06 March 2014

The easiest and cheapest way to learn Tableau

My tips for people who want to learn Tableau without any budget :)

1. Training & Tutorials on Tableau's website

Select 'On Demand', you have to create an account but it's free and you don't need to be a Tableau customer. The tutorials are selected into few groups Intro, Advanced, Chart Types, Server. It's the best place to start learning.

Check 'Live Online' out too.

Tableau's Knowledge Base – hundreds of tutorials are divided by topic.
Each short tutorial gives answer to a problem, it's good to check the titles and do tutorials which can be useful in your work. The list look like a never ending story but no reason to be in stress as most of things you will learn doing 'On Demand' tutorials.

2. Just work with Tableau :)

Even if you have no budget for this purpose you can grab some open data and Tableau Public, which is free, and keep working with data. Some options are available only in Tableau Desktop but still majority of the most important options are present in both versions.

3. Tableau Forum

You can ask questions there, which are answered by Tableau employees and users. It's also worth to check if others had the same problems as you, then there is a chance that the answer is already waiting for you.

The forum is divided by topics.


4. Twitter and other social networks

Mark your question-tweet with hash tag #Tableau.
Using this hash tag you can show off your Tableau works, check data visualizations and tutorials others have done.

From my experience I've learn that Twitter is the most popular social network among Tableau users. Each Tableau conference is broadcasted on Twitter, Twitter users can vote for their favourite data visualization in contests organized by Tableau.

LinkedIn
You can join groups devoted to Tableau, I use:
- Tableau Public Visualizations (a subgroup of Tableau Software Fans and Friends)

5. Blogs

Google it, it's simple as that, in this way you can find the answer on your problem on forums, blogs of Tableau's sales agents or just some people like me :)

My list of blogs with tutorials devoted to Tableau and data visualizations created in Tableau. 


The tips that I've posted don't demand any money, of course books and paid courses are great resources too.


There is also a hard way to learn Tableau, you have to contact with me and I will explain you how to use the software in a language that you don't speak lol  

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