A GIS file utilizes a standard format to encode geographic data. There are many GIS applications that use various flavors of this format. One popular version (or flavor) is the shape file format developed by ESRI. As of this writing, Tableau can directly read the following shape files:
- ESRI
- MapInfo
- KLM
- GeoJSON
- TopoJSON
For some shape files, there is a constraint to have other files in the same directory, in order for Tableau to process them. Please check out the Online Help for more information: https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/maps_shapefiles.htm.