2021 Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam Guide: Tableau Certification
I'm about to sit the Tableau Desktop Specialist exam, so let me walk you through the setup, the skills it tests, and exactly how to pass it.
- The Desktop Specialist exam is $100, has no prerequisites, runs 60 minutes with multiple choice and multiple response questions, and requires a 70% pass mark.
- The new Pearson Vue setup is a contained environment with no internet, help menu or documentation access, unlike older Tableau exams.
- The exam prep guide's skills-measured section and nine sample questions are the most valuable preparation resources, and comprehension of Tableau's specific terminology matters as much as knowledge.
- Always check in 30 minutes early because technical issues happen, and questions test exact mechanics like where to click rather than just concepts.
- Scores are reported as a scaled score out of 1000, and the exam may include unscored trial questions, so the actual count can exceed the stated 30.
0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, I'm
0:01going to be going through the Tableau
0:03specialist exam.
0:04Now, before I get into this video, I'm
0:06actually about to set the exam in just a
0:07few minutes. But
0:08what I thought I'd do is I take some time
0:10just to go through the exam setup, and what
0:12the exam is
0:13actually covering. All the Tableau exams
0:15have moved over to a new website over on
0:17Pearson Vue.
0:18That's what I've got here in front of me.
0:20So now you can see there's a new page
0:21dedicated to Tableau,
0:23you can see that all their certifications
0:25are now being delivered through Pearson Vue
0:27. So this
0:28changeover from loyalist exam services has
0:31basically been finished and all the exams
0:34are
0:34here. Now, I've actually already done
0:36videos on some of these other cert
0:37ifications, for example,
0:38the certified associate consultant, and
0:41also the Tableau certified data analyst
0:43beta, I've actually
0:44done a first impressions on that. So if you
0:45want to see that, go check that out. But
0:47today, I'm
0:48going to be doing the Tableau desktop
0:49specialist. Now, the context of this is, I
0:52've actually sat all
0:53the other exams in the past, I've sat the
0:55certified associate exam, and I've also
0:57done the desktop
0:58certified pro exam in the past, same with
1:00server associate and same with server pro.
1:03So I'm not a
1:04newbie to Tableau by any means. So
1:05essentially, what I'm doing is I'm sitting
1:07this exam to get
1:08a genuine impression of what it's like,
1:10what the questions are like compared to
1:12some of the more
1:13advanced exams, so I can sort of put them
1:14on a scale. And I'm generally working my
1:16way through
1:17all the certifications, because I need to
1:19actually renew my certifications, they're
1:21not valid forever.
1:22So you do have to renew them at least once
1:24every two to three years, depending on the
1:26exam. Now,
1:27if you go to the Tableau website, the first
1:29thing they do, if I actually go back to the
1:31main website, they have a list of all the
1:32certifications that are available. And you
1:34can
1:34see here, the desktop specialist is $100.
1:36That doesn't include any VAT or any
1:38additional taxes
1:39or charges. But when you go to pay kind of
1:41goes through all of that and lays that out
1:43so clearly
1:44for you. Now, there are no prerequisites
1:46for this. So this is a great foundational
1:48exam for
1:48anyone who's starting out for the first
1:50time, and just wants to whet their appetite
1:52with some sort
1:52of certification to say they've started
1:54learning Tableau. And if you actually go to
1:57the page,
1:57it does give a bit of information about the
1:59exam details. But the best place to go for
2:02any of this
2:02is actually to go to the exam prep guide
2:04over here, if you click that, it opens up a
2:07PDF that
2:07looks a little bit like this. Once you've
2:10got this PDF open, you go down to several
2:12pages, and it
2:13starts to go through the exam format. So I
2:15'm literally about to sign into the check in
2:17for
2:17this exam. That's that's 30 minutes before
2:20the actual exam itself. So be sure to check
2:22the details
2:22about your specific exam if you're sitting
2:25it remotely, if you're in person in the
2:27test center,
2:27will be entirely different. But nonetheless
2:29, the exam format here is 60 minutes. It's
2:31multiple
2:32choice, multiple response and hands on.
2:34There's a number of questions is 30, and
2:37scoring automatically
2:38scored. So you'll find out your results
2:40pretty much at the end of the exam. So it's
2:42immediately
2:42scored because you're answering from a pool
2:45of questions. The past Mike is 70%. And it
2:48's offered
2:49in several languages, which is great. And
2:51the delivery platform is a Windows virtual
2:52machine
2:53containing Tableau desktop. Now, the skills
2:55measured is actually the most useful part
2:57here. So
2:57it breaks it down into specific skills. So
3:00understanding these concepts is super,
3:03super important. Now these are fundamental
3:05things. If you started learning Tableau,
3:06and you haven't
3:07covered this, this to me is like the holy
3:09grail of what you should really
3:11fundamentally understand.
3:13And you'd be amazed how many people will go
3:15to an advanced certification or an advanced
3:18course,
3:19and not know the ins and outs of every one
3:21of these individual items. You can think
3:23you've
3:23covered a topic, but I always say that you
3:25don't know a topic until you can explain it
3:27really well
3:28and clearly to someone else. So that should
3:30be your benchmark, essentially
3:31understanding what a
3:32join a blend a union is all of these
3:34concepts, they're sort of very easy to
3:36dismiss. But if you
3:38don't understand them too well, you're
3:40going to struggle a little bit with this
3:41exam. Now, you
3:42don't have to know everything, the past
3:44mark is 70%. So you just have to make sure
3:46you gauge how
3:47much of this you're comfortable with. And
3:49can you recall all of this in your head,
3:51and Tableau exams
3:53of the past will used to let you search the
3:54internet and do a bunch of other things.
3:56And they
3:57don't do that anymore with a new Pearson V
3:58ue setup, essentially, you're in a contained
4:01environment.
4:02And so don't expect to have things like the
4:04help menu, and so on and so forth available
4:07. And you
4:08can sometimes look at the documentation,
4:10but you'll see lots of exam guides from the
4:12past,
4:12that will say that you can do this, that's
4:14no longer the case, everything has changed.
4:16That's
4:16why I'm doing this round of videos. So now
4:18if I keep going down, you'll see a sample
4:20questions
4:20list. This is really, really good, because
4:22it gives you an idea of what the questions
4:24are going
4:24to look like. And because this exam has 30
4:27questions, and you've got four here, that's
4:29nearly
4:3010% of the questions you're going to see.
4:32So it's a really good idea just to check
4:34these out and make
4:34sure you can get these right, as well. So
4:36let's look at some of this, which one of
4:38the following
4:38is the best reason to use an extract
4:40instead of a live connection, your data
4:42source only supports
4:44the live connection, you need to the fres
4:46hest possible data at all times, you need to
4:48apply
4:48an aggregation that takes too long when
4:50using a live connection, you need to join
4:51tables that
4:52are in the data source, C is the obvious
4:54answer there. And there's some detractors
4:56in there. Some
4:57of those might sound correct, if you haven
4:59't spent enough time with Tableau. But the
5:01obvious answer
5:02there is an aggregation that takes too long
5:04, the whole point of an extract is that it's
5:06fast. So
5:07be sure that you can get into one of these
5:09questions and actually give a logical
5:11reason
5:12why that is, why it sounds is the answer.
5:14And you're not just guessing because you
5:16know,
5:16you think it's the right answer, be sure
5:17you can absolutely explain those, you won't
5:19need to an
5:20exam, but it's a really good idea to sort
5:22of get in there, we actually get nine
5:23sample questions,
5:24and they're really, really good. And then
5:26you obviously have the solution spread out
5:28over
5:28several pages to give you an idea of what
5:30to expect. So that's pretty much it. The
5:32exam guide
5:33is super, super important. I'll probably go
5:35through this in a little bit more detail,
5:36maybe
5:37some other time when we do a more full on
5:39guide for the entire exam. But nonetheless,
5:42that's
5:42pretty much it for the exam guide. Once you
5:44've, you know, looked at the exam guide, you
5:46're ready
5:46to book, you head over to Pearson Vue, you
5:49sign into your account, you book the exam.
