A List of Tableau Features Since 2019

Extend the Native OAuth Service and Connector SDK to consume customer provided OAuth configurations.

Build solutions that connect Tableau much more efficiently with a variety of data freshness technologies and use it for operational monitoring and analytics scenarios. You can now push updates to extract files through the REST API and HyperAPI on Tableau Server or Online to enable more flexibility, efficiency, and ultimately improve the freshness of your data.

Multiple Analytics Extensions per site allows organizations to use multiple analytics extensions within each Tableau Server or Tableau Online site. Teams can now use advanced analytics and predictions from Python and R, multiple different TabPy servers, or Einstein Discovery and TabPy in visualizations all in the same environment. Administrators can configure multiple connections in the Site Settings page, and connections are now added at the workbook level, either in web authoring or on publish.

We're excited to introduce two new Admin Insight Data Sources called 'Groups' and 'Site Content' created to help Site Administrators monitor content governance and group membership.

You can now create parameter actions and set actions within web authoring.

Further customize your dashboards with the ability to format worksheet backgrounds, titles, and captions on the web.

We're excited to provide Tableau ID + MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) to our Tableau Online customers which provides them with the ability to enable MFA on their sites. MFA is one of the easiest, most effective tools for enhancing login security, and safeguarding your business and data against security threats.

With 2021.2, Tableau Prep expands its output capabilities to include Google BigQuery, in addition to the existing databases outlined here. This enables you to add or update data in Google BigQuery with clean, prepped data from your flow each time the flow is run.

Containers are fast becoming the standard way for businesses to leverage the cloud by increasing availability, orchestrating large deployments, and sharing infrastructure. This deployment option adds the ability for our customers to run Tableau Server on Linux in a single container, making production and development deployments easier, faster, and potentially more cost effective.

When viewing a worksheet or dashboard that includes a map, consumers now have the flexibility to control the visibility and interactivity of the marks layers without editing the workbook. When enabled by the author, users can simply use the new toggle settings to customize the map view to best answer their own location questions and analysis.

With the area spatial calc, you can now measure the square area of your selection on a map in units that you specify. Combined with the power of spatial joins, answering location-based questions is easier than ever. For example, you can now easily calculate the total acres of multiple parks you've selected on a map. Or, a business could use this to calculate population densities to inform about where to place a store.

The Intelligence Connector is now available natively out of the box in Tableau Desktop, Prep, Server, and Online. The Intelligence Integration connects Tableau to Intelligence, creating an easy way for customers to consume harmonized Intelligence reports in Tableau.

You can now log into your Tableau Online account using Salesforce login credentials, and a newly enabled Integrations Tab makes it simple to tap into and analyze your Sales Cloud and Service Cloud data—all via a ready-to-go workbook that keeps your data fresh.

Finding the data you need for your analysis has never been easier. Collections are a new way to gather the content from across your site on Tableau Online or Server and organize it to fit how you use it. Collections can contain items that span different projects and workbooks, allowing you to reuse content in multiple contexts without additional storage or resources. And, it’s easy to organize and share content around key topics such as curated resources for new users for onboarding or a center of excellence collection that includes dashboards showcasing best practices.

Enjoy a more cohesive and flexible web authoring experience. Creators can now transition seamlessly from web authoring to Tableau Desktop with a click of a button. Start your workflow in web authoring and choose to transition to Desktop at any point in your analysis—without having to download the workbook. When you’re finished, simply save to Tableau Online or Server so your content reflects the latest changes for others in your organization.

Explore the millions of vizzes and author profiles on Tableau Public more easily with improvements to the search algorithm. Quickly scan through the results with an improved grid layout.

We’ve broadened the reach for Explain Data with a reimagined user interface optimized for deeper exploration and a wider business audience. Now available for Viewers, Explain Data makes it easier for anyone to explore and interact with data. When you select a mark and run Explain Data, Tableau proposes possible explanations for that mark based on statistical models. Explain Data gives you a jumping-off point to help you explore data more deeply and ask better questions.

We’ve broadened the reach of Ask Data by making it available to Viewers. Everyone with a Tableau license can now use Ask Data! We have a completely redefined natural language experience for business users, including seamless integration into dashboards with a new dashboard button. Additionally, a new content type, Ask Data Lenses, makes it easy to curate data with definition of column and value synonyms and suggested questions so you can better leverage existing published data sources.

Search and filter Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool data to quickly find specific content, events, and sessions generated by Tableau Server.

As part of Advanced Management for Tableau Server, integrate with Azure Key Vault for Tableau Server data extract encryption at rest to centralize key management and unlock more advanced security and compliance scenarios.

Admins can now apply term and capacity licensing changes to Tableau Server without requiring restarts that disrupt business activities. Additionally, upon subscription renewal, Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder licenses will automatically be refreshed when they are nearing expiration.

Opt-in to Server Authorization to Run (ATR) product activation of Tableau Server deployed in cloud or virtual environments, which abstracts licensing from underlying hardware changes.

Data quality warnings (DQW) will be automatically created based upon extract refresh and Tableau Prep flow run failures so that data freshness (or lack thereof) is communicated without any manual effort. These can be combined with existing DQWs set manually or via API to add another layer of data quality information to your environment.

You can now easily see all metrics on a viz by opening the metrics panel while viewing a dashboard. Having this visibility makes it easier to find and create the metrics relevant to the data you care about.

Search for a table or a database, and see the most relevant results returned. Matches by name are now ranked higher than matches by columns. To ensure you are finding the most trustworthy content, certified tables and databases will be ranked at the top, and assets with a data quality warning will be ranked lower.

Enjoy expanded formatting options while creating and editing dashboards on the web. You can now format filters, parameters, and legends directly in the browser.

Tableau Prep expands its output capabilities to include ability to write to MS Excel. In addition to writing your data to CSV and Hyper files, you will be able to create new excel files, or add/replace data in existing ones. With the Tableau Prep visual and direct interface, you can easily see what tables are available in your Excel file and determine how your flow fields map to existing fields in the Excel tables.

You can now design device specific dashboards all within the browser. Add, edit, and customize your dashboards' layouts to create a design optimized for the best viewing experience on a phone, tablet, or desktop.

Connecting to SAP HANA databases from Tableau products on Windows platforms will now use a JDBC driver by default instead of an ODBC driver, which makes the connector consistent across Mac, Linux, and Windows systems. Connections from Tableau to SAP HANA on Mac and Linux platforms already use JDBC.

We’re making spatial analysis with KML files easier within your workflow. In addition to KML files, you can now connect directly to KMZ files, the corresponding compressed file type.

We’re expanding Tableau’s spatial database connections to make solving location-based questions easier than ever. You can now connect directly to tables in Snowflake that contain spatial data, and instantly visualize that data in Tableau.

Take advantage of new improvements to display headers and axes in Tableau Desktop, Server, and Online. Notice a better experience in how you draw borders, lines, and tick marks. You can also now reorder headers below a viz, overlapping labels will be skipped on the left, and scrolling will feel smoother. And as a part of this refresh, header and axis objects are now native HTML elements in the browser, so users can search for text with built-in browser search capabilities.

Create dashboards and visualizations with new chart types and interactivity with the support of more dashboard extensions added to Tableau Public.

Create new visualizations on Tableau Public right from a browser. With web authoring in beta on Tableau Public, you can connect to data in Excel and text-based files including CSV, JSON, PDF, Spatial files, Statistical files, Tableau Data Extracts, and Hyper Extracts.

With the in-product Tableau Exchange, all your connectors and extensions are a simple click away. Easily discover connectors and extensions with an enhanced browsing experience, search and filter options, and complete the installations all without leaving your Tableau workflow.

