Resources to grow your skills

The most beginner-friendly Tableau channel on YouTube. Clear walkthroughs using real datasets, covering everything from your first bar chart to advanced LODs. A great starting point for Kenya TUG members new to the tool.

Andy Kriebel is a Tableau Zen Master who co-founded Makeover Monday. His channel covers intermediate-to-advanced techniques, design principles, and chart type breakdowns — with a strong focus on best practices and visual clarity.

Tableau's own YouTube channel hosts product walkthroughs, customer stories, Iron Viz competition recordings, and TC session replays. Useful across all skill levels — search for topics rather than watching chronologically.

Weekly challenge walkthroughs by the Workout Wednesday community. Each video rebuilds a specific chart or interaction technique — ideal for learners who want to understand the "how" behind a specific viz they've admired.

The official Tableau training library — structured video tracks covering everything from getting started to advanced analytics. Organised by role and topic. The closest thing to a full curriculum that's entirely free.

A 5-course specialisation from UC Davis covering data visualisation principles and Tableau practice. Free to audit — you only pay if you want the certificate. Takes 3–5 months at a self-paced schedule.

Practice exams and structured study guides specifically designed for the Tableau Desktop Specialist certification. Udemy regularly runs sales — rarely worth paying full price. Look for discounts or ask the community for a shared coupon.

Tableau's official docs are surprisingly readable and comprehensive. The calculated functions reference, LOD white paper, and performance optimisation guides are essential reading for advanced users. Bookmark the functions reference — you will use it weekly.

Official Kenyan government data — population, economic indicators, health, education, and agriculture. Real local data that makes for meaningful practice projects and community vizzes. Download as Excel or CSV.

When you open Tableau, the Superstore and World Indicators datasets are already connected. Superstore is the industry standard for learning — it's clean, well-structured, and covers sales, profit, and geography in a way that teaches many concepts at once.

Hundreds of development indicators across 200+ countries, including strong African and Kenyan data series. Excellent for comparative dashboards, time series, and mapping exercises. Download directly as CSV or Excel.

Thousands of community-contributed datasets on every topic imaginable. Great for finding messier, real-world data that needs cleaning before visualising — a natural step up from the pristine Superstore sample.

The free desktop application for building and publishing vizzes. No expiry, no hidden costs. Everything you learn as a beginner and most of what you need as an intermediate user is available in Tableau Public.

Tableau's visual data preparation tool. Clean, reshape, pivot, and join data before it reaches your dashboard. Available free with your Tableau Public account. Essential once you move beyond clean sample data.

Generate, explore, and export colour palettes for your dashboards. Includes a contrast checker and accessibility tools. You can export palettes as hex codes and paste them directly into Tableau's preferences file.

Not a Tableau book — a data visualisation fundamentals book. Covers chart choice, removing clutter, and telling a clear story with data. Read this first and every dashboard you build after will be better. One of the most recommended books in the analytics community.

100 tips, tutorials, and strategies for Tableau users who have the basics but want to level up. Covers design, calculated fields, dashboard best practices, and storytelling. Well-suited for intermediate learners who want concrete, actionable techniques.

A deep reference guide covering dashboard design patterns across industries — healthcare, finance, sports, and more. Less a tutorial and more a design reference. Ideal for advanced users who want to understand how professional dashboard designers make decisions.

The official Tableau community forum — the best place to ask questions, search for solved problems, and discover techniques. Before writing your own question, search first. The answer to almost every beginner question already exists here.

A weekly data visualisation challenge — every Monday a dataset is released and participants redesign an existing chart. A brilliant way to practise deliberately, get feedback from the community, and build a portfolio. One of the most powerful learning habits you can develop.

Weekly technical challenges that require you to recreate a specific chart or interaction exactly. Harder than Makeover Monday — you're solving a defined puzzle, not expressing a design opinion. Great for building technical precision and discovering new techniques.

Our own community events — virtual, free, and practical. Every session is an opportunity to see how other Kenyan analysts work, ask questions in real time, and connect with people on the same journey. The best resource on this page.