5:51And once
5:52you've done that, you've signed up, you've
5:54paid for it, you have to do a little bit of
5:55an exam,
5:56sort of set up, you get a confirmation
5:58email from Pearson Vue, Pearson Vue will
6:01tell you your test
6:01time, they'll check you to test, they'll
6:03ask you to test your system ahead of time,
6:05then you need
6:06to check in 30 minutes before the exam. So
6:08I've actually got to hop off in exactly one
6:10minute to
6:11go check in for my exam, right after I
6:13record another video and give you my take
6:16on the exam
6:16compared to some of the other exams that
6:18exist in the Tableau ecosystem. So let me
6:21switch over. Okay,
6:22so I've literally just start the exam, it
6:24took about 45 minutes end to end, I checked
6:26in at
6:27quarter past 10. I took about 25 minutes to
6:30actually get into the exam, because there's
6:32a technical issue always leave 30 minutes,
6:35it doesn't matter how good your setup is,
6:37it doesn't matter how you know, well
6:38prepared you are, something can always go
6:40wrong. In this
6:41particular case, I actually managed to un
6:44plug my webcam, as I was showing the proctor
6:46around my
6:47desk, I actually pull the cable out. When I
6:50did that the system that was, you know,
6:52recording the
6:53exam basically wouldn't let me add a webcam
6:55back in. So I actually had to restart the
6:57whole process
6:58again. And that took another 10 minutes. So
7:00it's the reason why they say check in 30
7:02minutes,
7:03always leave enough time. Now I've just had
7:05the exam, I know that I've passed, I'll go
7:08to my score
7:08report in a second. But in essence, I'm
7:10just going to show you the process of
7:12finding out your score.
7:13At the end of the exam itself, if it's an
7:15automatically scored exam, you will
7:17actually
7:17tell you whether you've passed or not. And
7:19it will give you the scaled score. And it
7:21looks exactly the
7:22same as the score report, which is what I'm
7:24going to show you now. So let me go ahead
7:26and sign into
7:26my account. And obviously, I have other
7:29exams in here. So you can see that I've got
7:31the three exams
7:32that I've taken, and I've made videos on
7:34the desktop specialist, I've just taken the
7:36certified
7:36data analyst beta server certified
7:39associate as well. And if I go into my exam
7:42history,
7:43you'll see you'll see that I've got the
7:46three exams in here. Now what I can do is I
7:49can go
7:50ahead and click on the tableau desktop
7:52specialist, you'll see that it has my
7:54status here as a past
7:55has my registration ID and a couple of
7:57other bits of information that'll obviously
7:59blur out.
8:00But if I go back, and I just go back to the
8:02previous page, what I can actually do is
8:06view the score reports. And that takes me
8:08to another page, which actually has the
8:11same information, again, telling you that
8:13they've passed, you can see the three exams
8:15that I've
8:15taken here. And if I select the desktop
8:17specialist, and I hit view, you'll get a
8:20PDF that loads up.
8:21I've actually already got this open here in
8:23another tab. And you can see there's my mug
8:25shot
8:25that I took right before the exam, along
8:28with the past Mac, which is 917 out of 1000
8:31. And that's
8:32pretty much it. Now, I sat 45 questions.
