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Tableau | Data visualisation

Animation Alerts

Tableau 2020.4 now warns you when a sheet won't animate in the browser, so you don't switch animations on only to find they don't work.

Tim Ngwena •16 December 2020 •3 min watch •2.1K

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Tableau 2020.4 shows a notification when certain sheets, like maps, won't animate properly once published to the browser
There's a documentation list of which chart types won't animate and which browsers are unsupported (Internet Explorer)
Enable animations workbook-wide via the Animations menu, and you can keep transitions fast rather than slow
The fastest way to add and show a filter is to right-click the field and choose Show Filter, which does both steps at once
The animation alert and interface appear in both Tableau Desktop and the browser, giving near feature parity in 2020.4

0:00In Tableau 2020.4 you now get notifications

0:02when features won't animate properly in the

0:05browser.

0:05This is a nice quality of life improvement

0:07because up until now animations have been

0:09great,

0:09you get them pretty much most of the time

0:11but sometimes there's some scenarios where

0:13it's just

0:13not supported. I'm presuming this is

0:15because they're working their way through

0:17the different

0:17chart types and animating them properly but

0:19in the meantime it's useful to know what's

0:21not going to

0:22animate so you don't switch animations on

0:24only for it to not work. Okay let's show

0:26you how this works.

0:27To show you this I'm just going to build

0:28something from scratch. I'm going to

0:30connect to

0:30Sample Superstore here and as this opens up

0:33we just want to build a map because a map

0:35is one

0:35of the types that's not going to animate

0:37properly in the browser. There's actually a

0:39really good

0:39list in the documentation, I'll put that in

0:41the description below so you can check that

0:44out of

0:44what won't animate and the unsupported

0:46browser which is just one browser internet

0:48explorer of

0:48course as always and but fundamentally

0:50everything else is pretty much good to go.

0:53So what I'm going

0:53to do is I'm going to get location here and

0:55just double click on city. This visualizes

0:57all the

0:58states in the US. I'll go to the show me

1:00tab and I'll hide that because we're not

1:01using that

1:02and then I'll drag cells onto size and you

1:05'll see here that now we have a really okay

1:07sort

1:07of visualization and it's pretty much good

1:10to go. Now what I'd like to do is probably

1:12add a category

1:13filter so let's just find that under the

1:16product hierarchy here and we can just do

1:19that by dragging

1:20that into the filters. The faster way is

1:22always I always forget this actually the

1:24fast way to show

1:24a filter on the page is to right click it

1:26and then show the filter and it does those

1:28two things for

1:28you in one go. You've got the category

1:30there and you've got the filters on the

1:32right hand side.

1:33Now when I deselect these you'll see that

1:35nothing really changes here okay so what I

1:38can do is I can

1:39make these much much much bigger and now it

1:41's much easier to see the change and you can

1:43see that it

1:44animates itself okay so as I deselect these

1:46you can see them slowly animating on and

1:48off.

1:49It's not fast but it is then it's slowly

1:51working okay to switch on animations if you

1:53can't see this

1:54yourself go to animations and make sure

1:56that it's on by default for the whole

1:58entire workbook. If

1:59it's off you actually get a much faster

2:01sort of transition you can see this is

2:02almost instantaneous

2:04now but there's no animation so we'll

2:06switch it on and we'll keep it fast as it

2:09was before and

2:10we're pretty much good to go. The new

2:11feature in 2020.4 is right here at the

2:14bottom maybe some of

2:15the more attentive of you saw that you can

2:17see here that some sheets might not animate

2:19when

2:19published. So there we have it that's the

2:21feature pretty much in a nutshell the other

2:22thing to

2:23remember is that this feature is also

2:24available in the browser so if I just

2:26switch over to

2:27a little chrome tab that I've had here

2:28hidden in the background I'll just close

2:30this alert

2:30you'll see that I also get this

2:31notification here I'd actually already

2:33built this previously and you

2:34can see that it's got the old sort of

2:36design I can change the size just so it

2:38matches up but

2:39pretty much you can see here that you get

2:40that notification both in desktop and in

2:42the browser.

2:43Let me just go back to the animation window

2:45here so you can compare the interfaces I'll

2:47just put

2:48this to the left and then I'll bring this

2:50window on top and you can see that the

2:51interfaces are

2:52pretty much identical we almost have

2:54feature parity at least for animations here

2:56in terms

2:57of what you're getting so there's something

2:59actually consistent with all of 2020.4

3:01every

3:01single feature works in the browser as well

3:03so if you build in the browser

3:04predominantly or you're

3:05using web altering as your main experience

3:07this is also available for you when you

3:09start using

3:10Tableau. Okay that's pretty much the

3:11feature in a nutshell I hope you enjoyed

3:13the video if you

3:14didn't hit the dislike button twice and

3:16send it to someone you don't like and I'll

3:18catch you in

3:18the next video.

Rollup

Tableau 2020.4 warns you at the bottom of the screen when a sheet won't animate once published to the browser, so you can find out before you switch animations on and get caught out by a chart type that doesn't support it.

Built from Sample Superstore: a map of US cities sized by a measure, with a category filter added to trigger visible changes on the view. Maps are one of the chart types that currently don't animate properly in the browser.

The Breakdown

Know which chart types don't animate 0:22

There's a documentation list of chart types that won't animate properly in the browser and of unsupported browsers (just Internet Explorer). Check it before relying on animation for a specific viz type.
Build the view first 0:42

Put together your visualisation as normal — here, cities on a map sized by a measure — before worrying about animation settings.
Add a filter the fast way 1:00

Rather than dragging a field to Filters and then separately showing it, right-click the field and choose Show Filter — it adds the filter and displays the filter card in one step.
Make changes visible enough to judge 1:20

If marks are small, animation differences can be hard to spot. Increasing mark size (or otherwise making the change obvious) makes it easier to confirm whether animation is actually working.
Turn animations on workbook-wide 1:41

Go to the Animations menu and switch animations on for the entire workbook; without it, transitions are near-instantaneous with no animation at all.
Keep transitions fast rather than slow 2:01

Once animations are on, you can choose the speed — keeping it fast avoids sluggish-feeling transitions while still showing the animation.
Same alert and controls in the browser 2:21

The notification and the Animations interface also appear when working in the browser, with an interface nearly identical to Desktop — useful if your main workflow is web authoring rather than Desktop.

Worth Knowing

Internet Explorer is the only unsupported browser for animations
Maps are one of the chart types currently excluded from animation support
With animations off, transitions happen almost instantly rather than smoothly

Use It When

Reach for this check whenever you're about to publish a workbook that relies on animation to communicate change — it saves you assuming animation will work and then finding out only after publishing that a chart type like a map doesn't support it.

How this Rollup was made provenance & method

A Rollup is drafted by AI from the video's transcript, then reviewed and edited by Tim. Everything used to produce this one is listed below — the model, the exact prompt, and the source video — so the process is transparent and reproducible.

Transcription: On-device — NVIDIA Parakeet v3 for recent videos, OpenAI Whisper large-v3 for earlier ones. The transcript never leaves the machine or gets published.
Drafting: Claude Sonnet 5 in the cloud, from that transcript.
Prompt: The exact Rollup prompt (v2) — the full system prompt, unedited.
Source video: Watch on YouTube
Drafted: 5 July 2026 at 09:38
Reviewed & edited: 5 July 2026 at 09:41 · by Tim Ngwena

Model + prompt + video is everything you'd need to recreate a Rollup like this yourself. The one thing we don't share is the transcript.

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