Tableau bootcamp training course Online November 2, 2026

Tableau Bootcamp course topics

This four-day Tableau Bootcamp combines the complete introductory and advanced Tableau curricula into a single, comprehensive course. You progress from understanding data and creating your first visualization to building advanced calculations, custom charts, geographic visualizations, dynamic dashboards, and production-ready Tableau content.

Day One: Tableau Fundamentals, Data Preparation, and Visualizations

Understanding data and visual analysis

• Understanding what data is and how organizations use it
• Recognizing records, fields, dimensions, and measures
• Identifying common sources of organizational data
• Understanding structured and unstructured data
• Recognizing characteristics of analysis-ready data
• Translating business questions into analytical questions
• Using visualizations to reveal comparisons, patterns, trends, and outliers
• Selecting visualizations based on the information being communicated
• Avoiding misleading or unnecessarily complicated visualizations

Getting started with Tableau

• Understanding common uses for Tableau
• Reviewing the Tableau product environment
• Distinguishing Tableau Desktop, Tableau Cloud, Tableau Server, Tableau Public, and Tableau Prep
• Understanding the basic Tableau workflow
• Opening Tableau and reviewing the start page
• Connecting to a sample dataset
• Creating a first visualization
• Saving a Tableau workbook

Navigating the Tableau Desktop workspace

• Working with workbooks, worksheets, dashboards, and stories
• Navigating the Data and Analytics panes
• Understanding shelves, cards, fields, and pills
• Working with the Marks card
• Understanding dimensions and measures
• Recognizing discrete and continuous fields
• Understanding blue and green fields
• Using the Show Me panel
• Changing the visualization suggested by Show Me
• Undoing, redoing, and reverting changes
• Duplicating, renaming, and organizing worksheets

Connecting to and reviewing data

• Identifying the data needed for an analysis
• Connecting to Excel workbooks
• Connecting to CSV and text files
• Reviewing database and other available data connectors
• Understanding common file and data formats
• Reviewing tables on the Data Source page
• Previewing records and source information
• Understanding live connections and extracts
• Creating and refreshing an extract
• Assigning and correcting data types
• Renaming and hiding fields
• Working with aliases and default properties
• Recognizing null, missing, and incomplete values
• Refreshing and replacing a data connection

Preparing and structuring data

• Understanding how data should be structured for Tableau
• Recognizing headers, field names, records, and summary rows
• Using Data Interpreter to identify usable data
• Removing unnecessary headers and formatting from imported data
• Splitting combined values into separate fields
• Pivoting columns into rows
• Combining similarly structured data with unions
• Understanding the purpose of relationships
• Reviewing the basic difference between relationships and joins
• Recognizing when multiple tables are needed
• Confirming totals and record counts after preparing data

Creating foundational visualizations

• Starting a visualization with an analytical question
• Creating text tables and crosstabs
• Creating highlight tables
• Creating bar and stacked bar charts
• Creating line and area charts
• Visualizing changes over time
• Creating treemaps
• Creating scatter plots
• Changing mark types
• Using Show Me to explore chart options
• Applying fields to Color, Size, Label, Detail, and Tooltip
• Changing the aggregation applied to a measure
• Editing axes, headers, and titles
• Duplicating and modifying visualizations
• Comparing different visual approaches to the same data

Sorting, grouping, and filtering data

• Sorting data manually and by field values
• Creating groups from related values
• Creating bins for numeric data
• Building and using hierarchies
• Drilling into and out of hierarchical information
• Filtering categorical values
• Filtering numeric measures
• Filtering dates and date ranges
• Keeping or excluding selected marks
• Displaying interactive filter controls
• Customizing the appearance of filter controls
• Selecting single-value and multiple-value filter options
• Applying filters to multiple worksheets
• Clearing and resetting filters

Day Two: Calculations, Formatting, Dashboards, and Sharing

Working with calculations and aggregations

• Understanding how Tableau aggregates data
• Working with SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, and COUNT
• Changing the aggregation used for a measure
• Understanding row-level and summarized values
• Creating calculated fields
• Performing arithmetic calculations
• Creating ratios and percentages
• Building basic conditional calculations
• Using simple IF statements
• Handling null values in calculations
• Editing and validating calculated fields
• Applying calculated fields to visualizations
• Using quick table calculations
• Calculating percent of total
• Creating running totals and differences
• Adding totals and subtotals
• Confirming that calculated results are reasonable

Working with dates and time-based data

• Understanding Tableau date fields
• Distinguishing date parts from date values
• Changing date granularity
• Working with year, quarter, month, week, and day
• Creating continuous and discrete timelines
• Working with calendar and fiscal dates
• Creating basic date calculations
• Filtering data by relative and selected date ranges

Enhancing and interacting with visualizations

• Navigating Tableau’s formatting tools and menus
• Formatting an entire worksheet
• Formatting specific fields and parts of a view
• Formatting numbers, percentages, currency, and dates
• Editing fonts, alignment, lines, borders, and shading
• Editing and formatting axes
• Adjusting axis ranges and tick marks
• Formatting headers and gridlines
• Using color to categorize or emphasize data
• Applying accessible and consistent color choices
• Changing mark size
• Adding fields to the Detail property
• Displaying and formatting mark labels
• Creating and customizing tooltips
• Adding explanatory text to tooltips
• Creating annotations for marks, points, and areas
• Highlighting selected values
• Adding reference lines and basic trend lines
• Reducing unnecessary visual elements
• Maintaining consistency across worksheets

Creating dashboards

• Understanding the purpose of a dashboard
• Identifying the audience and purpose of a dashboard
• Selecting worksheets for a dashboard
• Creating a first dashboard
• Selecting fixed, range, or automatic dashboard sizing
• Adding worksheets, text, images, and navigation objects
• Understanding tiled and floating objects
• Working with horizontal and vertical layout containers
• Adding filters and legends
• Applying filters across dashboard views
• Using a worksheet as a dashboard filter
• Creating basic filter and highlight actions
• Adding navigation between dashboards
• Editing dashboard titles and supporting text
• Testing dashboard interactions
• Designing dashboard layouts for different displays
• Reviewing device-specific layouts

Creating stories and presenting findings

• Understanding the difference between a dashboard and a story
• Identifying the central message of an analysis
• Organizing information to guide the audience
• Creating a Tableau story
• Adding worksheets and dashboards to story points
• Adding, updating, and sequencing story points
• Using titles, captions, annotations, and tooltips to provide context
• Presenting comparisons and trends accurately
• Distinguishing correlation from causation
• Reviewing a story for clarity and consistency

Saving, printing, exporting, and publishing

• Understanding Tableau workbook and data-source files
• Working with .twb workbook files
• Working with .twbx packaged workbook files
• Understanding Tableau extract files
• Saving and packaging a workbook
• Checking whether a packaged workbook contains required data
• Previewing worksheets and dashboards for printing
• Configuring page setup and print options
• Printing worksheets and dashboards
• Exporting visualizations as images
• Exporting worksheets and dashboards to PDF
• Exporting presentation content
• Exporting summarized and underlying data
• Understanding basic publishing options
• Publishing to Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server
• Understanding the public nature of Tableau Public
• Avoiding the publication of confidential data to Tableau Public
• Sharing a published workbook
• Reviewing a workbook before distribution

Day Three: Advanced Data Models, Calculations, and Analysis

Planning advanced Tableau analysis

• Translating complex business questions into analytical requirements
• Identifying dimensions, measures, metrics, and comparison periods
• Determining the required level of detail
• Recognizing row-level, aggregate, and visualization-level logic
• Understanding how granularity affects calculated results
• Planning reusable fields and data sources
• Identifying potential data-quality problems
• Establishing validation totals before creating visualizations
• Documenting analytical assumptions

Designing advanced data models

• Reviewing Tableau’s logical and physical data layers
• Selecting relationships, joins, unions, or data blending
• Understanding relationship cardinality
• Understanding referential integrity
• Preserving different levels of detail with relationships
• Reviewing inner, left, right, and full joins
• Diagnosing duplicated measures caused by joins
• Combining similarly structured data with unions
• Working with multiple fact tables and shared dimensions
• Combining data across connections
• Using data blending for specialized situations
• Validating record counts, totals, and unmatched values
• Documenting the structure of a Tableau data source

Preparing and managing advanced data sources

• Choosing between live connections and extracts
• Creating extract and data-source filters
• Reviewing full and incremental refresh options
• Creating wildcard unions
• Replacing data sources in existing workbooks
• Managing metadata and default field properties
• Organizing fields with folders and hierarchies
• Working with custom SQL when appropriate
• Identifying when preparation should move to Tableau Prep
• Creating reusable, analyst-friendly data sources
• Testing prepared data against known results