8:35And I believe the exam guide said, so let's
8:37just
8:38look at this again, let's just double make
8:39sure what's going on here. So tableau
8:41specialist exam,
8:43there's a PDF, the exam guide said that we
8:47had 30 questions, okay. So what I believe
8:51is happening
8:52is they ask you 15 questions that aren't
8:54necessarily part of the exam, but you don't
8:57know which those which which which
8:59questions those are. So there's typically,
9:02this is like AWS,
9:04or some of those exams, you do actually get
9:06some questions that are not part of the
9:08exam,
9:09those are put in there to see how people
9:12perform, and essentially pull questions for
9:14the future,
9:15essentially. So they always put in more
9:17questions than are actually necessary to
9:19part to pass the
9:20exam. Now, if I just go back up, let me
9:23just look at this, it doesn't say anything
9:24about that in
9:25here. So I can only make the assumption
9:27that that's the case. I know it's the case
9:29with some
9:29of the other tableau exams as well. But
9:31nonetheless, yeah, so it says 30 questions
9:34here actually did
9:3545 in the same 60 minutes, if that makes
9:38sense. So I don't know if that's just
9:40because this document
9:41needs an update, or if it's actually
9:43incorrect, and the exam has slightly
9:45changed. And it's maybe
9:47something worth just clarifying with
9:48certification at tableau. So maybe I'll try
9:51and do that and add
9:52it to the comments of this video in the
9:54future. But if I actually go back to my
9:56score report,
9:56you can see everything's in there. Now the
9:58scaled scores out of 1000. Essentially, the
10:01way to think
10:02of this is I got 91%, essentially, so nine
10:05917 over 1000 is basically 91%. Now over
10:10the number
10:11of questions, if I just think I had 45
10:14questions, if they're doing the thing where
10:17they're putting
10:18in questions that you know, don't count
10:21towards exam, it's sort of difficult to
10:23figure out exactly
10:24how many questions you got wrong. So I
10:27think just looking at this, I think I
10:29either got like
10:30something between three and one question
10:33incorrect for that to be the case. If I
10:35look if I think of
10:36the exam, actually, if I think of it this
10:38way, if I got asked 30 questions, and I got
10:4110% of them
10:41wrong, that means I got about three wrong,
10:44okay. And if that's how many actually
10:45counted for the
10:46exams, it's about three, if it was 45, and
10:49I got 10% of them wrong, then I got four
10:51and a half
10:52wrong out of the 45. And I'll come to why I
10:54got those wrong in a second, because I did
10:56have a few
10:57issues with this exam. But nonetheless,
10:59that's basically how to think of it, the
11:00scaled score is
11:01basically trying to give you some sort of,
11:03you can kind of figure out percentage, I
11:05don't know why
11:06they just don't do a percentage. And the
11:07same is true with most other software exams
11:09, actually,
11:10they always give a scaled score out of 1000
11:12. But nonetheless, that is what it is. Now,
11:15when it comes to the questions I got wrong,
11:17this is something you have to factor in.
11:19And I've always
11:20had this issue. In fact, I know I'm not the
11:23only one. The tableau exam is either
11:25written, well,
11:26let's rephrase, the tableau exam is written
11:29in a style that can sometimes can sometimes
11:32be a
11:32challenge to understand. And by that I mean
11:35, it's written in a very sort of exam, sort
11:38of English
11:39way. So sometimes they'll ask the question,
11:41there was actually a couple of questions
11:42today where I
11:43was like, Hey, what are they actually
11:45asking him? I'm not actually clear exactly
11:48what they're
11:49stating him. Okay. And in those cases,
11:51there are only two questions like in those
11:54cases,
11:54what I tend to do is I mark them for review
11:56, and I come back, I can't show you what
11:58that looks like,
11:58because you're not allowed to record the
12:00exam. But hopefully tableau will be making
12:02resources
12:02that you can see and get a feel for what
12:04the interface looks like. You can actually
12:07also do
12:07like a practice setup. When you do the
12:10Pearson Vue practice setup, you actually do
12:14go through
12:14something that looks like the exam
12:16interface. It doesn't have any real
12:17questions there.
12:18But nonetheless, if I go back to the
12:20questions, there's always one or two
12:23questions where I'm
12:24never sure what exactly they're actually
12:26asking. And it's not because I don't know,
12:28it's just
12:28because I just don't understand the
12:30question properly. So comprehension is a is
12:33a meaningful
12:34part of this exam. And where that also gets
12:36a little bit more interesting is that with
12:38this
12:38new exams, you don't have access to the
12:40product. So whereas before I could open up
12:43tableau, I could
12:44go to the help guide, or I could go
12:46download documentation or go check the
12:48documentation and
12:49triple check my understanding. With this
12:52one, there's a couple of nuanced questions,
12:54I'll come
12:55to the question types in a second, where,
12:57you know, I just couldn't remember the
12:59exact thing I
13:00need to do, I couldn't visualize the exact
13:02thing I need to do. And by exact thing I
13:04need to do,
13:05I'm talking, do I need to right click there
13:07? Or do I need to click on that, then go
13:10down a level in
13:10the menu, it's that level of detail that
13:12they're actually testing in this exam. So
13:15really try and
13:16make sure you have some lived experiences
13:18of the products. Because if you don't,
13:20those questions
13:21are really going to sting you in those
13:22specific questions where they're asking,
13:23you know, where
13:24do you do x? Or how do you format this to,
13:26you know, look like this in the shortest
13:28possible way,
13:30those ones usually only have one correct
13:32answer. And it doesn't matter how many
13:34years you've done
13:35it, there's more than one way to do it in
13:36Tableau, but they're looking for a specific
13:39one. So I'm
13:39pretty certain that's what I got wrong. I
13:41'll never know, because unfortunately, you
13:43don't get any
13:45sort of breakdown of the questions or
13:46answers. Otherwise, people would be making
13:48a I'm sure a
13:49black market of questions that they saw the
13:51ending in the exam. But that's basically
13:54what you have to
13:54look out for. Now, when it comes to the
13:57actual questions itself, I found the
13:58questions fairly
13:59straightforward. Again, I'm someone who sat
14:01quite a few tablet exams. In fact, I've sat
14:04all of them
14:04in the past, I'm resetting them again to
14:07renew them. And in terms of the way the
14:09questions were
14:11termed, bearing in mind, you don't have
14:13access to the resources. This was
14:15definitely a very simple
14:17set of questions. But you had to make sure
14:19you were paying attention to the detail in
14:21the question.
