Introduction

Starting in late 2012, Tableau began publishing their monthly blog post titled: “Best of the Tableau Web”.

Typically Andy Cotgreave produces the publication but others have also done so. It is not known (at least to me) how the blog posts are selected for re-publication by Tableau, but clearly there is some process used to pick the blog posts that get selected.

If you like this article and would like to see more of what I write, please subscribe to my blog by taking 5 seconds to enter your email address below. It is free and it motivates me to continue writing, so thanks!

Since these blog post selections represent some of the best work completed by the Tableau Community, it became clear to me that assembling this information into a database would be a good idea.  This database, coupled with Tableau, allows me to quickly reference this body of work, which is now approaching 400 individual blog posts.  Although Tableau generally publishes one of these every month with about 21 blog posts selected, there have been a couple of months where they did not publish this post.  I offer much thanks to Andy for his work in identifying the articles and making the monthly publications occur. Andy (and others, I’m sure) have done the hard part and my contribution has been simple and is now offered to you.

The Best Blog Posts Anthology

If you are a reader of this Tableau-based blog, you already know that I use Tableau for just about everything I do at work and at home.  It is only natural that after spending the time to mine and manipulate the “Best of the Tableau Web” data that I would create a couple of dashboards to access this information.  As shown in Figure 1, the first dashboard allows you to specifically launch any of the individual blog posts and by clicking on the Figure 1 picture, the Tableau Public workbook will be launched for your usage.

Figure 1 – The Individual “Best of Tableau Web” Blog Posts. Click On Figure to Launch the Tableau Public Workbook.

You can search the database by the name of the blogger or by a key word search. As shown in Figure 2, if you search for the term “Alteryx”, you find that three blog posts exist that mention “Alteryx” in the title. You can change the time range of consideration if you so choose.

Figure 2 – A Search for the Term “Alteryx” Returned Three Blog Posts.

The second dashboard allows you to launch the monthly Tableau “Best of Web” blog posts. By launching these posts, you have direct access to any of the blog posts that were selected for that month.  Figure 3 shows this dashboard and you can click on this figure to launch this dashboard.  As with any Tableau Public workbook, you are free to download this information and use it as needed.  I plan to keep the database updated over time and this workbook will always be accessible through my blog or my Tableau Public page.

Figure 3 – Dashboard Used to Launch Monthly “Best of Tableau Web” Blog Posts. Click On Figure to Launch the Tableau Public Workbook.