Creating advanced calculated fields

• Reviewing Tableau calculation types
• Distinguishing row-level and aggregate calculations
• Resolving aggregate and nonaggregate errors
• Creating nested conditional calculations
• Working with IF, ELSEIF, and CASE
• Creating Boolean calculations
• Manipulating and standardizing strings
• Creating reusable date calculations
• Building period-to-date calculations
• Comparing current and previous periods
• Handling null and incomplete values
• Creating ratios without double aggregation
• Building user-selectable measures
• Validating calculations in supporting worksheets

Mastering table calculations

• Understanding how table calculations operate on displayed results
• Controlling addressing and partitioning
• Using Compute Using options
• Creating running totals
• Calculating differences and percent differences
• Creating percent-of-total calculations
• Building ranking calculations
• Creating moving averages
• Using window calculations
• Using index, first, last, and size functions
• Creating secondary table calculations
• Applying table calculations to filtered views
• Troubleshooting unexpected results

Using level of detail expressions

• Understanding the level of detail of a visualization
• Comparing LOD expressions with table calculations
• Creating FIXED LOD expressions
• Creating INCLUDE LOD expressions
• Creating EXCLUDE LOD expressions
• Creating table-scoped LOD expressions
• Calculating customer-level and order-level metrics
• Finding first and last transaction dates
• Creating cohort and retention measures
• Combining LOD expressions with other calculations
• Applying filters to views containing LOD expressions
• Selecting the appropriate LOD expression for a business question
• Troubleshooting results created at different levels of detail

Understanding Tableau’s order of operations

• Reviewing the order in which Tableau processes filters and calculations
• Distinguishing extract, data-source, context, dimension, and measure filters
• Creating and using context filters
• Working with condition and Top N filters
• Understanding filters processed before and after LOD expressions
• Creating accurate Top N analyses
• Combining filters with table calculations
• Diagnosing results that change unexpectedly
• Selecting filter types based on analytical intent
• Considering the performance impact of filters

Creating parameters, sets, and user-controlled analysis

• Creating and displaying parameters
• Using parameters in calculated fields
• Creating selectable measures and dimensions
• Building what-if analysis
• Creating adjustable targets and reference lines
• Creating dynamic date controls
• Updating parameter values from data
• Creating parameter actions
• Creating fixed and dynamic sets
• Building condition-based and Top N sets
• Combining sets
• Comparing in-set and out-of-set populations
• Using sets in calculations
• Creating set actions
• Combining sets and parameters in the same analysis

Day Four: Custom Charts, Mapping, Dynamic Dashboards, and Deployment

Creating advanced and custom charts

• Selecting advanced charts based on analytical requirements
• Creating dual-axis charts
• Synchronizing dual axes
• Combining different mark types in layered charts
• Building bullet charts and performance-to-target views
• Creating ranking and Top N charts
• Creating Pareto charts
• Creating box-and-whisker plots
• Visualizing distributions and outliers
• Creating variance and period-over-period charts
• Building cohort and retention views
• Creating small-multiple visualizations
• Visualizing cyclical data
• Creating radial and circular area charts
• Creating alluvial diagrams to show movement between categories
• Building custom charts from multiple marks and calculations
• Evaluating whether a custom chart communicates more effectively than a standard chart

Applying statistical, forecasting, and explanatory tools

• Adding reference lines and reference bands
• Creating reference distributions
• Adding and interpreting trend lines
• Reviewing model descriptions
• Examining residual information
• Creating forecasts
• Adjusting forecast options
• Understanding when Tableau cannot generate a forecast
• Displaying prediction intervals
• Adding clusters to identify similar observations
• Using supported predictive modeling functions
• Using Explain Data to investigate marks and outliers
• Distinguishing statistical association from causation
• Communicating uncertainty and analytical limitations

Understanding mapping and geographic data

• Understanding how Tableau creates map visualizations
• Identifying appropriate uses for maps
• Recognizing when a map is not the best visualization
• Understanding geographic dimensions and measures
• Reviewing the data required to create a map
• Working with country, state, county, city, postal code, and other geographic fields
• Assigning geographic roles
• Working with generated latitude and longitude
• Using existing latitude and longitude fields
• Correcting unrecognized and ambiguous locations
• Editing locations and resolving geographic errors
• Formatting location data before connecting it to Tableau
• Considering geographic granularity and aggregation
• Selecting an appropriate map type for the data

Creating map visualizations

• Creating basic geographic views
• Creating proportional symbol maps
• Using size to represent quantitative values
• Creating choropleth, or filled, maps
• Selecting appropriate measures for filled maps
• Using sequential and diverging color scales
• Creating point-distribution maps
• Creating density maps and geographic heatmaps
• Adjusting density intensity and appearance
• Adding labels and custom tooltips
• Filtering geographic data
• Creating geographic hierarchies
• Drilling from broad regions into detailed locations
• Comparing multiple measures geographically
• Avoiding misleading geographic comparisons

