Throughout the rest of the year, the exam is conducted online only, as explained in Joanna’s talk. This leads on to some important guidance – if you know that there is an upcoming new release just before your exam, make sure you are familiar with it! Although, if that lapses then you need to start over with the QA again.Įveryone is, however, required to sit the exam(s) using the latest version of the software, which in this case was 10.4, released only a few weeks prior. Further, once one attains CP status, they don’t need to keep their QA up-to-date either, so at that point you need only take an exam once every three years to retain certification. Having taken breakfast and done my best to kill time, I still managed to arrive before doors opened at 9am, but fortunately stumbled upon a familiar face from the evening before, which at least served as a minor distraction.įor those who have considered certification before, it’s worth mentioning at this point that there have been some changes lately – rather than being certified on a specific version of Tableau (you were previously required to sit a delta exam to bring you up to the latest version), one is now certified for two years as a Qualified Associate, or for three years as a Certified Professional.

Tableau offer conference attendees the opportunity to sit any of its four exams on the Monday or Thursday, and having a pretty horrific personal back catalogue of exam failures I really wanted to have this behind me so that it wouldn’t impact the rest of the week. This is a brilliant five minute overview which I’d encourage everyone to watch before reading further:įast forward four months and it’s Conference week. While I knew that the exam existed for a while, my first real exposure to it was when Joanna Hemingway gave a short presentation on it at Tiny Tableau Talks on the same evening as I presented my views on maps. I’m aware from discussions on twitter and beyond that many have thought about doing so, but that the range of resources out there in relation to it aren’t limitless, so this is an attempt to put something out there that may help others to know what they’re letting themselves in for a little more. I appreciate that there’s not a consensus over the importance of certification, and I don’t intend to lay out here my rationale for taking the exam, but I would like to give over some space to the experience. Something I didn’t make reference to on my conference review blogpost, and had barely told a soul about beforehand, was that I took the Tableau Desktop Qualified Associate Exam.

Tableau desktop qualified associate