New in Tableau Prep: Easier pivots, a progress indicator, and new connectors

In the December release of Tableau Prep Builder (2019.4.2), we’ve made it easier to reshape your data and enhanced the user experience when you prepare your data.

In the December release of Tableau Prep Builder (2019.4.2), we’ve made it easier to reshape your data and enhanced the user experience when you prepare your data. Also, we’re excited to introduce several new native connectors to bring in more of your data from diverse sources—you can now connect to data from Databricks, Kyvos, Qubole Presto, Alibaba AnalyticDB for MySQL, and Alibaba Data Lake Analytics. Download the latest release of Tableau Prep Builder today and give us feedback through the Community Forums.

Pivoting columns to rows just got easier

When you’ve got survey data or monthly data in columns, you have to pivot columns to get the data ready for analysis. Now you can do so directly! In any Step in the flow, just select the columns you want to pivot in the Profile Pane, then select the “Pivot columns to rows” option. Prep creates the pivot Step for you with your selected columns pivoted—it’s faster, more flexible, and keeps you in the flow. Prep also offers recommendations for columns that can be pivoted together based on scanning all the columns in your dataset so you can create large pivots with a single click.

See feedback for long-running operations

Have you wondered what Prep Builder is up to when you click a Step in the flow and the profiles take a long time to display? When you have large amounts of data or a complex flow, Prep spends more time loading data, processing transformations, and generating the profiles before they show up on your screen. We’ve introduced a progress indicator at the top of the Flow pane that keeps you informed of the status, so you get visibility into what Prep is doing behind the scenes.