Tableau for Beginners

Course description

This course is the first in a series of courses for those learning Tableau Desktop. No previous experience is required with Tableau. The journey begins here. The course starts with a review of the various Tableau products and describes what they do and how they create value when used together. The Tableau Desktop interface is carefully examined first. Then, data basics are introduced. Excel data and data extracts are used in this course. Often, data must be prepped before it can be analyzed. Several different techniques are used to prepare data. Because this is a beginner course, only basic prep is covered. Hierarchies are created to provide for drill-down and roll-up of summary data. This adds functionality to the visualizations to be created next. After covering several visualization creation techniques, an examination is made concerning what makes a good visual. The visualizations created in this course include: text tables, column charts, stacked bar charts, highlight tables, heat maps, value maps, tree maps, line charts, dual-axis line charts and scatter plots. Enhancements like titles and captions are also added. Finally, several basic dashboards are created. Dashboards can vary in terms of functionality; as such, the topic of dashboards is covered in the intermediate and advanced course as well. At each level, dashboards become more sophisticated with respect to interactivity. Stories and similar to slide shows, but with one big distinction. Each story point, or slide, is connected to data! No more static images in a presentation! The course could not be complete without creating a story! A story is created with the visuals that have been created throughout the course. This provides a satisfying place to conclude the beginner course and inspire confidence going forward for students.

Course outline