14:22There were a lot of questions, which had
14:24really good detractors by detractors. I
14:26mean, they ask
14:27you a question, there's four answers, and
14:30two of them sound right. One of them is
14:31right. And one
14:32of them is flat out wrong. That's sort of
14:35the the general approach. And the
14:36detractors sometimes can
14:38be really, really good. In fact, one of
14:40them I marked for review, I had to go back
14:41and when I
14:42read it again, having looked at some other
14:44questions, I realized that's just
14:46completely
14:46wrong. I've got the wrong options here. And
14:49I re recalibrated my marks. And I hopefully
14:52I got
14:52the question, right? I don't actually know.
14:54But that's something to be aware of. The
14:56question
14:57format is pretty simple in that sense. It's
14:59always going to be multiple choice question
15:01with one
15:02answer out of four. Or they'll ask you a
15:04question saying, you know, here's a process
15:07that I here's a
15:08visualization, for example, how do you
15:10build it, choose the two correct options,
15:13or choose the
15:14three correct options. And those ones, you
15:16need to make sure you really understand the
15:18detail of
15:18again, how that works. I've already talked
15:20about this. And that's pretty much it. That
15:22's the only
15:23sort of thing I got to see in the exam,
15:25there was no hands on part of the exam with
15:28the product in
15:29front of you. It was all done in this
15:31interface with just multiple choice
15:33questions. And the
15:34multi option questions, as I'm going to
15:37call them in this particular case. So that
15:40's that. Now, the
15:41questions themselves, I've said already,
15:43they were very specific. So lots of
15:45different questions about
15:47the kind of things we were seeing here in
15:49the exam guide. So if I take this exam
15:50guide, and we look
15:51at something like adding a union or join or
15:54a blend, and all of these things were being
15:56tested
15:57in sort of very deliberate way. So they
15:58wouldn't just ask you what is a joy and
16:00what is a blend or
16:01what is a union, but they'd ask you
16:03something about the mechanic of doing those
16:05things. So when
16:06you look at things like relationships, they
16:09might ask you a question on the mechanic of
16:11creating a
16:11relationship. Or they might ask you a
16:13question, for example, on something like,
16:16maybe physical
16:17tables in a relationship, how do those work
16:19? And what is the difference? What might you
16:22get if you
16:22take an extract of those things? Those are
16:25all sort of examples of questions. Or if
16:27you take one
16:28of these charts, for example, take a
16:30scatterplot, or take something like a dual
16:32axis chart, they
16:33might ask you about the mechanics of you
16:35know, creating one of those things, or why
16:37you might
16:37create one of those things, or doing things
16:39like visual groupings and applying filters.
16:42Again,
16:42they might ask you about the specifics of
16:45what you do first. And you need to be very
16:47sort of aware of
16:49the terminology they're using, because they
16:52're using what they term to be Tableau
16:54terminology.
