Tips for getting started in Tableau
By Junior Data Analyst, Rohail Khan
Working in an ICT industry or a consulting firm means you must stay on top of the tools and technology to fulfill the needs of your clients. When I joined White Box Analytics as an intern, the only visualisation tool I had hands-on experience with was Power BI, but I soon started to upskill in Tableau from the rest of the experienced team, as I excitedly became accustomed to it.
Initially, learning Tableau, was a different ball game altogether. I was already comfortable working with Power BI, which is a great starting point but each tool does things in different ways, so there is a learning curve to overcome. Something you can do quite easily in one tool can be painfully hard in another! However, with time and practice, things start to make sense. In today’s multitasking environment having a vast set of skills means you can succeed, work efficiently, and accomplish more.
Tips to learn and get started?
If you are a newbie in Tableau like I was, the following tips and traits can help you learn Tableau faster. There are countless resources on the web from where one can learn Tableau but the most authentic and easy way to learn is from Tableau’s own website below which has multiple free self-paced training videos:
Tableau also has an excellent and an effective community. It is highly recommended to join the Tableau Community whether you are a beginner or an expert. You can get most of your queries answered from the best in the business who use Tableau, in this way you can also stay connected with them and explore new ideas to work with.
https://community.tableau.com/s/
Another pro tip is to get on Tableau Public which is a free tool and has almost the same functionality as Tableau Desktop. Tableau Public is one of the main reasons of success of Tableau. In Tableau Public you can share your dashboards and explore dashboards from others throughout the world. In this way you can exchange ideas and get feedback on your work as well by which you can improve your skill.
Makeover Monday is a great resource for seeing how others have built their dashboards. There’s a weekly challenge to keep you on point:
https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/
Once you have mastered the tool you can also get yourself recognised by certifying in Tableau according to the level of your expertise for which you can find the details in below link.
https://www.tableau.com/learn/certification
Finally, practice makes perfect, there are open datasets on the web and one can start using them on Tableau to create and tell interactive stories to the world through data. For inspiration, check out some of White Box’s visualisations here.