Tableau Essentials Training
In preparation for my upcoming data and visualization course this spring 2026, I recently completed the Tableau Essentials training course by Curl Frye from LinkedIn learning. This was an in-depth comprehensive four-and-a-half-hour course that well prepared me to begin using Tableau for class and gave me a detailed overview of the differences between other Tableau tools and introduced me to the most important functions and features of Tableau Desktop. This course was tremendously helpful and well organized. It was divided into twelve informative sections where I learned an incredible amount of material.
I learned that Tableau Desktop allows you to connect to many different data sources like MySQL and an Excell workbook to create data visualizations offline. Other tools like Tableau Prep allow you to clean and remove null values and normalize your data to be able to build a workflow and join tables and group data from different sources to create new sharable data sources. Tableau Cloud is a browser-based tool that allows you to work online maintenance free and those with access and licensing can create reports, make visualizations, and view data. Next, Tableau Server is the option you would choose if you wanted to maintain more control of the server at your location, and Tableau Pulse allows you to create personalized metrics based on your data source. These different tools within the Tableau ecosystem allow you to accomplish specific goals tailored to your business needs and data demands.
In Tableau Desktop I learned about many different functions and features like how to use the data interpreter tool to manually or automatically prepare and remove any null values in my data and split text in a single cell using a delimiter to correct any information that may have been recorded incorrectly. I also learned how to join different tables and inconsistent fields making them equal to each other in the data source section of Tableau. Additionally, I also learned the differences between Tableau’s various file types like the Tableau Workbook (.twb) which stores visualizations without source data or the Tableau Data Source (.tds) file which contains server address, password, and other information required to access a data source and Tableau Bookmark (.tbm) which stores a connection to a worksheet in another Tableau workbook. Also, the Tableau Data Extract (.tde) file which stores Tableau data as a filtered aggregated extract and the Tableau Packaged Workbook (.twbx) file which stores extracted data and visualizations for viewing in any full version of Tableau and Tableau Reader.
There are so many functions like story mode, dash boards, and geo maps to display your data and features like tree maps in color and stacked bar charts to show size and scale in Tableau that I am now familiar with and ready to explore. I learned how to render charts and graphs using the marks card to encode my data and how to use the column and row shelves to change the vertical and horizontal dimensions of my visualization. Other basic functions like filtering, sorting and making comments, highlighting and captioning and displaying summery statistics were all covered in this course. More advanced topics like creating custom calculated fields, grouping fields, creating sets, forecasting with given data and even cluster analysis were also included.
I feel that being proficient with Tableau is an invaluable skill that will greatly help me better understand the data that I’m working with and be able to communicate my findings in a clear and concise manner through insightful charts, graphs, maps, and other visualizations that tell a complete story.