Tableau Certified Associate Exam Prep Resources

Free

• Tableau Official Exam Guide Questions (15 Problems, hands-on + knowledge base)

https://mkt.tableau.com/files/DesktopCA_ExamGuide.pdf

• Free Practice Quiz on learningtableau.com

I personally find them easier than the actual exam. But definitely recommend trying on these after finishing the tableau eLearning curriculum.

https://learningtableau.com/practice-quizzes/

Paid

Online Courses

• Tableau Official eLearning (previously FREE, currently $10 / month billed annually)

Choose your desired learning path based on the skill sets that you are trying to build. By taking the end-of-program assessment, you will have reasonable grasp of your strength /weakness.

https://elearning.tableau.com/

• Tableau for Beginners: Get CA Certified, Grow Your Career

leaningtableau.com’s course designed for exam prep. Although I did not watch all the videos since I have prior familiarity with the Tableau software, I finished the quizzes to measure my skill level. I recommend spending some time on the calculated field & LOD ones to master not just the syntax, as well as the mechanism behind.

https://www.udemy.com/course/tableau-accelerate-your-career-and-get-certified

The Complete Tableau Bootcamp for Data Visualization

I took this course because I want to learn more about dashboards and tracking KPIs. This course will give you the opportunity to play with functionalities that are relevant to the real work environment (LOD,action,parameter and other dashboarding essentials) and get you prepared for slight more complex calculations.

https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-tableau-bootcamp-dashboards/

Practice Exam

https://learning-tableau.dpdcart.com/

3 practice exams from leaningtableau.com comes with the Udemy Course

The difficulties of these problem sets are close to the actual exam. Exam 3 is way harder than the first two. I recommend timing yourself, finishing all three, and also coming up with different solutions from the sample manual. In addition to the hands-on, practice the KB (knowledge base) questions using the Tableau Help page.

Some Recaps

Hands-On

In my opinion the hands-on problems are easier to prepare compared to the KB ones since the latter are much more in depth. Hands-on in an exam environment could be nerve wracking, though! There might not be enough time to double check these problems thus it is crucial to get them correct on the first attempt.

• Please make sure you have enough familiarity with Tableau’s sample dataset (YES. I am talking about that Superstore one!)
• LOD — I read some others’ posts discussing their exam experience, most people got 1–3 problems that require LOD. In my case, I encountered 3 problems that I think LOD will give the cleanest solution and I happened to use all FIXED, INCLUDE, EXCLUDE in each of them. Overall I think LOD is just a personal preference, but it’s the core concept of Tableau so it is important to find your way to master the in-and-out of it.
• Forecasting
• Histogram, Box-Plot
• Create Action
• Create Sets
• Dual Axis
• Join, Blend, Cross Database Join
• Assign geographic role

Knowledge Base

Take a deep breath if you encounter functionalities that you never heard of during the exam! The KB questions cover Tableau Desktop, Server, Public & Online. I only read about the Tableau Desktop ones and they are never enough in the actual exam. But fortunately you can use Tableau Help & GOOGLE! However, searching for the right answer is not as easy as expected. Hence practicing searching on Tableau Help will allow you to develop a sense of ‘How’ and ‘Where’ to find the right answers for those particularly in-depth KB questions.

• Differences between data sources
• Saving as different workbook types
• Actions
• Parameter
• Groups
• Spatial file

Common Calculated Field & LOD Problem Types & Tricks

Would also love to share some of the most common problem types I encountered during my exam prep!

*Dataset: Superstore

Q: Find the total sales for all product categories for customers who ordered Envelopes?

Trick: Use LOD + MAX(IF()

• This is a typical LOD problem because it contains various level of detail:
• Product categories
• Product subcategories
• customer

Breaking things down

1. Filter customers who ordered Envelopes; this step might first sound straight forward, but if we look at the dataset structure, there are cases that each Customer ID ordered multiple Product Sub-Category.

1. Create calculation using

FIXED :[level that the expression will return value for] ]:

MAX(IF [Consdition] THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)}

3. Use the calculated field to filter the customer who ordered envelopes

Result:

Q: Find the First/Last order date?

Trick: Use LOD + MIN()

1. Notice that 1 customer can be associated to 1 or more order dates
2. This can be solved by finding the earliest order date for each customer using the combination of FIXED and MIN

Result:

Q: Number of customers placed fewer than 5 orders?

Trick: Use LOD + CONDITION that compares two values

• Use calculated field to count how many order each customer had
• Use condition to check whether the number of order is less than 5

Result:

Dataset: FIFA

Q. Find the Player whose Position Rating matches the highest Position Rating within specific Nationality and Position

Trick: Use LOD fixing 2 fields + Condition that returns the player name

1. Dataset
2. The FIXED expression first evaluates the MAX Position Rating for each Nationality + Positions combination
3. Adding an IF Statement to compare rating of each player to the MAX Position Rating, and return the Player Name

Result: