Getting Started with Tableau Public

What is Tableau?

Tableau is a powerful data visualization and business intelligence tool that helps people to see and understand the data easily by transforming the data into interactive and sharable dashboards, that provide actionable insights. Tableau can easily connect to various databases, spreadsheets, cloud services, big data, etc. It also offers a wide range of visualization options, like charts, graphs, maps, etc., which can be customized and combined in dashboards. Users can easily share their dashboards and reports with other users through Tableau Server, Tableau Online, or Tableau Public.

Tableau provides several products. Tableau Reader and Tableau Mobile (Viewer), Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public Desktop (for developers), Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Public Server (Server), etc. For learning purposes, I recommend you use Tableau Public Desktop and Tableau Public Server, which are two components of Tableau Public and are available for free. Please make sure not to save any confidential data to the public server.

Tableau Public Desktop is a free version of Tableau’s desktop application, which is used for creating data visualization and dashboards, but it is limited to connecting with certain data sources as compared to the paid version of Tableau Desktop. Dashboards created using Tableau Public Desktop can be easily saved to Tableau Public Server, which makes them available to anyone online. Tableau Public Server is accessible to the public, which means anyone can view and interact with the visualization.

How to Install Tableau Public?

Go to https://www.tableau.com/products/public/download and click on Download Tableau Public.

Provide First Name, Last Name, Business E-mail & Country in the form and click on the Download the App button.

You can download the installer according to your operating system. In my case, I am using Windows OS, so clicking on Windows installer.

After choosing the OS, An exe setup starts downloading. Once downloaded, double-click on the exe to install.

Read and accept the license agreement. Click on Install.

It will take a few minutes to complete the installation.

Once completed, Click on the Restart button. It will reboot the system which is required for the completion of the installation.

Now, you will see a Tableau Desktop icon on the desktop. Double-click on it to run the Tableau Desktop.

Tableau Public Desktop application has limited connectivity compared to the full version. Tableau Public Desktop can connect to Excel files, Text Files, Statistical Files like SAS, JSON files, Google Sheets, etc.

In the next article, I will show you how to connect with Excel files and create a visualization for the dashboard.