Tableau is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. Business intelligence comprises the strategies and technologies for the data analysis and management of business information. Data visualization deals with the graphic representation of data. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data is numerous. Tableau’s mission is to help people see and understand data. Tableau makes it easier and faster to create visualizations such as bar charts or line charts through their drag and drop interface.

Tableau was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the company was acquired by Salesforce for $15.7 billion.

Here is a list of the different Tableau products.

• Tableau Desktop
• Tableau Server
• Tableau Online
• Tableau Prep Builder[11] (released in 2018)
• Tableau Vizable (consumer data visualization mobile app released in 2015)
• Tableau Public (free to use)
• Tableau Reader (free to use)
• Tableau Mobile
• Tableau CRM

Learning Tableau

Here is a good video resource at Tableau Public called Resources. It’s a good place to start. If you view the video called Navigate the Workspace Area you get a sense of Tableau Public’s GUI. The instructor is using the Superstore Sales data. You can download that by navigating to the Resources menu at the top, Sample Data, and the first one listed might be Superstore Sales. Download it to your computer.

You could use YouTube to learn about Tableau. Here is a hands-on video called Tableau Tutorial For Beginners | Part 1 | Tableau Tutorial Part – 1 | Tableau Training | Simplilearn. There are a lot of videos on YouTube that talk about Tableau.

Here’s a video from Tableau Tim called What is Tableau ? Explained in under 10 mins!. Here’s another video (more advanced) from Tableau Tim called Tableau for Beginners: A Comprehensive Guide for All Roles. Here’s another Tableau Tim called How to Connect to Different Data Sources in Tableau: A beginner’s guide.

What is Tableau Public? Tableau Public is a free platform that allows you to explore, create, and share interactive visualizations using publicly available data online.

Here are a series of good YouTube videos on Tableau by Jed Guinto. His channel is called Jellyman Education. The third video is called Episode 1 – Introduction to Tableau Desktop Data Visualization.

Download

You can download the Tableau Public App here.