Learning a new tool can be daunting, especially if you are starting from square one with little to no experience. That’s why I’ve outlined a small list of free learning resources and exercises for a beginner with no experience to transition into a more intermediate user, or if you’re more experienced, these will give you a good refresher and practice in Tableau prep. Feel free to use this post as a hub to branch out from and learn more.
Tableau Resources
A good place to get started and initially connect to some data. If you don’t have Tableau Prep installed yet, Tableau has you covered with a step by step Installation Guide. Tableau also has a “getting started” video if you’re more of a visual learner, though the content offered is a bit sparse with only about 10 minutes of instructional content.
Tableau also offered this workshop on Tableau Prep a few years ago. It contains a bit more content than their free e-learning videos. Keep in mind that the data associated with the training is not linked on the video itself, but I managed to track down the .csv at the end of this Tableau forum post here.
Interworks Resources
Interworks offers a plethora of blog posts and helpful tips for learning Tableau Prep as well.
You can browse all of our Tableau Prep related offerings here. There are a couple that I would explicitly recommend to beginners or individuals learning Tableau Prep.
This primer for Tableau Prep offers us an insight into the ideal use cases for Tableau Prep, where it shines, and maybe where another tool might be a better fit.
Here is a great introduction to making a flow in Tableau prep with examples of many useful data prep techniques like data cleaning, pivoting and joins. If you’d like a deeper dive into Splits and Pivots in Tableau Prep we have a blog about that as well.
Preppin’ Data Challenges
Once you’ve got your Tableau Prep basics all settled, it’s time to test your knowledge with some fun challenges. Preppin’ Data has some great data prep challenges for beginners and experts alike. Here is the repository for the weekly challenges. For beginners, I would start with the first few weeks of 2023, but there are helpful hints and solutions for each challenge if you wanted to try something more intermediate or advanced.
If you’d like to work with us directly on your Tableau Prep challenges, or just on your data in general, reach out and see what we can do for you!
