Mapbox is a site that provides custom map templates, allows you to customise their templates, and integrate these templates with other programs. In this blog post, I’ll be running through step-by-step how to use Mapbox Studio and bring in your custom maps into Tableau.
Mapbox Studio
The first step to creating custom maps is to sign up to Mapbox Studio. After this, you’ll be presented with the home page.
Mapbox Studio Home Page
This is where you can access all of your previously designed styles. To start a new design, click on the ‘New Style’ button.
Mapbox New Style options
We can see multiple templates available as a base, or the option of starting with a blank canvas. After choosing a template (we’ll choose the Monochrome design for this tutorial), choose a variation and click ‘Customise’.
This will bring you to the editor screen.
Mapbox Studio Editor page
From here, play around with colours, details, and typography to create your ideal design. I won’t be running through the nitty-gritty as the process is fairly intuitive — play around with the options and once you’re settled, click ‘Publish’.
Mapbox Publish Box
‘Publish as new’ to create a new style, or simply click ‘Publish’ to overwrite the existing design. Next, click on ‘Share’.
At this point the goal is to grab a URL to direct Tableau to. From the ‘Share’ menu click on ‘Third Party’. Change WMTS to Tableau and then click on the blue ‘Copy’ button next to the Integration URL to copy the link.
Mapbox Share options
Tableau
Open your file in Tableau that has the geographic data you plan to map. Under Maps > Background Maps > Add Mapbox Map… , paste the link you copied into the URL text field. Name the style whatever you’d like in the ‘Style’ field, and then click OK.
Tableau Add Map
Drag your geographical data into the view and you will now see your data is plotted on your new map!
Tableau Final Map
Adding Mapbox maps to Tableau is simple, allowing you to further customise the design of your visualisation.
If you want to explore my previous blog posts, click here to see how to map basketball shots in Tableau, use spatial tools in Alteryx, and more!
Author: Joshua Verbeek
Josh completed a Bachelor of Psychological Science in 2021, with a focus on research. He discovered a great passion for analytics through the degree. Following graduation, he joined a Market Research graduate program working in data engineering. His decision to join the Data School resulted from a desire to perform analyses, gain insights and communicate results in a visually engaging way. Having previously studied and worked within Graphic Design, Josh is particularly interested in the way data is visualised and presented.