Sessions need a laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Tableau Public · Foundations
Build and publish a dashboard anyone can open at a link.
What you’ll end up with
One finished two-sheet dashboard. Sales and margin by territory, the same story over time, a filter a reader can drive, one sheet that filters the other, seven calculated fields you can each explain, and a public link.
11½
hours in all — about 7½ guided, 4 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Tableau Public. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Tableau Public. There’s no payment and no card required.
From three raw files to a finished dashboard
0165 min
Get the data in front of you
Tableau installed, the orders export loaded, and you can say what Tableau decided about every field before you touched it.
02135 min
One clean set of fields you can trust
The channel names folded into one entry each and proved on the first chart you build yourself, the note row that was inflating the returns gone, the product names free of stray spaces, and the money field that arrived as text usable as a number.
03125 min
Teach Tableau how your tables fit together
A third file related rather than joined, so a lead's name sits alongside a territory total without multiplying it; product categories that read as words; and a date field you can move between years and months on purpose.
04145 min
Write the numbers the business actually asks for
Seven calculated fields — sales, profit, orders, returned orders, average order value, profit margin and return rate — each returning a figure you have checked, plus year-on-year growth, and every one of them formatted so the screen says what it means. Return rate here means the share of orders that came back, counted as orders and not as returned lines.
05135 min
Build the dashboard people will actually use
Two worksheets that answer the question between them, labelled and sorted so the ranking is done for the reader, on one dashboard with a filter they can drive and a chart they can click to filter the other.
0675 min
Publish it, and defend it
One consistent look across the whole workbook, a title and a written finding a stranger can read, the dashboard published at a public link, a copy exported for a meeting pack, and a workbook that reopens whole.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit, or a Mac running Ventura or later.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser, beside Tableau Public.
Tableau Desktop Public Edition
Two names, one journey: you build in Tableau Desktop Public Edition, the free application, and publish to Tableau Public, the site anyone can open your work on.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. Tableau Desktop Public Edition is a free download, and the Tableau Public account you publish to is free. There is no card and no trial clock.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers Tableau Public, on your own computer.
- Windows 10 or Windows 11, or a Mac running Ventura or later
- 2 GB of memory on Windows, 4 GB on a Mac, which is what Tableau states for this app
- Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, to run Alongrail alongside Tableau and to open what you publish
- A free Tableau Public account, created before session one at the Tableau Public site — an email address and a password, no card and no work email. Tableau's own help says an account is what lets you publish, which is what session six does with it
- Be ready to fill in a form to get the download. Tableau's download page for Tableau Desktop Public Edition asks for a name, an email address, a country and a phone number, and carries an agreement about Tableau's services and a line saying their team will be in touch. There is no card and no payment, and the application itself is free — but the download is not a click, and the address you give it is an address Tableau may contact you on. Use one you are willing to hear from them at
- The data bundle halcyon-data.zip, downloaded from the course page and unzipped into a folder of its own called Halcyon — make that folder first and keep nothing else in it, because Tableau records the path it loaded from
- The on-your-own bundle for Pemberton Audio, downloaded from the course page and unzipped into a second folder of its own called Pemberton, so that two sets of files with identical names can never be confused for each other
- One thing to know before you start: what you save stays on your own computer, and what you publish to Tableau Public is visible to anyone who has the link. Both companies in this course are invented and their data is generated, which is why it is safe to publish. Never publish anything real here.
- Not a Tableau Prep course, and not a Tableau Cloud course. Everything here runs in the free desktop app and publishes to the free public site.
- No maps. The supplied exports carry no place names, and a geographic field added only to carry the topic would be padding.
- Not a calculation deep dive. You will write seven calculated fields and understand all of them, rather than skim forty.
- Everything you publish is public. That is the trade for a free tool with a real audience, and it is why this course ships invented data.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with three raw exports of a wholesaler's orders and finish with an interactive dashboard published on the web at a link you can send anyone, built by you, understood by you, and rebuildable without help.
A two-sheet Tableau dashboard — sales and margin by territory, and the same story over time — with a filter a reader can drive and one sheet that filters the other when it is clicked, built on a cleaned data source with seven calculated fields you can each explain, a written finding in the reader's language, and a public Tableau Public link that is the thing your completion record points at.
How a session works
- Open Tableau Public
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Tableau Public and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 11½ hours in all·about 7½ guided·about 4 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Tableau Public Foundations — build and publish a dashboard anyone can open
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The dashboard you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Data import and inspection · Data cleaning with and without a cleaning command · Relating tables without double counting · Calculated fields, row-level and aggregate · Table calculations · View choice and visual analysis · Dashboard design and interactivity · Publishing to the web, and understanding what that means · Stating and defending a finding
What was built
A two-sheet Tableau dashboard — sales and margin by territory, and the same story over time — with a filter a reader can drive and one sheet that filters the other when it is clicked, built on a cleaned data source with seven calculated fields you can each explain, a written finding in the reader's language, and a public Tableau Public link that is the thing your completion record points at.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Tableau Public Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the dashboard you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Tableau Public when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
How this relates to a certification — the course covers the core connecting, preparing, analysing and sharing skills assessed in Tableau's Desktop Specialist credential. This is not preparation for that credential, and its fee is separate and paid to Tableau.
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Tableau Public?
Tableau Public is the software this course is built in. It runs on your own computer.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Halcyon Cycles sells bicycles, frames, wheels and parts to independent bike shops across four sales territories. Three years of orders, a little over two thousand of them, and four territory leads.
The managing director has asked a question nobody in the company can currently answer: which territories are actually making money, and which are only busy. Sales are growing year on year. So are returns, and nobody knows whether those are the same story or two different ones.
There is no reporting system. There are three exported files, a shop-floor argument about who the best territory is, and a board meeting.
Your job is to build the dashboard that answers it.
Do I need to know Tableau Public already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 11½ hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 7½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Tableau Public runs on Windows and macOS.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
Does this prepare me for a certification exam?
Covers the core connecting, preparing, analysing and sharing skills assessed in Tableau's Desktop Specialist credential. This is not preparation for that credential, and its fee is separate and paid to Tableau. Alongrail is not an exam provider.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Tableau Public Foundations is Foundations in Tableau Public. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Tableau Public. All the courses →