Transforming Tableau's eLearning
A Success Story in Course Catalog Revamp
** Due to Tableau's adherence to a strict NDA agreement, I am unable to disclose any proprietary information or screen captures of employee or customer-facing training **
During my tenure at Tableau, a software utilized for data visualization, I held the role of Senior eLearning Developer. In this role, one of my primary responsibilities was to revamp the course catalog available to customers as part of their business Tableau subscription. By collaborating closely with management, trainers, and technical writers, I successfully devised a well-structured solution that enhanced user navigation, offered multilingual support, improved accessibility, implemented a certification system, and facilitated maintenance.
Issue:
Tableau offered a comprehensive and extensive online training catalog on the Learning Management System (LMS) portal. However, the organization of the catalog lacked structure and made it challenging for users to navigate and find specific courses. The addition of new courses without proper deletion further complicated the browsing experience. This issue was particularly concerning for Tableau's global customer base, as the LMS only supported English navigation, and many courses were only available in English. Furthermore, we aimed to provide our customers with the ability to obtain certification upon completing their training, which would serve as credible proof of their skills and knowledge for their employers.
Needs Assessment:
The needs assessment identified user types who could benefit from our certification offerings, from data experts to individuals seeking assistance interpreting the software's output. Our eLearning department had not fully utilized the capabilities of the Skilljar LMS, necessitating a partnership with Skilljar to explore and develop new features. Although certification could not be provided through Skilljar directly, we needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate users' eLearning progress with a third-party certification program, while prioritizing the security of our users and our product.
Solution:
With the assistance of Skilljar, CSS, Java, and Webhooks, I undertook redesigning the catalog.
Beginning with the back end, I focused on creating user categories, simplifying existing content, organizing it to align with the public-facing site, and enabling the utilization of lessons across different user types. By working collectively, the team successfully managed to clean up hundreds of hours of content.
On the front end, we devised CSS solutions to identify users' browsers' native language and cater to their specific needs. Additionally, we sourced translation services for the LMS, which facilitated the updating of courses. Although this did result in duplicating courses in multiple languages, the user-based categorization significantly simplified the process.
Additionally, with language services, we were able to improve accessibility with transcripts of video lessons.
To implement the certification, we collaborated with Tableau's web security team and a third-party certificate program to establish integration between the LMS and Certificate systems. This change enabled the LMS to support users with Tableau logins, thus granting them access to the eLearning site as well.
Outcomes:
The site was updated to a modern look and organized into user groups. The impact was very positive, with the salesforce reporting that companies were far more interested in including eLearning with their Tableau subscription package. Within a few months, we saw a dramatic rise in our LMS user base.
The certification program was highly successful, with many companies challenging their employees to get as many certification types as they could in friendly competition.
The new site was unveiled at the annual Tableau conference in Las Vegas, where hundreds of users came to a booth and started their certification journey. By the end of the conference, our online enrollment rates had more than doubled.
The effort was a smashing success, taking a year to accomplish. Tableau has since been bought by Salesforce and now uses Salesforce systems.
The effort was a smashing success, taking a year to accomplish. Tableau has since been bought by Salesforce and now uses Salesforce systems.