The new Ask Data help center centralizes all onboarding and administrative information for Ask Data users. For admins and data source owners, you can find best practices and usage statistics to see what questions your end users are asking. For business users, find helpful training information to learn what kinds of questions you can ask and other helpful tips. Anyone can also submit feedback and suggestions directly to the product team.

Natively connect Tableau to Customer 360 Audiences to discover insights from your detailed customer data. From customer engagement to behavioral and transaction data housed in Customer 360 Audiences, you’ll be able to create custom visualizations in Tableau Desktop and Server. Drill down to campaign, channel, and multiple customer dimensions to understand the “who” and “why” behind all your cross-channel engagement results.

You can now connect to your data in Azure SQL Database (with Azure Active Directory) and Azure Data Lake Gen 2. In addition, we now have support for Azure Active Directory in two of our existing connectors in Azure Synapse and Azure Databricks. For guidance and best practices around optimizing Tableau and Azure together for analytics, read our updated Tableau Server on Microsoft Azure Whitepaper.

Manage all of your notifications in the newly redesigned notification center within Tableau Server and Online. This dedicated space shows your shares, comments, extracts, and prep flows all in one place, consolidating all of the important changes across your organization. You can also control where you receive these notifications via preferences—directly in Tableau, email notifications, or both—helping you to never miss an important alert to take action.

Create Level of Detail expressions more easily. Use context menus or drag-and-drop a measure onto a dimension to automatically create a Level of Detail expression with the default aggregation.

Feed Tableau analytics with dynamic predictive intelligence and connect Einstein predictions directly into Tableau calculated fields. Construct, share, and scale interactive visualizations and dashboards incorporating dynamic predictions using existing Tableau infrastructure, and test new scenarios using Tableau parameters. Note: Available in Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server.

Select from two additional models in predictive modeling functions, regularized linear regression and Gaussian process regression, in addition to the default model of linear regression. Change the model from the calculation itself and get immediate visual feedback on how that change impacts the predictions when compared to historical data.

Quickly make adjustments to your mark labels in web authoring to stay in your workflow. Customize and choose which marks to label in a visualization, just like in Tableau Desktop.

Enjoy on-demand, interpretable ML predictions from Einstein Discovery natively integrated in Tableau dashboards. Users can click on one or more rows of data from a Tableau visualization to get dynamic predictions, see key drivers of predictions, and learn ways to improve predictions based on the model.

Einstein Discovery in Tableau brings trusted, intuitive predictions and recommendations from Einstein Discovery to every Tableau user across your organization. Get smarter, guided decisions for every team with cutting-edge, augmented analytics in a no-code required, rapid iteration environment.

You can now activate and register multiple keys on Tableau Server at install time prior to TSM initialization, allowing for a smoother installation and licensing experience.

As part of Advanced Management for Tableau Server, integrate Azure Key Vault and Tableau Server to manage keys for extract encryption at rest.

As part of Advanced Management for Tableau Server, configure an external Tableau Server repository on Azure database for PostgreSQL, which increases availability and scalability of repository metadata.

Feel confident in the Metrics you are viewing by knowing if there are any data quality warnings on the upstream data assets.

In the case of an unexpected issue or error, easily resume the Tableau Server install or upgrade from the step before the point of failure after addressing the issue.

Tableau Catalog allows you to see all up and downstream data assets and their relationships, and knowing which Metrics use a particular data asset is just as important. See which Metrics are created off a data asset and take advantage of understanding the impacts any changes might have.

Enjoy improved data compression performance that creates Tableau Server backups up to twice as fast. A new progress bar gives visibility into what step the backup is on and how much time is remaining.

Connect to the latest Salesforce objects, including Work.com objects, with the Salesforce connector API update. Work.com is Salesforce’s offering of advisory services and technology solutions to help companies and communities safely reopen in the COVID-19 environment. The Salesforce connector API update lets you connect to objects like Crisis, Employee, and InternalOrganizationUnit from Work.com data in order to visualize it in Tableau. This update brings the connector up to API version 49.0.

