Preparing for the Tableau Server Qualified Associate

by Mina Ozgen

Intro

Hello all, here today with a brief blog post since I thought it pertinent to talk on the topic of the Tableau Server Qualified Associate (QA) exam as it is not too often mentioned. I have decided to undertake this exam and begun preparations for it. Before I jump into my preparations let me just first tell you where I am starting from.

 

My Background

Before deciding I wanted to take the Server QA exam I had limited IT/architectural understanding, in fact, close to none. What I did have was a reasonable amount of experience as a Tableau Server admin, training on permission best practises by a Tableau consultant and I engaged in a few discussions on authentication methods. So I had one area I felt pretty confident in for server, permissions, and the rest was pretty much a black box.

 

To The Server Admin Guide we go!

In order to compensate my lacking IT knowledge and Tableau server knowledge, I had to go through the Tableau server admin guide from cover to cover, multiple times. This is also what has been recommended to me as the best form of revision for the server QA exam. However, it can be quite difficult to read through documentation or even get through some of the concepts presented within. I decided to try and quantify as much as possible of the server guide and make a story board that I would revise from. And this is what I did.

Here are just a few examples of what is contained in the storyboard and how they can be used.

 

Some of the content is actual data, as in the case of the minimum requirements vs minimum recommendations. However, other parts of the story board are more diagrammatic, or more like an interactive dictionary.

The content inside the storyboard has no consistent coverage and was entirely done based on what I wished to visualise on a whim so please do NOT use this as an exclusive server revision guide.

I will also add further material over time as I decide to spend more time on particular topics.