Tableau Server Interview Questions - Top 150 Interview Questions on Tableau

Hello guys,

Go through the Previous blogs:

http://tableaulab.blogspot.in/2017/07/tableau-interview-questions-i-my.html 

http://tableaulab.blogspot.in/2017/08/top-100-tableau-interview-questions.html

Hope the previous questions are helpful! Today I am going to share all the questions on Tableau Server.

        

1.     What is Tableau Server?

2.     What is the difference between tableau server and tableau online?

3.     How to publish a workbook to a tableau server?

4.     Where do you publish a workbook to the tableau server? Or what is a project in tableau server?

5.     What are all the components available in tableau server? (For e.g. Site, groups, projects, users, workbooks, data sources, scheduling, permissions, performance tuning, monitoring) Try to understand each of these

6.     How do you give permissions to a workbook to a user?

7.     How many levels of securities in tableau server?

8.     What are all the different roles of permission in tableau server?

9.     How do you take back up from a tableau server?

10.  What are the different server processes in tableau?

11.  How the tableau permissions or security works from the time the user logged in? Or what is the order of execution of different securities in the backend?

12.  What if the server goes down or not working suddenly? What is the first step you will take?

13.  How can we manage the alerts when the server went down?

14.  Where the server will be installed? What is the basic requirement or configuration for installing a server?

15.  Have you ever done the installation process for a server? If yes, How?

16.  Let us consider I have given editor permission to a project for a user where they can be able to edit, publish, save and download. Now one workbook from that project has been shared with that user and the user is not able to view any data? How can you handle this situation?

17.  Have you ever done ad-hoc reporting in tableau? How it can be achieved?

18.  Is it possible to do development in tableau?

19.  What edit option for a workbook in tableau server does?

20.  What is the difference between doing development on the server and in desktop?

21.  Can we publish data sources to tableau?

22.  Let us consider I have one workbook saved on my local machine with a live connection to an excel (saved locally). And we are publishing the workbook to the server. Now consider we are changing the data in the excel sheet (in local machine) and saving it. The workbook has been refreshed and remember it is on the live connection with the excel sheet.

The question is once the published workbook is refreshed will the changes done in the excel be reflected in that workbook? If yes/no, How and why?

23.  Can performance monitoring possible on the server? How?

24.  Have you ever faced timeout error? How can you handle?

25.  How do you schedule an extract in tableau?

26.  How do you schedule a normal workbook on the live connection in tableau?

27.  How do you automate reports using tableau?

28.  What are the platforms Tableau server can run on?

29.  Is it possible to connect to different instances/Site from the same server as different data sources? For eg: one data source needs to be connected to site A of XYZ server and one more data source needs to be connected to site B of XYZ server in the same workbook. Is that possible?

30.  Is it possible to change user authentication within one single installation?

31.  How to handle giving permissions to the multiple users?

32.  What are the new features in Tableau Server 10? Have you used any of the updated features?

33.  What are the challenges you have faced in tableau server?

34.  Have you ever embed tableau URL with any other applications or process?

35.  Explain Tableau Server Architecture?

36.  Consider a published workbook URL is given to the user. Explain me the architecture and flow what will happen in the backend from the time the User start clicking on the given link

37.  Have you ever used TABADMIN? If yes, Make sure you know the basic commands at least and the syntax.

38.  Have you ever done any migration in tableau (for eg: Moving from DEV server to PRODUCTION server)? If yes, How?

39.  Will the user filters/permissions given at the desktop level affect the permissions at the site level?

40.  How to create empty extracts in tableau? What is the use of it?

41.  What is the difference between a full refresh and incremental refresh in tableau?

42.  Is the version control possible in tableau server?

43.  How do you achieve row level security?

44.  What is the primary and secondary node in tableau server? Have you ever worked on it?

45.  How to create a backup in tableau server?

46.  What are subscriptions in tableau? What it does?

47.  Have you ever used the Tableau mobile app? How do you interact with the content of published workbook in tableau mobile?

48.  Have you ever used any API’s in tableau? What is meant by API?

49.  How to upgrade the tableau server?

50.  Where to find the tableau server log files? Have you ever analyzed it?

See you with more questions!!

Top 100 Tableau Interview Questions

Hello Everyone,

Hope so my first blog would have helped someone. Here I am continuing the next set of questions.