Using Analytics Extensions, customers can dynamically perform advanced analysis with models and functions in R, Python, and other platforms in Tableau Online visualizations.

We are expanding OAuth support for the enterprise to enable easier connection between Tableau and Snowflake. You can now authenticate via OAuth over AWS Private Link and Azure Private Link.

Salesforce Intelligence unifies marketing spend and performance data across channels into one system of record, empowering marketers to measure impact to increase customer engagement, eliminate waste, test and learn, and align all stakeholders. The Intelligence Integration connects Tableau to Intelligence, creating an easy way for customers to consume harmonized Intelligence reports in Tableau. Access the Intelligence connector here via the Tableau Extensions Gallery.

Enjoy greater customization for dynamic parameters. You can now set a parameter’s range to a field’s min and max value upon opening the workbook, or when the field’s data source is refreshed.

Ask Data has a new date range refinement widget that makes it quick and intuitive to change the bounds of any time series viz. Additionally, users can now specify that they want Ask Data to deliver results as a stacked bar chart. Other improvements include the ability to edit data role synonyms directly on the definition page and admin views of Ask Data's usage at the site level - both enabling more centralized governance.

Quickly add comments of any length to your calculation windows with block comments. Simply start your comment with /* and end with */ to enable your comment to span multiple lines.

We’re making it easier to see and manage custom views on Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Navigate to a new custom views tab to understand how custom views are being used on a workbook. Admins can now easily manage both private and public custom views in one place, deleting unused views or alerting users if their views will be impacted by changes.

Date axis extension allows you to do customized time-based predictions in Tableau. Select from a pre-populated set of extension options or use a custom menu to select your own range. Date extension works with predictive modeling functions, table calculations like Running Average, and external services like R or Python.

Create extracts without leaving the browser. In the web authoring flow, you can now choose to extract your data sources to improve performance.

Creators and Explorers now have an easy way to create a set either from the data pane, or visually via the tooltip command menu for quick analysis.

You can now use the apply filters to worksheets dialog on the web, unlocking the ability to choose specific sheets a filter should be applied, fine-tune your dashboards, and achieve more complex and connected dashboard designs—all in the browser.

Previously available for Windows only, Resource Monitoring Tool now provides agent-based monitoring of your Tableau Server on Linux deployment as part of Advanced Management for Tableau Server. Proactively monitor and troubleshoot server health with improved visibility into hardware and software performance.

Tableau Prep Builder can now import, recognize, and export spatial data to extracts and published data sources, bringing spatial context into the data preparation flow for better analysis.

Call attention to marks of interest and identify important relationships in the data with highlight actions, now available in web authoring.

We’re making it easier to access and analyze spatial data on Tableau Server with offline map support. You can now create maps using the offline map style in web authoring, ensuring that maps remain accessible to all users—especially in organizations with strict internet access requirements.

Combine steps together in your flow to help you build a flow that meets your mental model or business rules. With the ability to collapse and expand your groups, you can quickly find and go to the part of your flow that needs to be addressed.

We’re expanding Tableau’s spatial database connections to make solving location-based questions easier than ever. You can now connect directly to tables in Redshift that contain spatial data, and instantly visualize that data in Tableau.

Enhance your geospatial analysis with multiple marks layer support for maps. You can now add unlimited marks layers from a single data source to your map visualizations, bringing multiple spatial layers and context together for better understanding and analysis.

Quickly access projects, workbooks, and dashboards that others have shared with you on Tableau Server or Tableau Online all in one place, via the "Shared with Me" tab on the home menu. Customized views are automatically saved separately, so that you can quickly navigate to the personalized view you need.

Tableau Prep Builder in the browser allows you to prep your data from wherever you have access to a browser, bringing the data prep process into one integrated platform on the web. No need to manage individual desktops, IT admins can now upgrade the server to get everyone in the organization on the latest version.

