# How to use a Tableau dashboard: Tableau tutorial for beginners

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-10-20
- **Format:** Video · 2546 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Analytics
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, dashboards, filters, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-use-a-tableau-dashboard-tableau-tutorial-for-beginners
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_uDUmIUeWA

I cover something rarely explained: how to actually use a Tableau dashboard rather than build one. Logged in as a viewer, I walk through navigating Tableau Cloud, filtering and interacting with a dashboard, and using the toolbar features like downloads, subscriptions, comments, metrics, alerts and custom views.

## Key takeaways

- The viewer licence is Tableau's most basic tier, built purely for using dashboards, and many features you'd like are controlled by the author rather than you, so feeding back pain points to authors is essential
- Clicking data points, headers or axes filters a dashboard via actions, but authors decide what's interactive, and you can use the pause/resume button to batch multiple filter selections without waiting for each refresh
- The download menu offers image, summary data (first 200 rows for viewers), crosstab, PDF and PowerPoint, and you must click a chart element to enable the data and crosstab options
- When exporting to PDF, always choose 'unspecified' paper size and automatic scaling to get the crispest, highest-resolution vector output and let your printer handle sizing
- Custom views let you save a personalised default version of a dashboard, while subscriptions, metrics, alerts and data details give viewers ways to track and understand data, though metrics and alerts must be set up by an explorer or creator

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why this video exists
- 1:28 The viewer licence explained
- 2:05 Navigating the Tableau homepage and menu
- 5:06 Favourites and searching
- 6:54 Opening a dashboard and the toolbar
- 9:51 Filtering with clicks and actions
- 13:53 Filter controls and the pause button
- 16:16 Revert, undo and redo
- 17:36 Profit ratio legend and filters
- 18:25 Exporting and the download menu
- 19:28 Full screen, comments and sharing
- 21:16 Download options in depth

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-use-a-tableau-dashboard-tableau-tutorial-for-beginners

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena