.
2:27The reason is because we haven't told Table
2:29au what
2:30level of detail we'd like. So we'll go
2:32ahead and put name on detail. And now once
2:35that's loaded,
2:35when we hover over one of them, we actually
2:37get the corresponding name. Really simple,
2:39really,
2:40really good. Now the nice feature here is
2:42we right click on geometry, go to create
2:45greater calculated
2:46field, let's just make sure this is large,
2:48so we can see how this looks. It's not
2:50gonna let me zoom
2:51in, that's fine. We'll try and avoid
2:54breaking the demo. So we'll go over here, I
2:56'll open my little
2:57triangle carrot here, whatever you call
2:59this, go ahead and type outline. And you'll
3:02see this new
3:02function. And it tells you here returns
3:04polygons converted into line strings so
3:06that they can be
3:07styled individually. So big note here only
3:10works on polygons, okay, it's not going to
3:12work on lines,
3:13lines are already lines, and it's going to
3:16return a line in response to that polygon.
3:20So we'll take
3:20our polygon, it will draw an outline and
3:22give us just the line. And that's super
3:24useful. So let's
3:25go ahead and highlight this and then double
3:27click the function Tableau automatically
3:29wraps it when
3:30we do that. And we'll call this outline of
3:32wards because that's actually what this
3:34geometry
3:35represents. Hit apply. And once we've done
3:38that, everything is there. And you'll
3:40notice that we
3:40have a new spatial object right here,
3:43outline of wards. So we can go ahead, reset
3:46the whole
3:47of his let's just clear the whole sheet
3:48right here at the top. Start again. Now we
3:50're going to start
3:51with our outline of wards, we can double
3:53click it. And what we should see adjust the
3:55lines. Perfect.
3:56So this is the feature working in a
3:58nutshell, we'll go ahead and bring in the
4:00names. And the
4:01nice thing here is that look, when I hover
4:03over the line, the item activates, but look
4:06at this,
4:07we don't have it activated when you hover
4:10over in between. So this is super cool. Now
4:15, if you're
4:15switched on, you'll know that this is super
4:17powerful, because this is just a function.
4:19And
4:20because it's a function, it works just like
4:22any other calculation, which also means you
4:24can build
4:24logic on top of the function. So what I'm
4:26going to do, I'm not going to spend hours
4:28going into it
4:29here in the video. Instead, I'm going to
4:31point you to Mark reads blog, I'll put the
4:34link to this in
4:35the description, it's super good. He
4:37actually shows you how you can apply the
4:38spatial function
4:39and then take it to the next level by
4:41having it do things like outline on
4:44specific logic,
4:45or, you know, outline when you do a
4:46selection. I think this is a really nice
4:48gift here where he
4:49shows, he shows you actually being able to
4:51select specific items, and it actually
4:54outlines the area.
4:55And because you can map this with shape
4:57layers, you can still have your original
4:59shape, your
5:00original polygon as a visual element. And
5:03what you can have this do is activate the
5:06outline to show
5:07you the specific selected areas or regions.
5:10So there's a lot of nice logic, there's a
5:13lot of
5:13sort of good conditional logic, and Mark
5:15walks right through here, just showing you
5:17how to work
5:18marks blog is also fantastic. So be sure to
5:20check that out. And but yeah, I think this
5:22feature is
5:22super powerful. I think there's so much
5:24more you can do. And if you want to follow
5:26along with my
5:27exact data set, you can go ahead to this
5:30mayor of London website statistical gi s
5:32boundary files for
5:33London, I'll put this in the description.
5:35So you can download those two. And if you
5:37're looking for
5:38the full release notes of this particular
5:40release, go ahead and just go ahead and
5:42check out the
5:42Tableau cloud release notes. It's a little
5:45bit of hit and miss in some areas. So they
5:47do update it
5:48over time. But in here, we should see where
5:50is it you see we'll see the image role
5:52enhancements.
5:53I've just been talking about that. But I
5:55don't, I don't think it actually has the
5:56best up to date
5:58detail. This is so annoying. Oh, my word.
6:01If we go to the release notes, I bet you
6:05this has 23 to
6:06yes. And this is for desktop. Yes. And you
6:09can see here, what do we have? Where was
6:11the spatial
6:12announcements, new spatial functions and
6:15maps? It's so weird. And then when you
6:17click on that link,
6:18come on, does it take us anywhere? No, it
6:20doesn't take us anywhere. There's no learn
6:23more link.
6:24So documentation has become a bit of a pain
6:27point for me in the last few releases of
6:29Tableau should
6:30be for you as well, if you kind of use this
6:32stuff to get work done. But nonetheless,
6:34yeah,
6:34they should normally be a page with all the
6:36spatial functions, I'm actually going to go
6:38on
6:38a side quest here, let's go ahead and
6:42search Tableau spatial functions and see if
6:46the this
6:47page here, this is what I'm looking for.
6:50And if we search outline, why can't I why
6:53can I search
6:54out one here we go outline, there you go.
6:55So there you go, they have been added here.
6:57So you can see
6:58the three functions that have been added to
7:00this documentation. So the documentation is
7:02being
7:02updated, it's just not pinpointed to which
7:05is annoying. So here you are, you can go
7:07ahead and
7:08see how all the different logic works and
7:10pair it amongst other functions as well
7:13here at the top.
7:14Anyway, that's the end of the video, I just
7:15wanted to show you that feature really,
7:17really quickly. So you can figure out how
7:18to use it. Thanks for watching, and I'll
7:20see you in the
7:21next video.
7:21Transcribed by https://otter.ai
7:32[ Silence ]
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