My Skill Lab
Data ScienceBeginner

Tableau for Data Visualization

Build interactive dashboards that answer business questions.

Taught by Niraj Thapa · Analytics Lead

What you'll learn

  • Connect Tableau to files and databases and configure joins, relationships and data types
  • Explain dimensions, measures, discrete and continuous fields and use the Marks card deliberately
  • Build bar, line, map, scatter and highlight-table views that match the question asked
  • Write calculated fields and table calculations for ratios, running totals and rankings
  • Use FIXED and INCLUDE Level of Detail expressions for per-customer and per-order metrics
  • Assemble sheets into an interactive dashboard with filters and actions and publish it to Tableau Public

About this course

Learn Tableau from your first connection to a published interactive dashboard. This beginner Tableau course is for analysts, students and business users who want to turn spreadsheets and databases into visual answers rather than static charts. You will connect to Excel, CSV and database sources, understand dimensions and measures and the Marks card, build bar, line, map and scatter views, write calculated fields and table calculations, learn the basics of Level of Detail (LOD) expressions, and assemble sheets into dashboards with filters, actions and a story. Everything except the database connections works in the free Tableau Public, so no licence is needed to follow along; Tableau Desktop and Tableau Cloud users follow the same steps. No prior Tableau experience is needed and there is no coding. By the end you will have a published dashboard for your portfolio and the visual thinking behind it.

Course content

6 lessons
  1. 1The Tableau Landscape and Connecting DataPublic, Desktop and Cloud, the workbook structure, and your first clean data connection.Preview
  2. 2Dimensions, Measures and the Marks CardHow Tableau decides what to draw from the fields you place on shelves.
  3. 3Building the Core ChartsBars, lines, maps, scatter plots and highlight tables, each matched to the question it answers.
  4. 4Calculated Fields and Table CalculationsCreate new measures and dimensions, and compute running totals, differences and ranks in the view.
  5. 5Level of Detail ExpressionsFIXED, INCLUDE and EXCLUDE for metrics at a granularity different from the view.
  6. 6Dashboards, Actions, Stories and PublishingAssemble sheets into an interactive dashboard, add filters and actions, and publish to Tableau Public.