Tutorial: Get Started with Tableau Desktop

Learn how to connect to data, create data visualizations, present your findings, and share your insights with others.

This tutorial walks you through the features and functions of Tableau Desktop version 2022.4. As you work through this tutorial, you will create multiple views in a Tableau workbook. The steps you'll take and the workbook you'll work in are based on a story about an employee who works at headquarters for a large retail chain. The story unfolds as you step through asking questions about your business and its performance.

You'll learn how to connect to data in Tableau Desktop; build, present, and share some useful views; and apply key features along the way. Budget between one and three hours to complete the steps.

Here's the story...

Suppose you are an employee for a large retail chain. Your manager just got the quarterly sales report, and noticed that sales seem better for some products than for others and profit in some areas is not doing as well as she had expected. Your boss is interested in the bottom line: It's your job to look at overall sales and profitability to see if you can find out what's driving these numbers.

She has also asked you to identify areas for improvement and present your findings to the team. The team can explore your results and take action to improve sales and profitability for the company's product lines.

You'll use Tableau Desktop to build a simple view of your product data, map product sales and profitability by region, build a dashboard of your findings, and then create a story to present. Then, you will share your findings on the web so that remote team members can take a look.

Expand Learn more sections for background and examples. Give it a try:

Steps
Step 1: Connect to your data Learn all about the Start page and how to connect to your data.	GO TO STEP
Step 2: Drag and drop to take a first look Get to know the Tableau workspace, learn the language of Tableau, and start examining your data.	GO TO STEP
Step 3: Focus your results Ask deeper questions and use additional tools to refine your views and gain insights about your data.	GO TO STEP
Step 4: Explore your data geographically Learn how to plot your data on a map to see if you can spot any trends.	GO TO STEP
Step 5: Drill down into the details Drill down into the details of your data and learn how to create a Top filter.	GO TO STEP
Step 6: Build a dashboard to show your insights Learn how to build and format a dashboard to display the visualizations you created.	GO TO STEP
Step 7: Build a story to present Learn how to build and format a story to present your findings.	GO TO STEP
Step 8: Share your findings Share your findings with your organization on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, or share them with the world on Tableau Public.	GO TO STEP
Learning Library Now that you're a Data Rockstar, keep learning with these additional resources.	GO TO LIBRARY