Tableau Desktop : Hands-on Dashboards + SQL for Beginners

Explore the differences between Tableau and Excel, and learn how data manipulation and visualization flow from Excel into Tableau, including workbook structure and dimensions and measures.

Compare Excel and Tableau, highlighting pros and cons, differences in units of operation, dimensions and measures, workbooks and dashboards, data updates, performance, and sharing, with an Excel dashboard lab.

Connect Excel as a data source in Tableau and clean headers with data interpreter. Rename columns, pivot year data into a single dimension, and package the workbook for export.

Explore the fundamentals of SQL for building and querying relational data, including joining multiple tables with inner and left joins, and cautions about cross joins.

Explore how to combine tables using left, right, full and cross joins in SQL, handle unmatched records with nulls, and understand the impact on result sizes in Tableau dashboards.

Troubleshoot data issues caused by joins, including undercounting, overcounting, and not counting, by examining left, right, and inner joins and their effects on records.

Learn how Tableau generates SQL by defining relationships, choosing left or right joins, and using live connections to optimize queries across more than 50 data engines.

learn to write simple select statements, apply where filtering to reduce data, aggregate with sum and count, group by categories, and sort results to analyze large datasets efficiently.

Review SQL concepts in Tableau, including inner, left, right, full, and cross joins, plus troubleshooting data issues and applying aggregation, group by, filtering, and order by.

Explore how to create and manage Tableau data sources, including semantic layers, on-the-fly SQL, relationships, extracts, and security, to optimize dashboards and performance.

Learn to build a Tableau data source, organize dimensions and measures, create calculations, optimize performance with extracts, and apply basic security and formatting practices for dashboards.

Learn the four step dashboard design process—validate, analyze, design, and optimize—to create complete, accurate dashboards with charts, grid layouts, and interactivity.

Explore data validation and analysis for dashboards by verifying record counts, joins, and completeness, detecting outliers, and applying normalization such as purchasing power parity to add context.

Learn to design effective dashboards by using focal points and a three-by-three or larger grid, placing key KPIs front and center, with flexible filters and branding in Tableau.

Learn to craft dashboards with clean data ink, focus points, consistent layout and interactions, thoughtful typography, and a restrained color palette for responsive, human-centered visuals.

Explore 100 unique Tableau charts from the community, inspect dashboards in Tableau Public, and learn data prep tips while appreciating the art of possible chart designs.

Explore the dashboard design process from data validation and metric selection to analysis and optimization, illustrated with a lab featuring 100 unique Tableau dashboards.

Explore advanced Tableau concepts through practical demos on order of operations, data flow, blending, drill down, shape, parameter, level of detail, sets, groups, bins, and forecasting.

Trace the data flow from source to final rendering in Tableau, covering extracts, Hyper files, filters, context, sets and blends, and level of detail expressions to optimize performance and granularity.

Learn how Tableau blends data from multiple sources after dimension processing, using linking to map countries with a separate Excel file and define primary and secondary data sources.

Explore Tableau drilldown techniques by building and navigating hierarchies—from country to state to city—and viewing underlying data to drive interactive visualizations.

Apply custom shapes and images to dashboards in Tableau Desktop, using a custom shape palette, png transparency, and dual-axis charts to personalize data visuals.

Explore level of detail calculations in Tableau, using fixed, include, and exclude expressions to compute metrics like maximum weight across dimensions, and build dynamic titles with filters.

Explore how median and mean respond to outliers, and use the 1.5 interquartile range and box plots in Tableau to identify outliers and summarize data.

Learn how to integrate Tableau with Python using TabPy, configure server-based Python calls, and perform sentiment analysis on Twitter with TextBlob to build interactive dashboards.

Configure your Tableau Desktop to connect to TabPy by setting up the analytics extension connection, testing it, and addressing permissions and credential file paths.

Explore tweet sentiment analysis by sending text to a tap by server or using local Python analytics, then visualize sentiment with a dot plot in Tableau.

Build a professional dashboard by integrating data sources, applying relationships, and using context filters. Use Mapbox visuals, box and whisker plots, and branding elements to enhance the business intelligence output.

Build a professional Tableau dashboard by combining secure data and an Excel source, creating line charts by region and a box-and-whisker plot with outliers, maps, and labels.

Learn to integrate the Mapbox API into a Tableau dashboard, create and format a country-level spending visualization, customize map styles, and assemble charts to tell a cohesive story.

Publish your dashboard to Tableau public to share with the world, save to Tableau public, and explore Tableau online or on-premise server options for private hosting and security.

Explore additional Tableau resources to deepen data visualization skills, dashboard design, and data source optimization. Engage with the Tableau community on Twitter to learn and share insights.