Tableau Certification - September PHXTUG

So you want to be Tableau

Desktop Certified?Ann Jackson

September 2016

Tableau Desktop 9 Certified Professional, DQA

Sr. Informatics Analyst at Aetna

public.tableau.com/profile/Ann.Jackson

@AnnUJackson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/AnnUJackson

Ann Jackson

Brief background

Casual Tableau

User

PHXTUG

Regular

Certified

Professional

Why become certified?

Holding certification distinguishes you as an expert

Access to expert community & swag

Strengthens your resume

Foundation to describe your technical skills

Demonstrates commitment & follow through

Put simply in a quote

“One of the painful things about our time is that those

who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any

imagination and understanding are filled with doubt

and indecision.”

Bertrand Russell

Desktop certification comes in 2 flavors

Qualified Associate (1st Level)

• $250 Exam Fee

• For users with 5+ months of

experience

• 2 hours, 34 questions multiple

choice (75% passing score)

• Schedule & take online at any time

Certified Professional (2nd Level)

• $600 Exam Fee

• For users with 9+ months of

experience

• 3 hours, essay response &

submitting work (graded by

committee)

• Schedule & take online at any time

Exam prep guide Exam prep guide

Knowledge based questions

Hands on, multiple choice

Finding answers to basic questions

Using most common features

Leveraging built in tools

Right answer to every question

Applying your expertise

Critiquing visualizations

Re-visualizing data

Data storytelling

Advanced technical concepts

No “right answer”

Qualified Associate vs. Certified Professional

Qualified Associate vs. Certified Professional

Using the Superstore data set, what is

the total sales for the ‘Home Office’

segment in July 2012?

A. $37,930.18

B. $2,168,952.03

C. $141,773.41

D. $511,670.04

Answer: $37,930.18

Management is interested in

understanding how different regions

performed in the ‘Home Office’ segment.

Create a visualization that shows the

sales for each region compared to overall

sales. Point out any interesting findings.

Today I’ll be diving into the

Qualified Associate Certification

Foundational Knowledge

Common data connections

Excel

Access

Microsoft SQL Server

Salesforce

How to connect to Tableau

Server

Multiple data sources from

the same database

Joining data

Data Prep & Data Connection

What can you do from the

data connection window?

Change data types

Change field names

Pivot data

Use data interpreter

Hide fields

Data Blending

What is data blending?

Data blending is when you blend data from multiple data sources on a single worksheet (“view”)

What isn’t data blending?

It is not a way to add new dimensions or rows to data

Consider the integration of two data sources with a common

dimension of date

1. Total number of work units produced in one data source

2. Total hours of work from staff in another data source

How many work units per staff hour each day?

Common Terminology

Data & Analytics pane

Dimensions

fields that contain

categorical data

Measures

fields that contain

numbers

Parameters

variables

Discrete “individually separate and

distinct”

Produce headers, “buckets”

Filter “members”

Colors are categorical palette

Continuous “forming an unbroken

whole, without interruption”

Produce axes

Limit the range

Color is gradient of range

Important Visual Cues

Data sources

Check marks (blue vs.

orange)

Shape of data source

(cylinder vs. cube)

Arrow and pair of shapes

Tableau server icon

Fields

Blue vs. green

Preceded by equal sign

Exclamation mark

Chain icon (orange link,

gray unlink)

Organizing & Simplifying Data

Filtering

What types of filters are there?

When are different filters applied

to data?

How does filtering vary across

these data types:

Dates

Dimensions

Measures

Extract filters

Data source filters

Context filters

Filters on dimensions

Filters on measures

Organizing & Simplifying Data

Sorting

Computed Sort Options

Alphabetical

Data source order

By a field

Manual sorting

Sorting from the sheet

Sorting from an axis

Groups, Hierarchies, Sets

Group – set of dimension

members that can be

combined into higher

categories

Hierarchies – think drill

through

Sets – Groupings of marks

How do you make them

and what’s special about

each?

Calculations, calculations, calculations

Calculated fields

Create via calculated field editor; ad-hoc calculations

Table calculations

Local to Tableau calculations; performed on the view

Level of detail calculations

Define the granularity of the aggregation

Prepping for the exam

Schedule your exam 2 to 3 weeks before you’re ready

Become familiar with Superstore and other Tableau data

sets

Exam is on a Windows virtual machine

If you’re a Mac user, practice on a Windows machine

Expect some latency, number pad may not work

Expectation that you can navigate and connect to different types

of data sources

Let’s go through some exam prep

questions. As we walk through

them, keep in mind the skills

they’re testing for.

What is the percent of total Sales

in the ‘Home Office’ Customer

Segment in July 2012?

Filtering & Sorting

Aggregation

Table calculationsSkills:

Find the top 10 Product Names

by Sales within each region. _____

is ranked #2 in both the Central &

West regions in 2011.

Top N filtering

Filtering

Mechanics of top N filteringSkills:

In the Technology Product

Category, which unprofitable

state is surrounded by only

profitable states?

Maps

Spatial analysisSkills:

What was the Moving Average of

Sales in June of 2012, including

six months prior and six months

after?

Line charts

Quick table

calculations

Customizing

table calculations

Dual axis

Skills:

In which Region do all Product

Categories fall beneath the overall

average profit?

Averages in the view

Reference line average

Window average

Averaging with totalsSkills:

Key takeaways

Know how to navigate and different methods to do the

same thing

New or popular feature? It’ll probably be on the test

If you’re writing an in depth calculated field, consider an

alternative method

Pretty visualizations won’t play a factor, but will give you

great practical experience for Certified Professional

Need more help? Tableau offers the

following courses:

http://mkt.tableau.com/files/Desktop_I_Course_Description.pdf

http://mkt.tableau.com/files/Desktop_II_Course_Description.pdf

http://mkt.tableau.com/files/Desktop_III_Course_Description.pdf

http://mkt.tableau.com/files/Classroom-Training-Visual-Analytics.pdf

Feeling cheap? Access these free

resources:

http://www.tableau.com/learn/training

http://www.tableau.com/table-calculations

http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/LOD-expressions