Learning Resources

Here are some of my favorite resources to help you master the art of data visualization and Tableau!

hint: (click on the green text or images for links)

Which chart type should you use?
The Graphics Continuum shows several ways that data can be illustrated individually or combined to show relationships.

Financial Times Visual Vocabulary: Tableau Edition shows every chart represented in the Financial Times Visual Vocabulary. (Created in Tableau by VizWiz Andy Kriebel in collaboration with other Tableau masters.)

From Data to Viz is a fascinating decision tree that leads you to the most appropriate graph for your data and lists common caveats you should avoid. This resource also offers the code to build the appropriate graph in R, Python, and D3.js.

Getting Started with Tableau:

Follow the activities in the Tableau Starter Kits to learn how to create visualizations and ask questions of your data using Tableau Desktop. You’ll learn how to use software, educate yourself on authoring best practices, and be inspired by the great work of others. Enjoy!

Makeover Monday:
Makeover Monday is a free weekly learning and development exercise you do with hundreds of passionate data people. Watch a video on how Makeover Monday works.

Tableau for Students:

Tableau offers free one-year Tableau licenses to students at accredited academic institutions through the Tableau for Students program. Receive free access to Tableau's entire eLearning suite once verified. Click here to learn more.

Tableau eLearning (free with Tableau for Students):
Tableau eLearning is web-based training you can consume at your own pace. Courses are interactive and designed to help you learn Tableau regardless of skill level. Curated learning paths are tied to your role and make it easy for you to learn what you need to achieve your goals.

Free Tableau Training Videos:
Tableau offers free training videos for everyone.

Tableau Role Learning Paths and Badges:
Tableau Learning Paths find the role right for you, your responsibilities, and how you use (or want to use) data. Explore the learning objectives, curriculum, and related paths that can help you achieve your learning goals.

Tableau Best Practices:

Optimize Workbook Performance: Start with databases, data, and extracts, and then focuses on things that affect your data source, your workbooks, your calculations, and visualizations. Learn how to record and analyze workbook performance and how to reduce upload times to a Tableau server.

Watch Zen Master Kevin Flerlage’s Simple Steps for Better Design awesome presentation in which he reviews 26 different ways to improve your designs in Tableau.

Visual Best Practices: Visual best practices are key to developing informative visualizations that drive your audience to act. Even a beautiful dashboard with an interesting data source could be rendered useless if your audience can’t use it to discover insights.

Visual Analysis Best Practices: A Guidebook: Bringing your visualizations from “good” to “great” takes time, patience, attention to detail, and some basic knowledge of visual analysis best practices. Luckily, Tableau has compiled an important list of techniques to get you started.

Good Enough to Great: In today’s world, successful decision-making has everything to do

with turning data insights into action. And because the goal of data

visualization is impact, not numbers, here are five ways to take your

visualizations from good to great.

Telling a Story with Data:

Data Storytelling: You have the data—but what story does the data tell? Learn about the impact of stories on human cognition, how data stories can be used to communicate with decision makers, and how your data stories can be used to impact lasting change in the world.

Storytelling with Data: In this video, Pete Misner, Principal at Canyon Creek Elementary, Cheryl Phillips, Hearst Professional in Residence at Stanford University, and Robert Kosara, Research Scientist at Tableau Software discuss the importance of creating stories with data—emphasizing emotion and interactivity.

Best Practices for Telling Great Stories: A good data story brings data and facts to life. Use this article for tips on best practices to use with Tableau's story points feature.

Mastering Tableau Calculations:

Choose the Right Calculation: Tableau has multiple forms of calculations. And for those who are new to Tableau, choosing the right type of calculation to employ for a given problem can pose a challenge.

Tips for Learning How to Create Calculations: Now that you know the difference between the types of calculations and when to use them in your analysis, how do you actually know how to create the formula for them? This is where things can get tricky.

Best Practices for Creating Calculations in Tableau: This article describes several tips and guidelines for creating efficient calculations in Tableau. These guidelines are meant to help you optimize your workbook performance. For more information about all the ways you can improve workbook performance, see the Optimize Workbook Performance series.

Create Efficient Calculations: Learn more things you can do that can improve calculation performance.

Tips for Working in Tableau's Calculation Editor : To help you become more efficient with creating and editing calculated fields in Tableau, this article lists several tips for working in the calculation editor

Tableau Knowledge Base:

Research Tableau's Knowledge Base for product support.

Tableau Webinars:

Access Tableau's library of recorded webinars and discover upcoming live streams.

Tableau Articles:

Learn about data related topics in-depth, including data visualization, business intelligence, and data-driven organizations.

Tableau Whitepapers:

Access all Tableau's whitepaper reference materials.

Tableau Cookbook:
Josh Weyburne's Tableau Cookbook is a collection of how to instructions (recipes) from the Tableau community on how to make over 53 amazing visualizations in Tableau.

Tableau Viz Gallery:

Visit Tableau's Viz Gallery Dashboard Showcase!

Color Palette Creators:

The Tableau Magic Color Palette Generator generates color palettes from an image.

Adobe Color Wheel is an amazing tool that can be used generate palette hex colors.

Icons:
Professional icons are a must have. (Google images is a good resource.)

Tableau Pre-Made Templates:

One of the best things about Tableau is the freedom to design a dashboard the way you want, however I often get asked if Tableau comes with pre-made templates for users.

Dashboard Starter Templates for Tableau Online (including Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Oracle Eloqua, Marketo, and ServiceNow)

Tableau Dashboard Templates: The Pros and the Cons Webinar (by Interworks)

Creating an Enterprise Template for Tableau Dashboards (by Interworks)

Tableau Zen Masters (These are the best Tableau users in the world):

When it comes to mastery of the Tableau platform, the desire to collaborate, and leadership within the community, Tableau Zen Masters are in a class of their own. Recognized for their contributions, they are nominated by the community and represent diverse skill sets, backgrounds, and interests from all around the world.

Tableau Ambassadors:
Tableau Ambassadors are Community Leaders who create opportunities for connection, growth, and inspiration. Ambassadors serve in one of six Tableau branches: Forums, User Groups, Academic, DataDev, Public, Social. Apply today!

Tableau Developer Program:

Explore how to customize, integrate and extend the Tableau platform to fit your organization's needs. Tableau's Developer Program gives you the training, support, resources and a connection into the DataDev community. Code with confidence and obtain a free personal development sandbox with the latest pre-release version of Tableau Online. You can also connect with Tableau engineers to get support on what you are building.

Sign up today!

Tableau Community:

The Tableau Community showcases bold thinking, problem-crunching, idea-inspiring people like you... A place where like-minded data rockstars can truly shine!

Tableau Customer Stories:

Want to get inspired? See what amazing solutions Tableau has created for organizations both big and small. (A vast collection of customer testimonial videos and articles.)