First blog : http://tableaulab.blogspot.in/2017/07/tableau-interview-questions-i-my.html



Note: Some of the questions which I have provided would not be applicable for the person who did not experience the particular option till now. You can frankly tell in your interview that you did not get a chance to work on the same. But learning increases your scope 😊


1.     What are the different types of filter in tableau? Purpose of each filter

2.     What is the order of execution of filters in tableau?

3.     Have you ever used context filter? When and Why? Pros and Cons of context filter?

4.     The difference between a normal filter or cascading filter and a context filter?

5.     What is the Data source filter? Advantages and disadvantages of using it.

6.     How to create a cascading filter? Say for ex: Consider there is a region filter next I want to see a filter on the country. But if I select a particular region only the country corresponding to the region should appear? How?

7.     How to apply a common apply button for all filters at once? For e.g. After selecting the data from two or three filters I need to click on a common apply button and then the selection should apply for the view.

8.     How to make a reset button on which all the filter should get reset at once?

9.     How do you use Lookup function and filters together? Is there any impact of using a filter when writing a lookup function?

10.  Will filters work when we do data blending?

11.  How to get a cross data source filters? Is it possible in tableau?

12.  What is the Difference between the quick filter and Normal filter in tableau?

13.  What is user filter? How to use it?

14.  What is row level Security? What are all the ways to achieve row level security in tableau?

15.  How to you check performance in tableau? Is there any tool used for it?

16.  Get to know about the complete performance recording option in the tableau.

17.  Consider a scenario you have published a workbook to the server and a user is opening it.
            It takes 3 to 5 minutes to open the workbook and the user is not happy about it. What is the         first step you take to improve the performance?
          (see this article for answering this question: )

20.  What is meant by extract and how to take an extract?    

21.  Where does the extract file gets saved on the system memory?

22.  What is the difference between live and extract connection?

23.  On which the performance will be better?  Live or Extract? Explain the situation where you would like to go for live and extract?

24.  How to schedule an extract in tableau?

25.  Can we do an incremental refresh in tableau? How?

26.  What is the use of aggregation when creating extract?

27.  What is meant by data blending? How do you do it? What is the use of it?

28.  Can we join excel and some data source together in tableau?

29.  How do you join two different data sources?

30.  What type of join does data blending perform? Or what is the difference between doing a join and data blending in tableau?

31.  What are all the problems you have faced during data blending?

32.  Have you ever noticed * mark when pulling some columns after data blending? Why?

33.  How do you create relationships between two data sources on blending?

34.  How many charts are there in tableau?

35.  Have you ever build some chart apart from the default charts? What was it? How did you do?

36.  Consider a scenario where I have two measures say my profit and sales. What kind of chart do you prefer to show the profit and sales by country? You are also supposed to use filters.

37.  What is the use of scatter plot? When do you use it?

38.  Mostly try to know about all the charts and what kind of scenario it can be useful

39.  Have you ever build pie or doughnut chart in tableau? If yes, be sure about how to do it. If no, learn before you go for the interview

40.  What are the most frequent charts you have always used? On which scenarios?

41.  Consider a scenario that I have 100+ products for which I have sales, target, profit for last 3 years for 4 regions and 50+ countries. The products are grouped already in certain groups. Now I need to build a single dashboard which will give me the details about all these for the current year by default along with the history. The users of these dashboards are Vice president, Product Managers, Managers, Sales executives. The question is

·       What kind of view do you prefer to show all these in a single chart or multiple charts?
·       When different users’ login the dashboard should be in such a way that it should be according to their roles. Say for e.g. when it is vice president it should be an overview of how the sales and profit going YOY for all products in various regions. But for a sales executive, it is something like what is the sales and the target for what particularly he is assigned.

Note: Product are not supposed to be in filters because they cannot filter one product after the other to see the results

42.  Have you ever used maps in tableau? What will you do if some country/province (any geographical entity) is missing and displaying a null when you use map view.

43.  What is meant by custom geocoding? Have you ever used custom Geocoding in tableau? If yes, how do you do it?

44.  Which map service does tableau use? (Open street map contributors) Is it possible to import 3^rd party maps in tableau? How to do it? WMS servers?

45.  What are all the widgets available in tableau window?


46.  How do you show data refresh date time, username dynamically in tableau?

47.  How to show a dynamic title in tableau? For e.g. the parameter value should be displayed as title by selecting a parameter


48.  Have you used dual axis in tableau? What kind of scenario?

49.  What is measure values and measure names in tableau mean? What kind of scenario will it be used?

50.  Have you ever noticed the marks pill (Not the Marks card) on the left bottom corner in tableau? What does it mean? What kind of significance we can make by considering it


See you soon with more questions!

