Tableau Desktop Specialist + Data Analyst Certification

Download Tableau Desktop to begin the course, explore free trial options for 14 days or use Tableau Public with limited features, then open the application to start.

Connect to data sources in Tableau Desktop using Excel, JSON, text, and more. Explore the data source pane, sheets, and metadata, and compare live connections versus extracts.

Compare live connections and extracts in Tableau to understand real-time data access versus in-memory performance. Learn when to refresh extracts, save to a Hyper file, and optimize end-user dashboards.

Connect to multiple data sources by creating new data sources or adding connections under an existing data source, switching between test results and superstore within a single data source.

Explore joins and relationships in Tableau to combine data, learn when to use each, and compare joins merging in the physical layer with relationships remaining in the logical layer.

Create unions in tableau to append rows from tables with the same fields, using 2019–2021 data and a source column, and explore manual, specific, and wildcard methods.

Rename fields in Tableau to improve clarity for dashboards and colleagues. Explore three methods—right-click rename, click-and-hold to edit, and updating the data source—while noting the remote field name remains unchanged.

Create and edit aliases to rename values in a field, such as turning product category values into tech, and learn why aliases cannot be created on measures.

Discover how to assign a geographical role in Tableau, using geographical data to generate latitude and longitude for maps and identify zip codes or post codes.

Identify Tableau data types, including string, date, date/time, numerical, boolean, and geographical values, using icons, and change them via field logos, right-click menus, or the data source pane.

Learn how to set default properties in Tableau to standardize field presentation across views, including string, date, and numeric fields with comments, formats, colors, shapes, sorts, and aggregations.

Recap module one by connecting to data sources, choosing live connections or extracts, mastering joins, relationships, and unions, and adjusting field types, aliases, and geographical roles for accurate visualizations.

Create a bar chart in Tableau to compare sales across subcategories. Drag a measure to the column shelf, use show me, and format currency and axis for clear visualizations.

Create line charts in Tableau by using a measure and a date field to visualize sales and profit over time, with single and double measure charts, color, and formatting.

Learn to build a scatter plot in Tableau by plotting profit versus sales, flipping axes, splitting by order and product category, and formatting for clarity to identify outliers.

Learn to build maps in Tableau Desktop by plotting geographical data, color by sales with a diverging palette, and explore background map options and labeling to create your first map.

Create combined axis charts in Tableau Desktop to display multiple measures on a single axis, enabling comparisons of trends and correlations while saving space.

Explore building a dual axis chart in Tableau Desktop to compare profit and sales by subcategory, including axis synchronization, bar sizing, labels, and color choices.

Learn to build a stacked bar chart in Tableau Desktop, comparing sales by category with segments for consumer, corporate, and home office, including formatting and labeling.

Create a density map in Tableau by converting latitude and longitude to geographical roles, switching marks to density, and tuning color and size to reveal spatial concentrations.

Create and edit groups in Tableau to segment data, such as top performing products by profit and sales in a scatter view, and apply these groups to filters and visuals.

Learn two methods to create sets: manual inclusion of subcategories and dynamic sets based on a condition, like top five products by sum of sales. Update dynamic sets with data.

Explore hierarchies in Tableau, learn to create them with right-click, drag-and-drop, or multi-select, and drill down to subcategory and product details to control granularity in visualizations.

Master filters in Tableau to control categorical data, date values, and measures; apply top, wildcard, and condition filters, and experiment with relative dates and date ranges.

Learn how context filters in Tableau take precedence as the first applied filter, shaping the data set to optimize performance and increase flexibility for subsequent filters.

Learn data blending in Tableau to combine data from multiple sources without altering the original data set, using primary and secondary data sources, blend relationships, and create combined visuals.

Explore Tableau sorting methods, including data source order, alphabetic, field-based, manual, and nested sorts; visualize how sort choices affect a multi-dimension view, using profit and sales data.

Learn to add and customize reference lines in Tableau using the analytics pane, applying to table, pane, or cells, to reveal average and highlight top and bottom performance.

Explore quick table calculations in Tableau to add automatically computed analyses to views, including running total, difference, and percentage of total, and apply them to dual-axis visuals with synchronized axes.

Master bins and histograms in Tableau to visualize data distributions, create bins, and read counts per range, such as 60 to 70 with 16 records.

Learn to create calculated fields in Tableau using existing fields and built-in functions, covering basic arithmetic, string, and date calculations to derive metrics like profit margins and discounts.

Learn how to use Tableau parameters to dynamically adjust forecasts and end user controls, create calculated fields using the parameter, and expose views like top n products.

