What is it and how does it work?
Tableau is a powerful data visualization platform that enables users to explore and understand their data through interactive and visually engaging dashboards. As a part of the NationBuilder Insights suite, Tableau provides the tools to transform raw data into clear, meaningful insights that drive action and inform decision-making.
NationBuilder Insights allows users to:
Access Nation Data: Tableau integrates with NationBuilder’s data sources, so users can visualize key information about their Nation, such as supporter demographics, email engagement rates, fundraising data, and more.
Visualize and Analyze Data: By using Tableau’s rich visualization capabilities, users can identify trends, track metrics, and gain insights into areas like membership growth, volunteer engagement, and event attendance. Dashboards make it easier to spot emerging patterns and evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns.
Create Interactive Dashboards: Unlike static reports, Tableau dashboards are highly interactive, allowing users to filter views, drill down into specific details, and engage with the data directly. This interactivity provides a deeper understanding of the Nation data and makes it easy to tailor visualizations to the needs of different audiences.
Make Data-Driven Decisions: Dashboards help organizations make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions. For example, a campaign manager could use a dashboard to track the success of a recent donation drive, identify which regions saw the most engagement, and adjust future strategies accordingly.
Dashboards in Tableau are essentially collections of visual elements (charts, tables, graphs) displayed on a single screen. Within NationBuilder Insights, dashboards are specifically designed to:
Bring Together Different Data Points: For example, a dashboard might combine supporter demographics with donation history and volunteer activity to give a complete picture of community engagement.
Provide Real-Time Access to Key Metrics: Dashboards refresh on a regular schedule, ensuring users always have up-to-date information at their fingertips. This allows teams to monitor changes over time, such as shifts in supporter activity or email open rates.
Support Team Collaboration: Dashboards make it easy for teams to share insights and work toward common goals. For instance, a political organization could share a dashboard tracking voter outreach efforts across different districts, helping the team align their outreach strategies and allocate resources effectively.
What’s included?
A NationBuilder Insights license includes:
A Tableau Server site
Explorer user(s), with the ability to create and modify projects and workbooks
Viewer user(s), who can view reports and data visualizations assigned to them
Dozens of predefined data sources that extract the most commonly used data from the Nation’s database
A set of Pre-Built Dashboards with predefined visualizations
Additional users can be added anytime, and the Professional Services team is available for consultations to create custom data sources, dashboards, or reports.
Integration and refresh frequency
Insights draws data from the Nation using database backup copies, which are cleaned and prepared through Tableau Prep, another tool in the Tableau suite specifically designed to serve as a connector and data wrangler, ensuring that data sources are always accessible and well-organized.
How to access your Insights instance
Access to the Insights account is available through the dedicated URL: https://login.insights.nationbuilder.com/#/signin. Simply enter your credentials to log in.
For security reasons, we recommend the following:
Do not share login credentials among team members. Each member should have their own personal account.
Change your password regularly, and immediately update the initial password provided by the NationBuilder staff.
To change your password, go to Account Menu > My Account Settings. We recommend regenerating a secure password every three months. Passwords can be generated and safely stored using a password manager.
Overview of the user interface
Home: The main landing page in Tableau. It provides an overview of your recent activity, shortcuts to commonly used features, and quick access to your dashboards, reports, and data sources.
Favorites: A collection of dashboards, workbooks, or views that you've marked as favorites. This section allows you to easily access the content you use frequently. To mark an item as Favorite, click the star icon next to the item name.
Recents: Displays a list of the dashboards, views, and other content you've accessed most recently. It helps you quickly pick up where you left off.
Shared with me: Contains all the content shared with you by other users. It’s a convenient way to see what reports and dashboards others want you to review or collaborate on. To share a file with a member of your team, go to the explore section, click on the three dots next to the name of the item, select “Share,” and start typing the name of your teammate in the text field. Your colleague will receive a notification and will be able to view the shared item in their “Share with me” section.
Personal Space: A private area where you can create, store, and organize your own dashboards, reports, and other content without sharing it with others. Explorers can eventually share their content with other members of the team.
Collections: Customizable groupings of content that allow you to organize dashboards, workbooks, and views around a particular theme or project. You can create collections to suit your specific needs and add relevant content to them. You can add to a collection both items owned and shared with you by other users.
Explore: This section lets you browse through all available content in Tableau, such as dashboards, workbooks, and data sources. You can use filters and search options to find specific content across your organization.
Key concepts
Project: A folder-like structure in Tableau that helps organize and categorize content such as workbooks, data sources, and other projects. Projects group related content, making it easier to manage permissions and organize resources by team or subject matter.
Workbook: A file in Tableau that contains one or more sheets (dashboards, worksheets, and stories). It’s similar to a spreadsheet in that it holds all the components of your data visualization work, including data connections, visualizations, and layouts. Workbooks are the primary way users save and share their Tableau projects.
Dashboard: A collection of multiple views and visualizations (or sheets) arranged on a single screen to present a comprehensive overview of data. Dashboards can include different types of charts, tables, filters, and other interactive elements, allowing users to see multiple perspectives and comparisons in one place, facilitating deeper insights and storytelling.
Sheet: A term in Tableau that can refer to three different types of content: a Worksheet, Dashboard, or Story. In general, a sheet is any individual page within a workbook. A Worksheet contains a single view, like a chart or table, while a Dashboard combines multiple views. A Story is a sequence of dashboards or sheets that presents data in a narrative form.
Story: A sequence of sheets that together tell a data-driven story. Stories can convey insights, highlight trends, and present findings step-by-step. They typically consist of multiple sheets or dashboards and guide viewers through a narrative with data, making it easier for them to follow and understand your analysis.
Dimensions: Fields in Tableau that typically contain qualitative, categorical data, such as names, dates, or geographic locations. They are often used to segment, group, and add context to data, forming the rows or columns of a visualization and helping to break down measures into smaller, more understandable pieces.
Measures: Fields that contain quantitative, numerical data. They can be aggregated to calculate values such as sums, averages, or counts. Measures often represent what you want to analyze, such as sales, profit, or quantity. In a visualization, measures are usually plotted on the axes to create charts and graphs.