When I was teaching Tableau at QUT (my local university), or when I share visualisations online, I often get asked:
“How do I get started with data visualisation and Tableau as a beginner?”
If that’s you — congratulations on taking the first step! Tableau is a fantastic tool, and the Tableau community (the #DataFam) is one of the most supportive you’ll find. The key is simple: practice.
Tableau Public: (build your online portfolio)
- Create your free Tableau Public profile , publish your Tableau dashboard and share them online (via Twitter and LinkedIn). This is a bit like YouTube for data visualisation.
👉 Here’s my own profile for inspiration.
Social Media
- The Tableau community on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn is incredibly active and welcoming.
- Create or update your profiles.
- Start following data viz creators and Tableau Featured Authors, you’ll find lots of inspiration and learning opportunities.
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- Some helpful Twitter lists:
When you publish your work on Tableau Public, share the link on X or LinkedIn and ask for feedback using this tag: #DatafamFeedback
Good tags to use
- #Tableau | #DataFam | #DataFamFeedback | #DataViz | #MakeoverMonday
This is an example of a Tableau dashboard promoted on Twitter. Include hashtags, tag people, include a screen shot of your visualisation, use a URL shortener (bitly.com) to make the URL short and gain some space.
Attend online events to learn and know who’s who
- Attend your local Tableau user group (TUG)
- Datafam Community Jam (#DatafamCommunityJam!)
- Explore the Data Visualisation Society resources page, for meetups, data challenges, and book recommendations
Practice, practice and practice
- Start with Makeover Monday — a weekly data challenge that’s perfect for learning and improving your Tableau skills.
- You can also find a list community projects on my blog that welcome participants at all skill levels.
Find great datasets
- To practice you will need data!.
- Here are a few reliable sources:
- List of publicly available data sources (list by Cole Knaflic @storywithdata)
- Makeover Monday would also have a big list of dataset
- Kaggle Datasets – One of the best all-around sources. Covers everything from sports to finance, health, environment, and pop culture. You can filter by file type, size, and popularity.
Pick a dataset you are passionate about, and start creating stories about it
Inspiration
- Tableau Gallery includes examples of incredible visualisations, including the Viz of the Day (#VOTD)
💡 Important: You can download Tableau Public workbooks to learn from others, but always give credit to the original author. Never present someone else’s work as your own — if you’re unsure, ask permission. Most creators are happy to help!
Tableau Training
- Tableau has heaps of training material on their site https://www.tableau.com/learn
- If you are a University students check the Tableau Academic program for free licences
- List of Data visualisation courses
- And this awesome The Tableau Student Guide
Other data training
I would also suggest you learn other tools to prepare and clean the data
- Alteryx: Alteryx specializes in self-service analytics with an intuitive user interface. These analytics can be used as Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) – they offer free licenses for students
- SQL: if you also need to learn SQL. Have a read at this blog with a few basics
Further reading
- My blog also includes many other blog to follow, books to read…
To conclude, choose, topics that you are passionate about and viz that.
Good luck! Long live data
Data Visual.blog 