2
Assignments
Beginner
Skill Level
15 min
Duration
Introduction
Tableau Desktop is a powerful data visualization tool that lets you connect to different data sets and create interactive dashboards and visualizations. Whether you're a business analyst, data scientist or just someone who needs to understand complex data, Tableau Desktop can help you discover insights and communicate them effectively.
In this first section, we cover the basics of Tableau Desktop, including downloading and installing and an overview of the user interface and functionality.
In this lesson you will learn
- How to download and install Tableau
- How Tableau's user interface works
- The basic functionalities of Tableau
Download and Install Tableau Desktop
To get started with Tableau Desktop, you must first download and install it, of course. You can download a free trial version from the Tableau website, which gives you full functionality of the software for 14 days use. After that, you need to purchase a license to continue using it. We can help you with this. Contact us for Tableau licensing.
User Interface and Functionality
When you open Tableau Desktop for the first time, Tableau will ask you to register your trial account or log in to an already existing account. Make the choice that suits your situation. After this, you will be presented with a welcome screen where you can choose whether to connect to a dataset, open a saved workbook or create a new workbook from scratch. A workbook is Tableau's name for a dashboard.
If you choose to create a new workbook create one (click on the Tableau logo in the upper left corner), you will be presented with a blank canvas on which to build your visualizations. We will now briefly go over the most important parts of the user interface:
It contains buttons for common actions such as saving your workbook, undoing and redoing actions, and refreshing your data.
This shows the field names in the data source you are connected to and allows you to drag and drop fields to create visualizations.
This is where you create your visualizations. Views can include worksheets, dashboards and stories.
These are located to the left and above the canvas and allow you to add filters, sort your data and customize the formatting of your visualizations.
This is located on the right side of the canvas and allows you to choose the type of visualization you want to create, such as a bar chart or line chart.
Conclusion
In this section, we have outlined the basics of Tableau Desktop, including how to download and install it and an overview of its user interface and functionality. With this knowledge, you're ready to explore your data and create visualizations that help you gain insights and share your findings effectively with others. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to connect with data make in Tableau. Then we can start building and really start our analyses.