Back 2 Viz Basics
About the project
Wherever you stand in your Tableau or Data Visualization Journey, this project is here to help you practice some of the basics to help you form or rebuild that foundation.
Getting started with Tableau can pretty daunting. As someone who never had any formal Tableau or design training, I know how hard it can be to find good tutorials or initiatives in the community that are meant for those just starting out. Back 2 Viz Basics was created to help solve that problem. I wanted to create a community project that lends itself to helping those who are newer in the community and just starting out with Tableau. That’s not saying that this initiative is only limited to newbies; plenty of us oldies could use a few refreshers on how to built clean, crisp charts. In fact, we probably have quite a few tricks up our sleeves to help some of the newer folks in the community.
Project Structure
Back to Viz Basics will be run on a bi-weekly basis (every other week). The data set or prompt will be released every other Monday. Contributors will have two weeks to participate - build your viz, complete the questions, design a mock-up, etc. Tips & Tricks will be shared, a review will be posted, and submissions will be tracked. The cycle repeats.
Monday Week A: Data set/prompt released
Monday Week A - Sunday Week B: Participants complete the challenge and submit their entry
Wednesday Week A: Tips & Tricks are posted
Monday Week B: Video posted
Monday Week C: The Cycle Repeats
How to Participate
Follow us on X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, the Tableau Community Slack Channel and/or data.world so you will be notified when we post the weekly challenges.
Eric Balash: @ReadySetData
Shreya Arya: @datavizfairy
Victory Omovrah: @VizWithVictory
Read the prompt - each week will be different so you need to determine the tool or chart best needed to solve the problem. Don’t worry! I will give you a few suggestions. (FYI: You’ll need to have an account and be logged in to data.world to access the prompt and download the data)
Viz, doodle, type, draw - Complete the prompt!
When you are finished, please submit your contribution in the submission tracker below. This allows us to finds things a lot quicker than searching through Twitter or another medium.
Share your results! Post to your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #B2VB and tag us in your post so we’re sure to see it and can reshare it with the community.
B2VB Tableau Community Learning Initiative
New to Tableau? Learn how to build 5 basic charts: Bar, Line, Scatterplot, Map and Pie/Donut by following step-by-step instructions, and publish your first dashboard with our guided workbook resource.
Challenges
2026 Challenges:
Week 1 - January 12 -
Week 2 - January 26 -
Week 3 - February 9 -
Week 4 - February 23 -
Week 5 - March 9 -
Week 6 - March 23 -
Week 7 - April 6 -
Week 8 - April 20 -
Week 9 - May 4 -
Week 10 - May 18 -
Week 11 - June 1 -
Week 12 - June 15 -
Week 13 - June 29 -
Week 14 - July 13 -
Week 15 - July 27 -
Week 16 - August 10 -
Week 17 - August 24 -
Week 18 - September 7 -
Week 19 - September 21 -
Week 20 - October 5 -
Week 21 - October 19 -
Week 22 - November 2 -
Week 23 - November 16 -
Week 24 - November 30 -
Week 25 - December 14 -
Tips & Tricks
Tips for charts and techniques for our different Back 2 Viz Basics challenges (started in 2024). Check out Shreya’s website for more!
Beyond the Basics blog
Explore the design, storytelling, and strategy behind great visualizations. In each post, Victory Omovrah breaks down a standout viz to help you better understand the choices that create clear, impactful data stories.
SUGGESTION BOX
Is there a topic you’d like to focus on or get more practice in? Do you have a data set that you’d like us to use for a future challenge? Drop a suggestion, data set, or link to something that you’d like us to incorporate in the form below: