Why get the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification?

Overview

Data is at the center of the new digital age. Starting from invoices, sales figures, forecasting, to image processing, video editing, podcasting, every technical footprint that we leave generates immense amount of data. Corporations thrive to understand how and where their successes and failures lie. What decisions they took that benefitted them more? How can they learn from a slip in decision that cost them dearly in the eastern region of a place? Is it too early to put an injured star player back in the team? Can the recovered player be replaced with another recovered player whose has a history of resurfacing injuries within a week if played? Which city will have a devastating earthquake in the next few years? How can the government prepare for such disasters beforehand to save lives? The answer to all these questions, lie in the insights derived by analyzing the data that we already have. Herein comes the ever so crucial role of a data analyst.

What is the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification?

Tableau is one of the leading players in the Data Visualization and Analytics industry for nearly a decade. The Tableau software is extremely intuitive and powerful. Tableau already had Desktop and Server certifications. The new entry into the field is the Data Analyst Certification. How is this different from the rest? Let’s find out. To begin, experience is starting to play a more key aspect in these certifications. Tableau recommends atleast 6 months of experience with the product hands-on for this exam. This becomes even more essential as some of the benefits like ability to search answers over the internet in the other Tableau certifications are not present in the Data Analyst Certification. Tableau mentions that this certification exam will be held without any internet access provided to the candidate, which means one will not be able to search for answers during the duration of the exam. However it will not be too difficult for someone who has been working with the tool for some time.

The Tableau Data Analyst Certification is also of slightly longer duration than the Desktop Specialist and almost at par with the Certified Associate. The questions are focused on an individual’s ability to perform an end to end flow. Starting with data prep, then connecting and loading it into Tableau, and finally performing analysis on the data. Based on the types of questions provided, it is a combination of knowledge-based as well as hands-on questions. The questions are broadly divided into the categories of Connect to and Transform Data, Explore and Analyze Data, Creating Content, and finally Publishing and Managing Content on Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Thus by the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam, Tableau evaluates an individual’s ability to effectively garner insights from the data. Any kind of data processing and transformations as and when required are also in scope of the exam, thus providing a wholistic data analyst experience.

What are the main Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification topics?

As always, experience is key for this examination. Many of the things that we often perform subconsciously will start to play important role while answering the questions of this exam. Moreover with internet access prohibited, candidate has to totally rely on his knowledge and experience during the exam. Only during the hands-on section candidates will have access to the PDF version of Tableau Help. Let’s take a look at the main domains and the marks distribution of each in the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam.

Domain Title	% of Exam Content
Domain 1: Connect to and Transform Data	24%
Domain 2: Explore and Analyze Data	41%
Domain 3: Create Content	26%
Domain 4: Publish and Manage Content on Tableau Server and Tableau Online	9%

So here we see that each domain has been assigned different percentages based on the content present in the exam. Connecting to and Transforming Data pertains to activities like choosing appropriate data sources, live vs extracts, concepts of hyper and tde files, using relational database, extract filters, unions, joins, creating aliases, etc.

Exploring and Analyzing Data includes all activities related to Calculated fields – creating a calculated field with calculations using DATEPARSE, DATENAME, string functions, IF THEN, nested logics, number functions, data type conversion functions, aggregate functions, FIXED LOD calculations etc. It also includes creating quick table calculations like Moving Average, Percent of Total, Running Total, Difference and Percent of difference, Percentile, Compound Growth Rate, custom table calculations like Year to date, Month to date, Year over year, Index, Raking, First and last identifications etc. In this domain, we also have creating and configuring filters including Top N, Bottom N, include, exclude, wildcard, conditional, context filters, applying filter to multiple sheets and data sources, and creating parameters to enable interactivity in calculations, filters and reference lines. Then we ofcourse have questions from the major data structures like Sets, Bins, Hierarchies, Groups, and creating different types of maps geographically like symbol maps, heat maps, density maps, and chloropleth maps or filled maps. With respect to the Analytics features, this domain on Exploring and Analyzing Data in Tableau includes Reference Lines, Reference Bands, Average Lines, Trend Lines, Distribution Bands, Forecasting, and Predictive Modeling.

Creating Content section includes creating all types of charts like Bar Chart, Pie Chart, Highlight Table, Scatter Plot, Histogram, Tree Map, Bubble Chart, Data Tables, Gantt Chart, Box Plots, Area Chart, Dual Axis Charts, and Combo Charts. It also includes various representations of data using sorted formats, often by using custom sort logics. Dashboards, Stories, combining sheets into a dashboard by using containers and layout options, adding objects, creating stories, all come under this section. Adding interactivity to a dashboard is another interesting feature, by using techniques like applying filter to a view, adding filter, URL and highlight actions, swapping sheets using parameters or sheet selectors, adding navigation buttons, implementing user guiding sentences like click, hover, menu options etc. Formatting dashboard is another area of the Data Analyst Certification Exam, with focus on applying colors, fonts, shapes and styling, adding custom shapes and color palettes, adding annotations, adding tooltips, applying padding, removing gridlines, row-level and column-level bands, and shading, applying responsive design for specific device layouts.

Publishing and Managing Content on Tableau Server and Tableau Online caters to a list of topics starting from Publishing, Scheduling, to Managing Published Workbooks. It evaluates an individual’s ability to publish a workbook, publish a datasource, print content, export content, schedule data extract refreshes, schedule a Tableau Prep workflow, create alerts and subscriptions for published workbooks. It thus encompasses a wholistic end to end set of tasks that is required of a data analyst professional in his organization. Often the role of a data analyst may not include the Server aspect as it may be maintained by another administration team, but adding a Tableau Server expertise to the skill set ensures a level of proficiency that can easily be more demanding with a higher salary.

How is the Tableau Data Analyst Certification different from the Certified Associate?

Well, this is the most common question that professionals today are asking. If you have been learning Tableau long enough, you probably have heard of and even gathered the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification. The Tableau Certified Associate Exam had a comparable exam format with the Data Analyst, both had a passing score of 75%, both took 120+ minutes to complete, however Tableau has refined the experience from the perspective of the Data Analyst in the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Certification Exam, and retired the Certified Associate on 30th Sep 2021. We have the experience of both the exams, so let’s compare them:

• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam is for 150 minutes and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam is for 120 minutes.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam has 59 knowledge-based and 11 hands-on, i.e. total of 70 questions, and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam has 36 questions.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam is for 150 minutes and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam is for 120 minutes.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam both have a passing score of 75%. The Data Analyst Exam however uses a passing scaled score, which is a mathematical conversion of the number of items that a candidate answers correctly so that there is a consistent scale used all forms of the exam.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam can be taken at a testing center or online delivery method, and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam can be taken using Windows Virtual Machine containing Tableau Desktop.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam does not allow access to the Internet, and access to the Tableau Platform and a PDF version of the Tableau Help Guide is only allowed in the hands-on section and not in the knowledge-based sections. The Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam on the other hand provides complete access to public resources available over the internet.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam includes topics from Tableau Server and Tableau Online with focus on Publishing and Managing Content, and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam only focused on analyzing data using Tableau Desktop.
• The Tableau Data Analyst Certification Exam results are available 90 days after the beta period of the examination closes, and the Tableau Desktop Certified Associate Certification Exam were available within 48 hours of the exam.