Creating advanced and custom maps

• Connecting to spatial data
• Understanding point, line, and polygon geometry
• Creating maps from polygon data
• Working with custom geographic boundaries
• Creating custom territories
• Using spatial files in Tableau
• Adding static background images
• Mapping data over floor plans, diagrams, or custom images
• Defining coordinate systems for background images
• Using Tableau background maps
• Connecting to custom Mapbox maps
• Managing custom background map sources
• Customizing map styles and options
• Controlling streets, borders, place names, and geographic details
• Working with background map layers
• Adding multiple geographic marks layers
• Formatting and controlling individual map layers
• Changing the order and visibility of layers
• Creating dual-axis and layered maps
• Combining filled areas, lines, and proportional symbols
• Creating maps with multiple measures

Mapping movement, relationships, and time

• Understanding path and order fields
• Preparing origin-and-destination data
• Creating flow and path maps
• Creating spider maps
• Connecting destinations to a common origin
• Displaying direction and magnitude of movement
• Tracking geographic data over time
• Adding date and time fields to map visualizations
• Creating map trails and movement sequences
• Filtering maps by time period
• Creating animated geographic views when appropriate
• Combining time controls with dashboard actions
• Designing tooltips for movement and time-based maps
• Managing visual clutter in maps with many paths or locations

Creating dynamic and interactive dashboards

• Planning dashboards around user tasks and decisions
• Establishing visual and informational hierarchy
• Using layout containers effectively
• Applying spacing and padding consistently
• Using tiled and floating objects strategically
• Creating show-and-hide controls
• Applying dynamic zone visibility
• Creating sheet-swapping controls
• Allowing users to switch between charts, tables, and maps
• Creating measure-selection and dimension-selection controls
• Using parameters and calculated fields to control displayed views
• Creating drill-down and detail-on-demand experiences
• Adding filter and highlight actions
• Adding navigation and URL actions
• Using parameter and set actions
• Creating visualizations within tooltips
• Coordinating interactions between maps and other charts
• Creating controls for geographic layers and measures
• Managing dashboard filter scope
• Designing for desktop, browser, and device layouts
• Testing dashboard interactions and reset behavior
• Applying accessibility and usability practices

Improving workbook and dashboard performance

• Recognizing common sources of slow performance
• Reducing unnecessary marks and visual complexity
• Limiting unused fields and calculations
• Simplifying expensive calculations
• Evaluating high-cardinality fields
• Improving filter performance
• Optimizing extracts
• Managing automatic updates while authoring
• Reducing the number of dashboard worksheets
• Evaluating the performance impact of maps and spatial data
• Limiting unnecessary geographic layers
• Using Workbook Optimizer
• Creating and interpreting a performance recording
• Balancing performance with data freshness and analytical flexibility

Publishing, distributing, securing, and maintaining content

• Preparing workbooks for publication
• Publishing workbooks and data sources
• Selecting embedded or published data sources
• Publishing dashboards containing maps
• Confirming that spatial data and map sources remain available
• Testing Mapbox and other background-map connections
• Checking geographic layers after publication
• Exporting maps and dashboards as images or PDFs
• Sharing interactive visualizations
• Understanding projects and content ownership
• Reviewing workbook and data-source permissions
• Scheduling and monitoring extract refreshes
• Managing connection credentials
• Creating user filters
• Understanding row-level security approaches
• Adding descriptions and documentation
• Reviewing subscriptions and data-driven alerts
• Replacing and updating published content
• Establishing testing and promotion practices
• Maintaining workbooks after publication

Tableau Bootcamp project

You complete a comprehensive Tableau project that incorporates skills from all four days of the course. The project includes:

• Identifying the analytical purpose of a dataset
• Connecting to and preparing multiple data sources
• Creating and validating a multi-table data model
• Building foundational and advanced visualizations
• Creating basic and advanced business calculations
• Using table calculations and LOD expressions
• Applying filters according to Tableau’s order of operations
• Building parameter- or set-driven analysis
• Creating an advanced or custom chart
• Preparing geographic data and creating a map visualization
• Adding geographic layers and custom map formatting
• Combining charts, tables, and maps in a dashboard
• Creating sheet-swapping or dynamic visibility controls
• Adding dashboard actions and navigation
• Testing analytical accuracy and usability
• Evaluating workbook performance
• Preparing the completed workbook for export or publication