16:55But of course, if you're learning Tableau,
16:57you might not be familiar with that. So
16:58visual
16:59grouping actually means something specific
17:01in Tableau. It's a specific way of grouping
17:04things
17:04compared to grouping using labels, and some
17:06of this other information. So don't just
17:08assume that
17:09I've worked with groups, I know what that
17:11is. No, no, you need to specifically
17:12understand what
17:13visual grouping means. And so there's lots
17:15of lots of different things here, I could
17:17go through the
17:18whole entire guide. And if you'd like me to
17:20do that, let's say this, if I get 100 likes
17:23in this
17:23video, I will make a step by step guide for
17:26each and every one of these sections in a
17:28notion or
17:29something public that people can can access
17:31maybe linking off to videos or
17:33documentation,
17:33where it's necessary. And then I'll just
17:35walk through some of the specifics over
17:37them very
17:38quickly. So I'll make that promise 100
17:40likes, if we get there, I will do that
17:43guide as soon as I
17:44possibly can. And you can hold me to
17:46account on that one. So be sure to sort of
17:49really go through
17:50this guide, and make sure everything is
17:51correct, make sure that you've sort of gone
17:54through this.
17:54And because this might be your first ever
17:56Tableau exam, it's really important that
17:58you sort of get
17:59this right. If you've sat this exam, and
18:01maybe you failed it. Number one, check out
18:04my video on
18:04failing certifications, I've actually done
18:06one of those. But nonetheless, number two,
18:08just spend time on this page and make sure
18:11you know these things. It's actually a
18:14skills page
18:17that you could probably cover in a weekend,
18:19if you've used the product well enough and
18:21long
18:21enough to be able to go through these
18:23things and understand how they work. And
18:26you know, if you
18:26don't understand, just grab one of these
18:29headers, and go over to Google and just
18:32type in Tableau,
18:34and then paste the thing that you've just
18:36grabbed. So in this particular case, I didn
18:38't actually copy
18:38it. So let's go to there. And let's delete
18:42that and to say Tableau use shapes. And
18:45boom, surprise,
18:46surprise, the top hit is an article about
18:49using shapes. Okay, it's a slightly dated
18:53article using
18:53a slightly old version of Windows. And you
18:55can tell here, it's something like Windows
18:5795, or
18:58whatever. But nonetheless, it's still going
19:00to get you through. And if you look at some
19:02of the
19:03other things that come up as well, you're
19:04going to find the right resource. Now the
19:06thing I always
19:07tend to lean to is actually using Tableau's
19:10own help pages. So if you say it search
19:13Tableau shapes,
19:15and you just search KB, that's my typical
19:17approach for this, you normally get some
19:20sort of kb.tableau.com
19:22URL. And then you can go into that and
19:24knowledge base article KB stands for
19:26knowledge base, if we
19:27click on this particular one, you can see
19:29that they have this sort of issue and
19:31explanation. But
19:32the reason I'm actually going here is
19:34because of everything here on the right
19:36hand side. So the
19:37related links link off to other aspects of
19:39the topic, and just spend some time getting
19:42familiar
19:42with this topic, it might not even come up
19:44in the exam. But what you're doing is you
19:46're getting the
19:46language of Tableau and you get in the
19:49vocabulary into your head into your sort of
19:51everyday working.
19:52So when you open the product, you start to
19:54think like like the, you know, the product
19:57interface is
19:57designed to think you kind of have to get
19:59used to using the terminology and the
20:01behaviors that you
20:02know, Tableau wants to see in this exam. So
20:04that's pretty much it. There's not much
20:06more to say other
20:07than that. The this is a very simple,
20:09straightforward exam. I think everyone can
20:12pass
20:12this on their first attempt. There's no
20:15reason why you can't make sure that the
20:17thing you do is
20:18you spend time I think the most likely
20:21reason for failing this exam is just not
20:24spending enough time
20:25on this page. And they do have resources up
20:28here at the top. So free training videos,
20:30product
20:31support the Tableau product help the
20:34product help should be the only thing you
20:37need to pass this
20:38exam. In fact, all exams could be passed
20:41with just a Tableau help pages, the Tableau
20:43help pages are
20:44essentially the manuals for the product. So
20:47if you open up Tableau desktop, for example
20:49, you can go
20:50in there. Now it's always worth checking
20:52what they're testing the exam on. So for
20:54example, if I
20:55go to this exam guide, let's go back a few
20:58pages. And we will see here that it doesn't
21:01that it should
21:02normally stipulate what version of Tableau
21:04is being used. Mind you, this might be so
21:06foundational
21:07that it doesn't actually matter what
21:08version I think I can even say that myself
21:10without looking
21:11at the the guide. A lot of the features
21:13tested in the exam will probably work from
21:162020.2 onwards
21:18because they talk about relationships, and
21:20the physical and the data layer. So you
21:22probably want
21:23to make sure you're at least 2020.2 onwards
21:27. So you can actually set this exam and
21:29understand all
21:30the features and see them in front of you.