Tableau Interview Questions I - My experience

Hi Guys,

Glad to connect !!

I am one of the Tableau Lover :) Started my career as an IT professional in a Leading IT firm. My experience is into Business intelligence especially in Tableau and few other tools as well. 

There is no concept like there are some fixed interview questions for tableau. It completely depends on how you take it forward from the beginning of the interview. Here am listing few questions which I have faced in interviews throughout my journey.

Some of the questions may look silly and may include something general related to functional / Project along with Tableau because that is what I experienced :)

The first and foremost questions which we are prepared with is 

Tell me about your Project / Experience. (Might not be applicable for freshers. They should share about themselves)

1.    What do you think about Tableau compared to other tools?

2.    What is Data Visualization?

3.    Is tableau a reporting tool or data visualization tool?

4.    What are all the different products of tableau?

5.    What are the versions of Tableau you have worked so far? (whenever you have worked in multiple version you should be very sure about the major updates of the versions)

6.    What are all the different file versions of Tableau?

7.    Have you ever worked in Tableau public? If yes, what is the purpose of it and what have you built in Tableau Public?

8.    What is Tableau Online and Tableau Server and the difference?

9.    What is the major update in Tableau 9x over 8x or Tableau 10x over 9x?

10. Among the update brought in the recent version what you found interesting and what have used so far?

11. What is Tableau bookmark and how it differs from the Tableau workbook (.twb or .twbx)

12. Consider opening a bookmark file and a Tableau workbook. Are they one and the same? If yes, then what is the use of bookmarks?

13. Are you aware of Gartner magic quadrant for BI platform? If yes, who are all the leaders in 2016?

14. What is the major challenge in the project you have found so far?

15. what is the major challenge in tableau you have found so far?

16. What are the most complex reports you have built? (when you are answering this question get hands-on on that report. They might ask you to do)

17. What are all the difficulties you faced with larger data sets?

Let's get into more technical :)

18. What is the difference between sets and groups? (often asked in interview)

19. when do you use sets and when do you use groups? (explain a scenario)

20. what are combined fields in the tableau and when it will be useful?

21. Can you use sets/groups in a filter? if yes, why and how? If no, why?

22. Can you use sets/groups/parameters in calculated fields? if yes, why and how? If no, why?

23. What is the difference between parameters and filters?

24. When do you use parameters? (Probably you should be able to explain a scenario)

25. What are the limitations of parameters?

26. Can we do multi-select in parameters?

27. Can same parameters be used across multiple data sources?

28. Can we include data from the fields in parameters instead of hard coding? How?

29. How to create Top N and Bottom N values in tableau? If you are explaining using sets they might ask is there any other way to do it?

30. How to pass database parameters?

31. How to use nested parameters and their pros and cons?

32. What is a calculated field?

33. How to achieve YOY values (For e.g. YOY sales or profit) in tableau? If your answer is using quick table calculation then they might expect for another way to do it (using calculated field)

34. Get an idea as how to calculate YTD, MTD, YOY, MOM, Previous year sales at a given period (especially using calculated field as there are lot of ways provided Tableau experts)

35. what is the Rank function in Tableau? (go through all the 5 rank functions in tableau-like Rank, Rank_dense, Rank_combined etc.,)

36. What is the index function in tableau and the difference between rank and index functions?

37. There are some scenarios like they may ask what is the result of all 5 rank functions given a number say (1,3,4,3)

38. what is Lookup function and have you used it so far? how and when?

39. How do you manage to use filters when you are using lookups? (questions might be in different forms)

40. What is a dimension and a measure in tableau?

41. How tableau automatically identifies a dimension and a measure? what is the criteria?

42. Have you ever noticed that some dimension appearing as a measure in tableau? why?

43. What are the blue and green pills highlighted across dimensions and measures?

44. What is discrete and continuous in tableau?

45. How to change a field from discrete to continuous and what is the significance?

46. Is date (Full date) a discrete or continuous value?

47. How many columns by default tableau will accept in a report? If we want more is there any way to change it? (this question might be asked in different forms)

48. How to create a bin? what is the purpose?

49. what is aggregation and de-aggregation and the significance?

50.  What is the maximum number of tables we can join in tableau?

I know that I have not covered lot of topics which I will be covering in my next post :) I will try to cover some scenario based questions as well which I have experienced. Stay Tuned :)