Explore worksheet totals in Tableau by adding column grand totals, choosing bottom placement, and using show summary to verify 2017 and 2018 profits with a profit-margin parameter.

Master Tableau fundamentals by creating bar, line, scatter, and map visualizations, exploring groups, sets, hierarchies, filters, and calculations, including bins, histograms, calculated fields, and parameters, with worksheet totals.

Explore how color enhances Tableau visualizations for categorization, visual hierarchy, and accessibility, then edit colors for measures and dimensions, choose palettes, and apply custom color codes.

Configure fonts across the workbook to follow dashboard design best practices by using format workbook for consistent font types and sizes on sheets, tooltips, and titles.

Learn how to format marks as shapes in Tableau, edit shapes with the marks card, and import shapes by placing PNGs in My Tableau Repository shapes folder and reload shapes.

Explore Tableau mark types, color, size, and text/label, and how they shape bar, line, and text tables, with color mapped to a dimension or profit.

Finish exploring Tableau mark types by applying the detail mark to add granularity without clutter, and master tooltips to customize what appears on hover, including data source and update time.

Explore how viz animations display changes in your charts, learn to configure duration and style, and see how filters and worksheets affect animations in Tableau.

Adjust size marks across charts to improve readability by changing bar thickness and spacing, line thickness, and scatter and map sizing to highlight sales insights.

Learn how to work with legends by identifying color segments, editing colors, assigning palettes, and hiding or showing legends while formatting font type, size, and alignment.

Add worksheets to a dashboard in Tableau by dragging sheets, adjusting filters and legends, and using the layout menu with outer and inner padding to optimize space.

Explore adding interactive elements to dashboards, including filters (multiple and single value dropdowns, with apply button), data highlighters for subcategories, and customizable tooltips to reveal extra insights for end users.

Learn to configure dashboard actions in Tableau, including filter, go to URL, and highlight actions. Set source and target sheets, triggers, and hover or select interactions to drive linked visuals.

Design dashboards for different device types, including phones and tablets, while keeping desktop layouts separate. Use device preview, drag visualizations, and arrange legends and filters for mobile-friendly insights.

Create a Tableau story by arranging sheets into a sequence to convey a message, using captions and text boxes for key points like sales by subcategory.

Learn how to share and publish Tableau workbooks to Tableau Public, Server, or Online, including exporting to PDF, PowerPoint, or image files.

Explore six Tableau file types, including twb, tbm, packaged workbook, dot hyper, dot tds, and dot tdsx. Learn how to save and share these files for offline use and collaboration.

View and export underlying data in Tableau to enable collaboration and validation, sharing data with colleagues via view data, order data, and CSV downloads from worksheets and data sources.

Master Tableau Desktop skills by building dashboards for multiple devices and preparing for the Tableau Desktop Specialist exam, with a focus on dimensions and measures.

Discover the differences between dimensions and measures, with dimensions as qualitative data and measures as quantitative data, and learn how they affect headers, axes, and aggregation in Tableau.

Explore how Tableau uses blue pills for discrete fields and green pills for continuous ones, and how this choice shapes charts with order date from discrete months to continuous timelines.

Explore how Tableau aggregates measures and dimensions, using sum by default, then switch to average or maximum to compare profit by category in a view.

Solidify your understanding of dimensions and measures, discrete and continuous fields, and aggregated measures as you complete this short Tableau module and progress your Tableau journey.

Select an appropriate data source by considering server, file, or database options such as Tableau Server, Excel/CSV files, Snowflake, JDBC/ODBC, and Oracle to support ad hoc analysis and publishing.

Compare live connections and extracts, noting live connections provide real-time updates but can slow dashboards, while extracts offer fast, in-memory snapshots that require refresh to show latest data.

Connect to a dot hyper file by opening a workbook, navigating to the Tableau repository data sources, and double-clicking the extract to load it as a data source for visualizations.

Connect to a relational database using MySQL as an example by installing the driver and configuring server, port, database name, and credentials in Tableau, noting SSL requirements.

Learn to use custom SQL queries to pull data from a database, filter with a where clause before loading into Tableau, and improve performance.

Connect to a data source on Tableau Cloud to access published workbooks, data sources, and dashboards; sign in to Tableau Online, select Tableau Server, and connect to a Superstore extract.

Learn how to replace a data source so visuals update instantly when swapping from 2022 data to 2023 data, saving time by avoiding rebuilds.

Evaluate data quality by examining completeness, consistency, and accuracy, and apply these checks when working in tableau, recognizing how joins and date field mismatches can create null values.

Learn practical data cleaning operations in Tableau, including filtering, renaming fields, aliasing, splitting, and combining to improve data quality and analysis readiness.

Organize fields into folders in the data pane to keep it neat and tidy, grouping dimensions, measures, and calculated dimensions and calculated measures for quick access.

Recap how joins, relationships, and unions work, then demonstrate data blending in Tableau Desktop to blend two data sources using a month-based relationship for 2023 and 2022 profits.

Tableau's data interpreter cleans non-tabular data with a single click, turning messy Excel files into a tidy tabular dataset with proper headers and no nulls.

Learn how to pivot data in Tableau to reshape wide question scores into a long format, enabling per-student comparisons and visualizations of averages and highs.

Learn how extract filters reduce data and improve performance when using extracts, then create and edit filters in the data source pane to exclude Dave.

Set up Tableau Prep to learn data transformations, cleaning and combining data with an interactive, code-free interface, and prepare for the exam by focusing on exam criteria.

Import and union four yearly orders south files in Tableau Prep using the union feature, creating a single dataset in the flow pane; finalize by selecting output.

Learn to perform joins in Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop using product ID as join key, exploring inner, left, right, and outer joins and saving as a dot hyper file.

Apply an aggregation in a Tableau flow to adjust granularity. Create a table at product category, subcategory, and product ID with profit for targeted visualizations and joins.

Apply filters at the input in Tableau Prep to limit data and improve performance. Use the filter values sheet with calculations and the changes tab to track every step.

Learn to create a pivot in Tableau Prep by importing a pivot data source from Excel, renaming fields, and outputting a hyper file that shows each student's answers per question.

Create a simple Tableau prep flow, add a union of four data sources, and output a hyper file for use in Tableau Desktop to build visualizations.

Learn how Tableau Desktop default properties govern field behavior across a workbook, covering categories, dates, and measures with default color, shape, sort, date format, and aggregation.

Explore discrete versus continuous fields in Tableau Desktop, learning when to use each for date-based line charts. Compare how discrete months aggregate sales versus continuous months reveal time-series trends.

Explore when to convert fields between dimensions and measures in Tableau, using quantity and orders examples to show categorization, aggregation, and custom visualizations.

Explore data in Tableau by building calculations in a new workbook and connecting to the Superstore data source, with an overview of calculation types for the exam.

Build Tableau date calculations by converting string dates with date parse, extracting parts with date name, adding or subtracting with date add, and using date trunk, date diff, today.

Learn how to use string functions in Tableau, including left to get first initials, len to count characters, and contains to find substrings in fields like subcategory.

Explore logical functions in Tableau, including case statements and if/else if logic, to create calculated fields that classify orders as profitable, break even, or loss, and to format profit data.

Explore number functions in Tableau, including count distinct, rank by sum of sales, and window max to compute dynamic values across the current view.

Learn how type conversion functions in Tableau convert fields between string and date, create calculated fields, and use str and date to concatenate order date with customer name.

Master aggregate functions in Tableau, learning to explicitly sum profits over sums of sales for accurate profit margins. Explore median, percentile, standard deviation, min, max, and average.

Master fixed level of detail calculations in Tableau to compute sales at a defined granularity—such as category and subcategory—independent of the view.

Learn to apply quick table calculations in Tableau, including running total, difference, percentage difference, percent of total, rank, percentile, moving average, and compound growth rate across time.

Learn to create custom table calculations in Tableau by connecting to a new data source with date and sales fields, building year-to-date and month-to-date measures with filters.

Construct custom table calculations to compute this year's and last year's sales, then derive the year over year percentage change using max year of date.

Explore index, rank (descending and ascending), and first and last in Tableau in the final lecture to rank and filter sales data with practical examples.

Learn to apply filters to dimensions and measures in Tableau, including range, at least, at most, and null and non-null values, with a focus on sum of profit.

Use context filters to run first and boost performance, then apply top filters across category and subcategory on multiple sheets, and configure data source filters.

Learn to use parameters in calculations, filters, and reference lines to dynamically adjust visualizations. Apply top N products and profit margin parameters to control metrics.

Explore how sets create dynamic groups based on the sum of sales, using custom fields to separate the top five products from the rest.

Create bins in Tableau Desktop by defining ranges to group numerical values, enabling histogram visualizations that count data points per bin, with a 1000 bin size as an example.

Construct hierarchies as tree-like dimensions ordered logically, such as product name over category, to shape visualizations. Drill down and adjust granularity with plus and minus controls for dashboards.

Recaps groups and sets in Tableau, showing two ways to group: select data points or right-click subcategory to create a group, adding it to the color shelf with a legend.

Learn how to create a symbol map in Tableau by visualizing data on a map using different shapes, such as circles or squares, and view city profits on hover.