21:32If you haven't upgraded to any of those
21:33versions, maybe
21:34spend a bit of time with those versions and
21:36then work with it. But ideally go to the
21:38current help
21:39pages to get the current version of Tableau
21:41and then choose the product. In this case,
21:43it was
21:43Tableau desktop and web authoring. Web
21:45authoring is the web version of desktop
21:47essentially. And
21:48then you can go to the PDF or the HTML, I
21:50like to go to the HTML, because once you're
21:53here, they
21:53have the full help guide broken down. And
21:56you can basically go in and start wherever
21:59you want. So if
22:00you're talking about building visual
22:01izations from scratch, go go to build from
22:04build views from
22:04scratch. And you've got a few sort of chart
22:07types here. But you've also got a few
22:08videos and training
22:10content that you can find with sample data
22:12sets as well. And you've also got sort of
22:15other elements
22:16that sort of spin off here on the menu. So
22:18you can actually go into a deeper versions
22:20of these and
22:21keep going into multiple levels of, you
22:24know, explanation. And yes, it is all
22:26written. But it
22:27does have screenshots, it does have gifts
22:30explaining how to do stuff. So really, if
22:32you
22:33have no other resource, this is the only
22:35resource you need. So like I said before,
22:38forget 100 likes,
22:39I will actually make a linked resource. We
22:41used to get these actually a while back, a
22:43while back,
22:44you used to be able to get this document
22:46here, which is with each of these sections
22:49linking off
22:49to the appropriate help pages. And then
22:52they kind of stopped. So we'll try and do
22:54that we'll try
22:55and create recreate the resource so that
22:57everyone has something to go to and they
22:59can use. But that's
23:00it. I think I've talked for long enough
23:02about this exam. I'm glad I passed it kind
23:03of, you know,
23:05happy about that. But nonetheless, you know
23:08, again, it's important if you get 100%, I
23:11have
23:11actually got 100% in exam before. And that
23:14is a rare occasion. Because, again, I'm
23:17always never
23:18certain about sometimes some of the
23:19questions are just difficult to answer
23:22saying it is what it is.
23:23But nonetheless, it's a pass the pass and
23:25yeah, and yeah, wish you guys all luck. And
23:28let me know
23:29if you've passed the exam in the comments
23:30below. Let me know if you found this video
23:32useful. And
23:33maybe that's helped you pass. If not, let
23:35me know what could be better. We'll try and
23:37make a more
23:38dedicated resource for the exam itself
23:40going forward. Maybe at some point early in
23:42January as
23:43well. And yeah, I'll catch you in the next
23:45video. Check out my other videos on cert
23:47ifications as
23:48well. I've got an actual playlist that I'll
23:50put up on screen now so you can go check it
23:52out.
23:52Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in
23:54the next one.
In this one, I go through the Tableau Specialist exam run by Pearson Vue immediately after sitting it. This exam is for those who have foundational skills in and an understanding of Tableau Desktop, plus at least three months of applying this understanding in the product. Make sure to review the full Desktop Specialist exam prep guide before registering. Be sure to check out other videos in my certification playlist
0:00 Intro 0:19 Tableau and Pearson Vue booking 0:50 My past exams 1:30 About the Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam 2:01 The exam prep guide 2:54 Skills tested in the exam 4:19 Sample questions for the Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam 5:45 Getting ready for the exam 6:22 Technical issues and leaving enough time for them 7:04 Accessing your score report/results 9:31 30 - 45 questions 11:16 The way questions are asked 13:55 The questions in the Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam 19:25 Getting used to Tableau terminology 20:10 The best way to prepare 20:46 Tableau Help pages as a free resource for the exams 23:27 Outro