Author: Phil Steffek

  • So you want to your company to buy a new piece of software… Here are the basic steps to get what you want

    Sections you should include in your project / implementation plan 1. Definition of objective / Establish Sponsors Definition of Problems to solve Identify executive sponsors and supporters 2. Requirements gathering 3. Vendor selection & trial Sign MNDAs Notes: Using the best in class or industry standard should be the default. Deviate from this guidance only […]

  • Format SQL in Sisense CDT

    This is one of those posts that’s here for my own benefit more than yours. I can never seem to google up the solution to this one so if I put it here with a title that matches what I was googling, maybe I’ll be able to google my own article. So, how do you […]

  • Tableau – Parse Parameters From URL

    Well, file this under “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Search the forums on parsing strings with Tableau and you’ll find a lot of guidance which pretty much says “don’t do it!” and “better to do it in your source!” These people are undoubtedly right. But, what if your source is an existing […]

  • SSRS: Parse parameters column from ExecutionLog

    Ever worked on a quick little project, come across what you assume is a common need and think “I’ll just google up some code that someone else has written and then be off to the races”?  Have you done this and not been able to find the code you’re looking for? Well, that was me […]

  • Tableau + Git: Ignore default directories and preference files.

    Here’s a quick little item you might find handy. If you find it annoying that git keeps showing some of your default Tableau directories and files (which would probably only happen if you change your Tableau default repository) then you can set git to exclude those files and directories when it checks for modifications. In […]

  • Tableau: Format Date As String mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm

    gah. Why is some of this stuff so challenging in Tableau?  You have a date and you want to format it as a string? Why? So you can concatenate it with another string perhaps? Maybe you’re creating a calculated field to use in a label (that’s what I was doing). Unfortunately, when you convert a […]

  • Tableau: Custom Date Range Picker

    For Tableau requirements like: Allow user to choose “Last 7 Days”, “Last 30 Days”, etc. this is your ticket. It turns out one parameter and one calculated field are all you need.

  • Tableau – Where is the path to my extract!?!

    Suppose you create an extract in your desktop version of Tableau and everything is running great. Then one of your peers casually asks “how big is that .tde file anyway?” You quickly check file explorer and discover the extract is not in the default location (What is the default path?). It seems like there should […]

  • Tableau – What is the default path for extracts?

    What is the default path for tableau extracts on a windows desktop? C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\My Tableau Repository\Datasources For example mine is: C:\Users\psteffek\Documents\My Tableau Repository\Datasources Boom.  

  • Parse pg_dump Functions and Views Into Their Own Files (GreenPlum / Postgres)

    Here’s what we wanted: Each function from our GreenPlum (aka Postgres) database scripted out into it’s own file. I think after much hacking I’ve got something working that only requires a small amount of manual intervention. For whatever reason PostgreSQL/GreenPlum doesn’t seem to have a native way to split objects into separate files. This functionality is […]