How to Prepare for the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam?

Overview

The Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification is one of the most highly recognized certifications in the Data Analytics industry today. Besides the fact it is provided by Tableau, one of the leading Data Analytics organizations in the industries today according to the latest Gartner report, the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam essentially evaluates a candidate on all the essential key skills that a professional must have. The fact that the Certification includes questions using Tableau Server, Tableau Prep, Tableau Online, Tableau Desktop, indicates the test does a comprehensive assessment of knowledge of the Tableau Software as a whole. This is definitely one of the finest Certification Exams that Tableau has to offer and regularly leads to a salary hike during new hirings.

Preparing for Connect to and Transform Data using Tableau

The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam has 24% of the questions from this section. You are required to be aware of how to connect to different data sources. The benefits of Live vs Extract data sources and which type of data source is preferred in which scenario is a key topic to understand. Hence you a candidate is expected to be aware of how to connect to extracts, spreadsheets, hyper files, and tde files. A candidate taking the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam is also expected to pull data from relational databases by using custom SQL queries, connecting to data sources on Tableau Server, and replacing the connected data source with another data source for an existing chart or sheet.

Preparing the data for analysis is also critical for the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. It is required to assess data quality for completeness, consistency, and accuracy. A candidate is expected to perform cleaning operations, and also organize data into folders. A key step to prepare data for analysis includes using multiple different data sources by establishing relationships between them, creating joins, union of tables, and blending data. A candidate is also expected to be aware of preparing data by using Data Interpreter, pivot, and split, and use extract filters to prepare the data for analysis.

Performing data transformation using Tableau Prep is required for the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. A candidate is expected to be able to choose which data transformation to perform based on a business scenario, combine data by using joins, shape the data by using aggregations, perform filtering, shape the data by using pivots. Even though these may seem pretty basic concepts compared to the more advanced and challenging topics, often these play a crucial role in painting the bigger picture and provides easier visual reading in the analytical landscape.

Customizing fields by changing default field properties like data types, sorting etc, and renaming columns during different questions are required for the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam as well. A candidate is expected to choose when to convert between discrete and continuous, choose when to convert between dimension and measure, and create aliases.

Preparing for Explore and Analyze Data using Tableau

The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam has 41% of the questions from this section. This is essentially one of the most important sections of the exam and hands-on knowledge of using Tableau for several months is critical to master this domain. A good score in this section can guarantee you a passing score in the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam.

Creating Calculated fields are an integral part of the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. The calculations required to be created are related to Date calculations like DATEPARSE, DATENAME, String functions, Logical and Boolean expressions like IF, CASE, Number function, Type conversion functions, Aggregate functions, FIXED LOD (Level of Detail) calculations.

Creating Quick Table Calculations is critical for various questions of the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. It includes creating Quick Table Calculations like Moving Average, creating Percent of Total, creating Running Total, creating Difference and Percent of Difference, creating Percentile, and creating Compound Growth Rate. Effective use of the various Quick Table Calculations can help most of the tricky problems during the hands-on section of the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam.

Creating Custom Table Calculations using the various features of Tableau tool is also assessed during the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. These includes custom table calculations like Year to Date, Month to Date, Year over Year, Index, Ranking, First-Last calculations. We often take many of these calculations so casually that it comes to us naturally, but often these can form a part of a larger calculation or dashboard and can prove to be very efficient during the exam.

Create and using filters and parameters form an essential part of enabling interactivity in Tableau. Applying filters range from dimensions and measures to configuring filter settings including Top N, Bottom N, Include, Exclude, Wildcard, conditional filters, adding filters to context, and applying filters to multiple sheets and data sources. Parameters can exist in calculations, with filters, and with reference lines in the exam.

Having a clear understanding on how to Structure the data is important for the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. Candidates should be aware of how to effectively create and use Sets, Bins, Hierarchies, and Groups. These form the basics and fundamentals of how we can customize the structure of the data in Tableau and perform further analytical tasks using these structures. The Sets, Bins, Hierarchies, and Groups are also useful in performing various aggregation, drill-down and interactive analysis.

Mapping the data geographically also allows a candidate to answer various map related questions in the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. Maps are of various types, like Symbol Maps, Heat Maps, Density Maps, and Choropleth maps or filled maps. These types of maps allow to understand the statistics of a data much better in a given country or region by being accurately interpreted visually.

The Analytics feature of Tableau is also important for the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. A candidate is expected to know how to create Total, Subtotals, Reference Bands, Average Lines, Trend Lines, Distribution Bands, Forecasting by using default settings, Customizing a data Forecasting model, and creating a Predictive Model. The Analytics Pane in Tableau is one of the most intuitive and crisp way the tool provides to perform complex tasks very easily without any complicated steps involved.

Creating Content using Tableau

The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam consists of 26% questions from the Creation of Content section. The Create Content is the most crucial skill of a Data Analyst using which a candidate can present the data to the audience with powerful visual dashboards and stories. The audience can then slice and dice, interact with the data in various ways to derive further insights which otherwise might have been too difficult with the data.

Creating Charts form an essential part of this section. The charts can be Bar charts, Line charts, Pie charts, Highlight table charts, Scatter Plots, Histograms, Tree Maps, Bubble charts, Data tables, Gantt charts, Box plots, Area charts, Dual Axis charts, and Combo charts. Sorting of data is also at the core of creating insightful contents using Tableau, along with customized sorting techniques. Dashboards, and of course Stories, are part of this section focused on creating contents. A candidate is expected to be able to combine sheets into a dashboard by using containers and layout options, adding objects, and create stories. For a further advanced reporting experience, adding interactivity to dashboards is crucial, which includes but is not limited to adding filter to a view, adding filter actions, URL actions, and highlight actions, swapping sheets by using parameters or sheet selector, adding navigation buttons that allows an user to narrow down to any specific area they may be interested in, and implementing guiding sentences like click, hover, and menu options.

Formatting of exquisite dashboards is also a key area of the Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam. Candidates are expected to be able to appropriate use elegant colors, fonts, shapes, and styling to create attractive and yet easy to read dashboards. Addition of custom shapes, color palettes, annotations, tooltips, padding also form important aspects of this topic. Knowledge of Removing gridlines, customizing row-level and column-level bands, shading, applying responsive designs for specific device layouts are all expected from a candidate taking the Data Analyst Exam.

Publishing and Managing Content on Tableau Server and Tableau Online

The Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam contains 9% of the questions from Tableau Server and Tableau Online. A candidate can achieve the required passing score of 75% without knowing these topics, however it is important as a Data Analyst to know how to Tableau Server and Tableau Online works together to provide a complete Data Analytics environment.

This section includes questions from Publishing Contents using Workbook, a Data Source, Printing content, and Exporting content. It also expects a candidate to be aware of Scheduled Data Updates, like Scheduling Data Extract Refreshes, and Scheduling a Tableau Prep Workflow. The Data Analyst Certification Exam also includes Managing Published Workbooks by Creating Alerts, and Creating Subscriptions.