Easily update the start date of your organization's fiscal year to more quickly prep and analyze your data accurately.

Context filters can now control the list of values displayed by the set control in a dashboard, allowing end users to select from the most relevant values to power their analysis.

View recommendations are now on Tableau Mobile. Get personalized suggestions that instantly connect you to relevant vizzes on the go. Powered by machine learning, these recommendations leverage users' preferences and surface vizzes that others with similar viewing habits found interesting, and that are popular on your site. With the home tab, you can find recommendations in a dedicated channel on your Tableau Mobile App.

Don't worry about losing the work you've been doing combining, cleaning, and prepping your data. File recovery will automatically save drafts so you can get back to where you left off even when something unexpected happens.

Store your prepped data from Prep Builder in a central location that can be leveraged throughout your organization. Govern and scale the investments you've made in your databases by providing a visual and direct field mapping experience to ensure your prepped data ends up where it should be.

For our SAP HANA connector, users now have the ability to connect to Table Functions (stored procedures that return a table). We have also achieved official SAP Certification (HANA-BI-SQL 2.0) for integration with SAP HANA on Tableau Desktop, Prep, Server and Online. Read our new Tableau and S/4HANA Analytics Whitepaper for guidance and best practices around S/4HANA integration, and how to optimize the experience of using Tableau and S/4HANA together for analytics.

Customers looking to connect to data sources beyond Tableau’s native connector list can now find connectors in the Tableau Exchange, built by partners like Qubole, Dremio, Yellowbrick and SQream.

We're making it easier to optimize your organization's seat investment, extending the value of Tableau to more users. Site admins can now designate members—specific individuals, teams and departments, or even your entire organization—to be automatically granted a site role (Viewer, Explorer, Creator) upon their first time logging in to their Tableau Online or Tableau Server account. Deploy Tableau at scale without having to manually respond to license requests, and quickly scale up when needed.

Quickly filter to the data you care about with the ability to create, edit, or remove data source or viz filters in the browser.

You can now use the export dashboard button to export to a crosstab on Ta

You can now customize the page orientation and page size of your PDF subscriptions to better format how your dashboards are displayed.

You now have the option to export crosstabs directly to Excel on Tableau Server and Online, preserving consistent number and cell formatting.

Relative date filters are now fully keyboard and screen reader accessible, enabling more relevant and complete analysis.

The ability to add third party map services, such as WMS Maps or Mapbox Maps, is now available directly in the background maps menu. Enjoy an updated UI to more easily add and manage your external map connections.

Make your data even more approachable with new improvements to Ask Data's suggested questions. Customize the suggestions and add display text so they appear in colloquial language that your users are more accustomed to. Additionally, we've added refinement support for absolute date filters, and Tableau Online users can now access on-boarding and curation resources directly from the product.

New prediction functions go beyond the existing trendline analytical function to build a model that understands how your data is distributed around a best-fit line. MODEL_QUANTILE is a table calc that returns a target value at a specified percentile, based on other predictors. MODEL_PERCENTILE is a table calc that returns the probability of the expected value being less than or equal to the observed mark, based on other predictors.

The underlying model for Explain Data continues to get refined to handle more cases, improve explanation scoring, and support Relationships, Tableau's new data modeling enhancements.

To ensure a smooth installation and upgrade experience, Tableau Server now automatically performs a set of checks as you start the initialization/upgrade process. These checks are designed to detect common errors and issues (around permissions, credentials, base ports) that can arise during upgrade and install. You can also perform this check at any time with the TSM command. Today, this capability is for Windows, but we are working to bring it to Linux soon.

You can now set a subscription email to run after the underlying extract is refreshed, making it easy to get the latest data out as soon as it's available.

When applying a quantitative filter to a field or a date, you can pass fields into the applyRangeFilterAsync method to control advanced filtering options. One of the options is NullOptions and you can now indicate what to do with null values when applying the filter.