Get to Know Tableau Public
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain what Tableau Public is and what it’s for.
- Sign up for a free Tableau Public account.
- Get started for free with web authoring or download Tableau Desktop Public Edition.
What Is Tableau Public?
Tableau Public is a free platform to explore, create, and publicly share data visualizations (or vizzes) online using public data. With millions of inspiring data visualizations to discover and learn from, Tableau Public makes it easy to develop your own data skills and create an online portfolio of work.
Easily Learn Data Skills
With Tableau Public, you can learn data skills by seeing how others use Tableau to create compelling analyses, visualized as beautiful data stories. Either download a visualization or explore it in a browser to see how the author created it, and even try making a version of your own.
So where do you start? There are so many ways that you can interact with the site and other authors. Watch how-to videos and find sample data to help you get started. Participate in fun challenges with the Tableau community. Connect with others to learn new tricks and get helpful feedback to improve your Tableau and data viz skills. Or, just tune in to the conversation by exploring vizzes and seeing what others are doing.
Be Inspired
With millions of interactive data visualizations made by over a million creators around the world, Tableau Public lets you explore the art of what's possible with public data on any topic. That means you can see and understand data about the topics you're passionate about. Whether you’re interested in arts and culture, sports and fitness, or social impact, there are visualizations on virtually any subject.
Advance in Your Career
Build your online analytics portfolio and stand out to potential employers by saving visualizations to your personal Tableau Public profile and letting the community know you’re available for hire with the Hire Me button. Anyone can view your profile, and you can share it with your professional networks. Join Tableau Public to see how some of the best analysts and leading organizations around the world are using Tableau. Learn from them and then apply your new skills to your next project.
Tableau Public isn’t only for data scientists or analysts. It’s for anyone who’s interested in understanding data or sharing visualizations about a variety of different topics. Journalists, bloggers, students, professors, hobbyists, critics, organizations, and more, all use Tableau Public.
How Is Tableau Public Different from Other Tableau Products?
Tableau Public is a great platform if you want to share vizzes that use public data. You can create visualizations in your browser by signing in and using our web authoring platform or by using Tableau Desktop Public Edition for free. Then, publish your work to the Tableau Public website.
Here are a few ways that Tableau Public differs from other Tableau products.
With Tableau Public, you can:
- Access free authoring tools for analyzing public data.
- Publish your work on a free, open visualization platform that anyone can access.
- Share your expertise and let the community know you’re available for hire with the Hire Me button.
- See others’ visualizations and immediately explore or download them to learn from them and see how they're made.
- Join a vibrant, global community of users on Tableau Public who are eager to help you out and share their work.
With Tableau Desktop Public Edition, you can also:
- Work offline, allowing you to save and publish visualizations to Tableau Public when you're ready.
- Save locally, allowing you to work with private data.
- Automatically save your work every few minutes.
Other differences include:
-
Data Connectors are limited.
- Live connections aren’t supported.
For more information about the Tableau product suite and how all the products work together, check out The Tableau Workflow.
As soon as a viz is published to Tableau Public, it’s accessible by anyone on the internet (with some caveats—more on that in a later unit). So be sure to only use data that is suitable for a public audience, and avoid sharing private or confidential information. To work with private data, you can use Tableau Desktop Public Edition for free and save your workbooks locally.
Connect with the Tableau Community
Thousands of people and organizations around the world create and share data visualizations on Tableau Public. This global community is there to help you learn. Pick up new tricks by participating in fun, community-led challenges like Iron Viz and Workout Wednesday. Get answers to specific questions in the Community Forums. Or, be inspired by the amazing work of other authors around the world.
Check out the Tableau Public homepage to start exploring visualizations that people in the Tableau Community have been creating. This includes the Viz of the Day—visualizations selected by the Tableau Public team that spark meaningful data conversations, showcase what’s possible in Tableau, and highlight the outstanding work of the community. Want more? Subscribe to the Viz of the Day to get community visualizations delivered straight to your email inbox.
Get Started Today
Sign up today to start exploring our curated channels, favoriting vizzes, and to learn more about our featured authors.
Important: Later on in this module, you’ll need to sign in to Tableau Public to complete an interactive unit. If you don’t already have a Tableau Public account, be sure to sign up and activate one now.
To get started, sign up for Tableau Public.
- Sign up for an account here.
- Fill in the form with your information, including a strong password.
- Then, click CREATE MY ACCOUNT.
- Make sure you have your username and password handy as you use them to connect your playground later.
- Fill in the form with your information, including a strong password.
- Activate your account (look for an email from @tableau.com). This is required before you can link your new account to the playground.
In a later unit, you use your Tableau Public account to learn how to connect to data, create a viz, and publish your work for others to see.
Now that you know all about what Tableau Public is and who it’s for, you’re ready to learn your way around the Tableau Public website in the next unit.