4 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting With Tableau Desktop

Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash

1. Youtube
   Find a short tutorial(40–50 mins) on Youtube to get a brief idea about Tableau Desktop. This will help you in understanding what the tool is capable of and how you are going to leverage it to steer your career.
   Install the tool from here.
2. ̶T̶a̶b̶l̶e̶a̶u̶ ̶L̶e̶a̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g Explore
   Before you start with the official training program, it’s better to look at what the community is doing. By this, you will:
   ● Know and connect with the featured authors & active users.
   ● Discover various community challenges to aid your learning.
   Also, don’t forget to check Twitter for the regular updates!!
3. Tableau Learning
   Once you have a basic idea, you are good to go ahead with various online courses available but I’d suggest you start with the official course by Tableau. It is detailed and well structured into different levels. Additionally, the practical implementation of concepts is quite helpful. After you’ve completed them, you can switch over to the learning paths to earn a digital Role Badge which can be added in your online profile.
4. Community Challenges (read: “most important”)
   There are lots of community challenges which can help you practice and implement the concepts on some real-world datasets. It not only broadens your knowledge but also helps you in building a good Tableau Public profile.
   Here’s a list of few online community challenges:
   ● Makeover Monday
   ● Iron Quest
   ● Sports Viz Sunday
   ● Project Health Viz
   ● TheSDGVizProject
   ● Workout Wednesday
   Don’t hesitate to share your work on social networks to seek feedback and improve your learning journey.

Lastly, summarizing with one of Ankur Warikoo tweet:
To start anything, start! Don’t expect any other answer. There isn’t!