#VizLikeAnArtist - Hub and Spoke Maps

by Ben Moss

#VizLikeAnArtist

Welcome to my first ever blog! I am going to title this series #VizLikeAnArtist and in it I am going to teach you some neat tricks that will help you maximise your tableau output to ensure your users have the best possible experience when interacting with your work.

Have you ever wondered how to create hub and spoke maps in Tableau using Excel data, without the complexities of working with SQL? Well in this video blog I will guide you through that process!

In The Data School last week, we worked on a project looking at the refuge crisis and I thought what better way to represent this data set than by looking at routes of immigration across the world (you can see my finished viz here: 19 Million Project).

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to create such maps, and the tutorials I found online all focused on using SQL and Legacy connections, which as an individual with no SQL experience, and limited (although ever expanding!) Tableau experience, this frightened me and probably will many others.

So I decided to embark on finding out how to create a hub and spoke chart SQL free. Fortunately Coach Kriebal guided me through this last week, and now I am going to pass on my (mainly his) wisdom to you. So have no fear, Ben Moss is here.

This tutorial is split into two sections depending on whether or not you already have latitude and longitude coordinates in your data set, if you have then move straight to the second video. If you have not then the first part of this tutorial will show you how to use Tableau to incorporate these values into your data set in Excel.

The second part looks at how to transform our data in Excel so that Tableau can read your data correctly before moving onto how we actually create a hub and spoke map in Tableau.

There is also a third (bonus as I am labelling it) video which focuses on a couple of tips and tricks that will help bring your newly created hub and spoke map to life.

The workbooks I used in both parts of this demonstration can be found here:

Part 1 (no coordinate data): Hub and Spoke Workbook – Part 1

Part 2 (with coordinate data): Hub and Spoke Workbook – Part 2

Hub and Spoke Charts – Part 1

Hub and Spoke Chart – Part 2

Hub and Spoke Charts – Part 3

Thanks for watching, your feedback is appreciated and if you have any queries please comment below.

Ben

@benjnmoss

#VizLikeAnArtist

Thu 25 Feb 2016

Wed 24 Feb 2016