Getting started with Tableau — terminology

7 min readDec 10, 2022

This article is about the terms and terminology used in the Tableau ecosystem. Understanding what each terminology refers to is crucial especially if you are preparing for one of the official Tableau Certifications.

Source: Tableau help

Canvas

A. Left pane on the facing page — Displays the connected data source and other details about your data.

B. Canvas on the facing page: logical layer — The canvas opens with the logical layer, where you can create relationships between logical tables.

C. Canvas on the facing page: physical layer — Double-click a table in the logical layer to go to the physical layer of the canvas, where you can add joins and unions between tables.

D. Data grid on the next page — Displays first 1,000 rows of the data contained in the Tableau data source.

You can use the data grid to make general modifications to the Tableau data source like sorting or hiding fields; renaming fields or resetting field names; creating calculations; changing the column or row sort; or adding aliases. For the Web Data Connector, file- and relational-based data sources in Extract mode, you can see extract data in the grid, including extract only calculations.

When you’re in the logical layer, you see the data for the selected table. In the physical layer, you see the merged data based on the joins and unions.

E. Metadata grid — Displays the fields in your data source as rows.

Data pane

In the worksheet, the columns from your data source are shown as fields on the left side in the Data pane. The Data pane contains a variety of fields organized by the table. For each table or folder in a data source, dimension fields appear above the gray line and measure fields appear below the gray line. In some cases, a table or folder might contain only dimensions or only measures to start with.

The Data pane includes:

Dimension fields — Fields that contain qualitative values (such as names, dates, or geographical data). You can use dimensions to categorize, segment, and reveal the details in your data. Dimensions affect the level of detail in the view. Examples of dimensions include dates, customer names, and customer segments.

Measure fields — Fields that contain numeric, quantitative values can be measured. You can apply calculations to them and aggregate them. When you drag a measure into the view, Tableau applies an aggregation to that measure (by default). Examples of measures: sales, profit, number of employees, temperature, frequency.

Calculated fields — If your underlying data doesn’t include all of the fields you need to answer your questions, you can create new fields in Tableau using calculations and then save them as part of your data source. These fields are called calculated fields.

Sets — Subsets of data that you define. Sets are custom fields based on existing dimensions and criteria that you specify. Named sets from an MS Analysis Services server or from a Teradata OLAP connector also appear in Tableau in this area of the Data pane. You can interact with these named sets in the same way you interact with other custom sets in Tableau.

Parameters — Values that can be used as placeholders in formulas, or replace constant values in calculated fields and filters.

View

A view is a visualization or viz that you create in Tableau. A viz might be a chart, a graph, a map, a plot, or even a text table. Every view that you build in Tableau should start with a question. What do you want to know? Every time you drag a field into the view or onto a shelf, you are asking a question about the data. The question will vary depending on where you drag various fields, the types of fields, and the order in which you drag fields into the view.

Any view that contains this sort of grid of individual charts is referred to as a small multiples view.

Panes

A pane is defined by the intersection of fields on the rows and columns shelves. In a table calculation, this is seen as one or more cells that belong to the same field, which are computed down or across according to the calculation, as in the example below:

Cells

Cells are the basic components of any table you can create in Tableau, defined by the intersection of a row and a column. For example, in a text table, a cell is where the text is displayed, as shown in the view below:

Nested table

This view is called a nested table because it displays multiple headers, with quarters nested within years. The word “headers” might be a bit misleading because while the year headers remain at the “head” of the view (that is, the top), the quarter headers are at the foot (that is, the bottom). So it might be more accurate to call them footers.

Workspace area

A. Workbook name — A workbook contains sheets. A sheet can be a worksheet, a dashboard, or a story.

B. Cards and shelves — Drag fields to the cards and shelves in the workspace to add data to your view. The Columns shelf creates the columns of a table, while the Rows shelf creates the rows of a table. You can place any number of fields on these shelves. When you place a dimension on the Rows or Columns shelves, headers for the members of that dimension are created. When you place a measure on the Rows or Columns shelf, quantitative axes for that measure are created. As you add more fields to the view, additional headers and axes are included in the table and you get an increasingly detailed picture of your data.

Filters shelf

The Filters shelf allows you to specify which data to include and exclude. For example, you might want to analyze the profit for each customer segment, but only for certain shipping containers and delivery times.

Additionally, you can filter data based on the fields that make up the columns and rows of the table. This is called an internal filter. You can also filter data using fields that don’t contribute headers or axes to the table. This is called an external filter. All filtered fields display on the Filters shelf.

Pages shelf

The Pages shelf lets you break a view into a series of pages so you can better analyze how a specific field affects the rest of the data in a view. When you place a dimension on the Pages shelf you are adding a new row for each member in the dimension. When you place a measure on the Pages shelf, Tableau automatically converts the measure into a discrete measure.

C. Toolbar — Use the toolbar to access commands and analysis and navigation tools.

D. View — This is the canvas in the workspace where you create a visualization (also referred to as a “viz”).

E. Click this icon to go to the Start page, where you can connect to data.

F. Side Bar — In a worksheet, the sidebar area contains the Data pane and the Analytics pane.

G. Click this tab to go to the Data Source page and view your data.

H. Status bar — Displays information about the current view.

I. Sheet tabs — Tabs represent each sheet in your workbook. This can include worksheets, dashboards, and stories.

Marks card

Tableau displays data using marks, where every mark corresponds to a row (or a group of rows) in your data source. Add context to the visualization by encoding marks with color, size, shape, text, and detail. Marks can be represented using lines, bars, shapes, maps and so on. The type of mark you use and the mark properties are controlled by the Marks card.

In this example, three different fields have been dragged to different properties in the Marks card. Segment is on Color, Region is on Shape, and Quantity is on Size.

When you drag fields to the view, the data are displayed using marks. Each mark represents the intersection of all of the dimensions in the view. The inner fields on the Rows and Columns shelves determine the default mark type. For example, if the inner fields are a measure and a dimension, the default mark type is a bar. You can manually select a different mark type using the Marks card dropdown menu.

For example, in a view with Region and Year dimensions, there is a mark for every combination of those two dimensions (East 2011, East 2012, West 2011, West 2012, etc.). In this case, the mark type is set to Text, so the Abc represents the location where the value for the text mark will appear — once a measure such as Sales is added to the view.