Quick Tips to Help You Get Started with Tableau

Note: As part of #TableauTipsMonth, the students of The Information Lab’s Data School are sharing their favorite quick tips.

Jules Winceslaus: Get Started with These Resources

New to Tableau? Here are three steps to help you get started.

1. Check out Tableau starter videos. They give a great quick overview of what you can do in Tableau.

2. Start creating vizzes. A great place for inspiration is the Tableau Public gallery. Have a question on how to do something in Tableau? The Tableau community is extremely helpful, and you can usually find answers via Google. Answers often originate from Tableau’s Online Help, Tableau’s Knowledge Base, and Tableau’s community forums.

3. Understand the difference between blue and green things in Tableau. (Short answer: blue fields are discrete, and green fields are continuous.) In terms of using Tableau, learning this is game-changing as you’ll understand how Tableau thinks. It’s so important, we were taught it twice on the second day of the Data School. A fantastic explanation can be found via The Information Lab's website.

Ben Moss: Find Inspiration & Up Your Game

In my eyes, the best way to learn Tableau is to create visualizations. Hundreds and thousands of them. One way in which I do this is to find inspiration from books and online media; museums are another excellent resource for great looking visuals.

If you find something you like, try and recreate it. My Tableau Public page is full other people's ideas I have ripped off.

I find it especially challenging building things that have never been done before. And whilst they may go against best practices, you will find you learn a lot about how Tableau actually builds visuals.

Got a Tableau tip to share? Post them in the comments below or via Twitter using the hashtag #TableauTipsMonth!