Density maps, also known as heat maps, visualize the distribution and intensity of data points across geography, highlight clusters and outliers, illustrated with a New York rat sightings example.

Learn to build choropleth (filled) maps in Tableau by fixing unknown locations, mapping states, and coloring by profit to create clear, exam-ready visualizations.

Revisit column grand totals and learn how to enable subtotals by adding a category dimension to a subcategory table of profit and sales using the analytics pane.

recap reference lines and bands, rename sheet to totals, and show how banding from the average sales value controls gray area and edits distributions and box plots via custom menu.

Learn how to add and remove the average line in Tableau. Use the analytics pane to apply or remove the average reference line to tables, panes, or cells.

Learn to use trend lines in Tableau to visualize patterns, build a line chart, compare linear and exponential models, and read r squared and p values to interpret data trajectories.

Learn to use distribution bands in Tableau to highlight values below 50% and above 90% of the average, adjust the percentages and formatting, and add context to visualizations.

Learn forecasting in Tableau by building a line chart of profit over continuous months and applying the forecast option to predict future values, then use describe forecast for details.

Explore predictive modelling in Tableau using the two functions model quantile and model percentile to forecast future sales from historical data.

Explore creating and comparing multiple visualizations in Tableau, including pie charts, highlight tables, treemaps, bubble charts, Gantt bars, box plots, and area charts.

Review sorting options in Tableau, including ascending and descending orders, sorting by specific fields, data source order, alphabetic order, manual ordering, and nested sorts.

Learn how to organize a dashboard with layout containers, drag horizontal and vertical containers, place visualizations inside, and distribute content evenly for balanced layouts.

Explore popular dashboard objects in Tableau, tidy your dashboard by removing containers, and use text, image, and navigation tools to structure and navigate dashboards efficiently.

Explore how stories use story points to present one visualization at a time, with captions and text objects to convey a focused message distinct from dashboards.

Apply a category filter across all visualizations in a Tableau dashboard, turning it into an interactive, multi-value dropdown that updates the entire dashboard for end users.

Explore dashboard actions and their reuse from part one, reviewing how filter actions link visualizations, highlight data points on hover, and go to URL actions for logos and websites.

Explore swapping visible sheets in a Tableau dashboard using a string parameter and a calculated field. Drive visibility of the sets viz or trend viz by the parameter value.

Explore navigation buttons in Tableau to open specific sheets and switch dashboards. Change button styles between text and image, and add tooltips and borders for better presentation.

Learn how to create a menu-triggered filter action in Tableau by right-clicking data points to filter the pie chart and restore the view by selecting the bar again.

Learn to customize colors, fonts, and shapes in Tableau by importing custom shapes and palettes, editing the preferences file, and applying a categorical color palette to visuals.

Learn to add context to Tableau visualizations with annotations, using mark, point, and area options, and apply formatting to highlight data points and insights.

Master tooltips in Tableau by formatting and enriching them with data source name and data updated time, and insert a sheet to show breakdown by category within the tooltip.

Explore outer and inner padding in Tableau dashboards by applying borders and adjusting padding to demonstrate how spacing affects layout.

Remove grid lines and turn off row divider and column divider to create cleaner visualizations in Tableau, demonstrated on a bar chart of subcategory by sales.

Discover how to create device-specific dashboards in Tableau, turning off the auto-generated layout to craft custom layouts for default desktop, tablet, and phone, with generic and specific phone models.

Export packaged workbooks (.twb) containing all sheets, dashboards, calculations, and data sources to share with colleagues, and export or print to PDF or PowerPoint for selective or full workbooks.

Publish a workbook to Tableau Cloud by signing in to Tableau Online, choosing publish, and embedding data sources, then explore the default folder to view the first published workbook.

Publish a data source to Tableau Cloud to enable reuse across multiple workbooks, ensure consistency, and enable automatic refreshes, using server or data menu options with project, name, and permissions.

Configure an extract refresh schedule in Tableau Cloud for the Superstore data source, selecting weekly refresh at 9:00 in the morning London time and monitoring the status.

Publish a Tableau Prep flow to Tableau Cloud, union 2022 and 2023 datasets, add an output, and schedule a weekday 4 p.m. run while noting the safe list requirement.

Set up data alerts in Tableau Cloud to notify you when sales reach a threshold, by selecting the numeric axis, creating an alert, and configuring frequency, recipients, and visibility.

Create and manage subscriptions in Tableau Cloud to email a scheduled PDF or image snapshot of a view or entire workbook, including setup, recipients, format, and refresh timing.

Recognize your growth as a confident Tableau developer and prepare for the desktop specialist and data analyst exams with focused study and practice under pressure.