Outline Spatial Function For Tableau | New in Tableau 2023.2

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 ]