Sunil Bhardwaj
4 min readFeb 14, 2023

If You Like To Achieve the ‘Tableau Desktop Specialist Certification’ Read This Book

A prep guide with multiple learning styles to help you gain Tableau Desktop Specialist certification

Data Visualization uses maps, graphs, charts, and other visual elements to depict a dataset or information. Data visualization aids in the comprehension of a dataset’s trend, insights, patterns, and other relationships.

Tableau is a data visualization tool for businesses that allows users to create interactive data visualizations in minutes using its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Tableau enables easy movement between overall data sets and in-depth analytical data sets to draw smart conclusions.

Tableau also allows users to add colors, widths, depths, pictures, animations, and more to their tables. As a result, once complex data sets can now be easily understood and presented to external stakeholders.

The software is primarily used to extract business intelligence from massive amounts of data, including social media interaction, sales figures, or any other metric that could assist an organization or corporation make decisions.

Adam Mico in his new book for the Tableau Desktop Specialist Certification focus on the new format, which has new and more complex challenges compared to the prior version. (Available on Amazon — http://packt.link/ckXQ3)

Adam Mico is the principal, data visualization and enablement at Moderna. Before that, he worked as a Tableau evangelist for Keyrus US. He is a two-time Michael W. Cristiani Community Leadership Award winner (Tableau Conference). He is also a Tableau visionary, mentor, Tableau Speaker Bureau member, and a Tableau ambassador.

Tableau Desktop Specialist Certification By Adam Mico available on Amazon — http://packt.link/ckXQ3

In this article, I will give a quick review of this book and discuss what it covers and why you should read and how to get the most out of it.

Table of content:

  1. What does this book cover
  2. Why you should read this book
  3. How to get the most out of this book

1. What does this book cover

  1. Tableau Desktop Specialist Certification Overview
  2. Data Ingestion
  3. How to Interpret the Data in a Data Visualization
  4. Working with Dimensions, Measures, and Marks
  5. Calculations and Functions Syntax
  6. Connecting to and Preparing Data
  7. Understanding and Creating Fundamental Charts in Tableau
  8. Data Organization and Worksheet Analytics
  9. Sharing insights
  10. Exam Preparation
  11. Mock Tests

2. Why you should read this book

  1. This book gets you started by covering the exam format, Tableau basics, and best practices for preparing data for analysis and visualization. It also builds on your knowledge of advanced Tableau topics to get you up to speed with the essential domains and domain objectives. Although the guide provides an outline and starting point to key in on what needs to be understood before the examination, it also delivers in context to give you a strong understanding of each piece before taking the exam. Instructions on how to get hands on with examples, a common data source, and suggested elements are also included. Understanding the concepts will not only assist you in passing the examination, but will also help you work effectively with the tool in your workspace.
  2. By the end of this book, you will have the knowledge to not only pass the examination but also begin working in the field of data visualization. You will be able to build charts and dashboards, understand the terminology, create calculations, provide analytics, and learn formatting in Tableau. This book is also helpful for those that are required to upskill quickly for data analytics or consulting roles. Besides that, if questioned in an interview for a job requiring fundamental knowledge of Tableau, you will have the tools to confidently respond to those questions.

3. How to get the most out of this book

This book is aimed at those who are new to Tableau or have never opened the application. It assumes no knowledge of Tableau. Although all exercises come with step-by-step instructions and prior knowledge is not required, having a background in Excel formulas, SQL, and/or using data visualizations in another tool will reduce the learning curve and help you pick things up quicker. You will need to set aside 25–40 hours over 2 weeks to read, practice, take the mock exam, and review the additional study materials.

Throughout the book, you will be working with examples utilizing Tableau Desktop. To get the most from the book, please download the Tableau Desktop application, which offers a free trial for 2 weeks every time a new version is released. However, downloading the free Tableau Public application will give you most of the features and a playground to publish exercises for absolutely no cost.

In conclusion, this book is extremely recommended if you would like to learn and master Tableau fundamentals and get the one and only Tableau certification that never expires, while expediting your journey from zero to certification in a very practical way with a lot of hands-on examples and exercises.

Thanks for reading! If you like the article make sure to clap (up to 50!) and connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on Medium to stay updated with my new articles.

Sunil Bhardwaj

I'm Salesforce CRM Analytics Ambassador (2023 & 2022). I'm working with HCL as Salesforce Lead Consultant. I always enjoy helping people & being a Trailblazer!