_edited_edited.png)
“By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes. A sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.” – David McCandless
In Tableau images play a key role when analyzing any kind of data .For example when you are visualizing sales data of a store you can add powerful images for different kinds of furniture by adding a picture to the sales worksheet. You can add images dynamically to your worksheets and use them to add visual details.
GATHER DATA AND IMAGE SOURCE
Images URLs can be assigned to field in dimensions. Some mandatory points to be followed before assigning images to the desired fields.
Image files should be like .jpg,.jpeg,.png
Image file should be of size 128kb and can 500 images per field
we should ensure URL begins with HTTP or HTTPS
Lets see some sample -superstore dataset with images
Before beginning your analysis, you must connect to your data and then set up the data source.
Open tableau desktop ,add data source by clicking the add source button.
select the excel option and select source as sample-superstore
after loading the excel file. drag tables to form the relations between tables
Drag the orders and people and returns tables to the worksheet
make the relations from regions in orders table to regions in people table
make the relation from order id in orders table to order id in returns table
your data will be mapped with the fields in the same way and the worksheet will be loaded. Further select the sheet1 in the sheet tab and all the fields of the tables will be loaded in the following way.
select the fields and map the fields which we want to analyze.
Here we are selecting product name ,product URL and sales fields .
Sample:
Product Name | Product URL | Sales |
Apple Ear pods with remote and mic | https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1585565804112-f201f68c48b4?i | 252 |
Apple iphone5 | https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1533568749383-2b0bf33e53cb?ixlib | 12997 |
Apple iphone5c | https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1439853885754-b0fc182c360f?ixlib | 1340 |
Apple iphone5s | https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1529618160092-2f8ccc8e087b?ixlib | 4902 |
Assign an image role to your URLs
Connect to the data source and you can add image role to URLs in data source page or data pane in the worksheet tab
you can add from data source page :
Locate the column that has image URLs.
Right-click (control-click on Mac) the icon on the top left of the column and select Image Role > URL. The icon changes to an image icon, and your images are ready to use.
You can add from worksheet
From your worksheet, drag the Image Role field onto the Rows or Columns shelf. You can now see images along with their associated data on your viz.
Here the data with images telling you that there are more iphone5 sales.
Sharing your viz
You can export your workbooks with images and share them. Be sure that the images used in your viz are available to be viewed by everyone you share your viz with. For example, if you’re using images that are hosted on an internal server behind a firewall, be sure that everyone you share the viz with has sufficient permissions to access the images. In this example, users who view the viz while connected to the same server shouldn’t have any issues seeing the images. But users who export the viz to a PDF on a Tableau Cloud server may not be able to see the images.
If you export your workbook and your viewer attempts to open it in Tableau 2022.3 or earlier, your viewer won’t be able to see the images.
Troubleshooting tips
If you receive broken image icons instead of your images, first confirm that you have sufficient permissions to view the images (or if, for example, they're behind a firewall). Tableau must be able to access the images, and the images can't require a separate authentication to view them.
If you're sure that you have permission to view the images and they're within the size requirements, check that web images are enabled on your settings page.
In Tableau Desktop:
From your workbook, click Help in the toolbar.
Select Settings and Performance > Set Dashboard Web View Security.
Depending on the complexity of your viz, you can typically load 500 images per field. If you have a complex viz, it may default to server-side rendering. With server-side rendering, you can load 30 images per field.
If you get an error message that there are too many images in the viz, filter out images and try again.
Make sure that Enable Web Page Objects and Web Images is ticked.
Finally ,Even though if some of the images are not displaying you can check the following :
The image file is too large. Each image file must be smaller than 128 KB to render. Check your image file size and try again.
The image URL must begin with http or https Verify your URL format and try again.
The image file extension is not supported An Image Role can be assigned only to URLs that navigate to image files with .png, .jpeg or .jpg extensions. Currently, Images Role doesn't support URLs that navigate to .svg files. Verify your URL format and try again.
The image file contains bad characters
< > & \ ^ '
or the following character sequences:
.. \\. \r \n \t
Verify that your URL doesn't contain any of these characters or character sequences and try again.
All exports and export-related features are processed with server-side rendering, which allows you to load up to 30 images per field. Verify that you have fewer than 30 images per field and try again.
Thank you for reading.