Custom chart types for Tableau with Viz Extensions | Tableau 2024.2

0:00Hey, it's Tim here.

0:00In today's video, I'm here to demystify some of the questions around Viz extensions and how they work.

0:06As ever, let's get stuck in.

0:07Okay, so Viz extensions have just been launched and uh they're in beta, so they're not fully available yet.

0:13Um what that essentially means is that in the next few weeks, maybe month or two, this will be available in the next release of Tableau.

0:21So 24.

0:222

0:23Um that is typically I think the spring.

0:25I think spring is the first release and then it's the summer release.

0:29So wherever summer is for Salesforce, that's when this will be available.

0:33What I'm going to show you is how they work first and then we're going to go and answer all the questions.

0:37And I think I just have to show you how it works very quickly so you can understand how simple it is to do this.

0:42In order to do this, I've opened up this Superstore workbook down here.

0:45I've already got it open.

0:46It's open in the background, but one thing I wanted to call out is that I'm using a version of Tableau that's specifically built for Apple Silicon.

0:54That was also announced in 24.

0:562.

0:56So this is a nice to have because you're starting to get more native capability of Apple Silicon and it's faster than it was previously working because it was using Rosetta.

1:05So nonetheless, I've already opened the workbook.

1:07You're probably wondering, well, why can't I see it?

1:09Because I'm in the connection window.

1:10If I go to the Tableau logo here on the top left, click on it, it flips to the workbook, and I'm now in here.

1:15Okay.

1:16We'll go ahead and create a new sheet

1:17And what we'll do is we'll go to the marks pane and you'll see we have this option for Viz extensions.

1:22Now Viz extensions are a capability that live in the Tableau Exchange.

1:26This won't be the only way to add custom chart types

1:29to tableau i'll come to that a little later but fundamentally we'll go ahead and select add extension and it will open up this page this will load up the visualizations that are available on the tableau exchange i'll actually put a link so you can go see these

1:42on a website in the comments below so you can just go and get stuck in and see what they look like.

1:46Now once here you have some filters on the left hand side you can see the chart types built by Tableau.

1:51They will be building more they committed to that during the conference session about this

1:56to sort of answer some questions about Tableau, handing over the keys to the domain to third party developers to create freemium and premium stuff.

2:03Stuff is nonsense in my opinion, but nonetheless

2:05You can see that Tableau are going to be building extensions themselves.

2:09There'll be free versions as well that are available here built by third parties.

2:12And those third parties are mentioned in each of these.

2:15So you can see here InfoTopics, La DataViz, uh ActinVision, which is uh bit of a play on Activision in some ways.

2:22Not original name, but hey.

2:24Um, and so you can see these chart types sort of starting to take place now

2:27These partners have been involved in helping sort of build this in the first instance.

2:31So they've been part of the beta process to really get sort of first presence on here, but

2:36There will also be a community exchange according to the conference session.

2:40So I'm not going to commit to that, but they said during the conference session that there will be a community exchange coming soon for more general community-based plugins.

2:48The difference is that these are built by Tableau partners, so they go through a separate approval process, whereas community exchange is probably going to be not held to the same sort of level or standard.

2:59So that's again something to watch out for.

3:01But

3:02Nonetheless, let's carry on.

3:04I'm going to pick the Sankey chart and you'll see it opens up this page.

3:07It gives us a bit of information about this specific chart type

3:10As we scroll down, you get a description and you get some other extensions by Tableau.

3:14It's not great that these aren't chart types.

3:16These are sort of uh what I call accelerators.

3:19So the fact that these are showing here

3:20When I'm here adding an extension specifically about charts is kind of misleading.

3:24These are not uh chart types, these are templates, something else you can get on the exchange.

3:29But you get an idea of how this works.

3:31Now, if I just go back, I hit the back button, let's go to a different extension here.

3:35Let's go to the tree diagram which I used in my video.

3:37You'll see that each sort of developer has an opportunity to showcase their extension in their own way.

3:43So there's already a bit of a difference in how these are communicated.

3:46You can see here that Tristan and Jessica have actually sort of laid out their page slightly differently to Tableau's.

3:51And you can see that they've got a bit of information about them, where it's hosted.

3:55I'll come to this in a minute.

3:56And again, a description.

3:58And they've just been a bit more detailed about what you can do.

4:00And they've put a ton more links and they've put some social elements.

4:03They're just doing their marketing as you'd expect.

4:05But if you go to the bottom, you can now see that you can see more chart types by the same developer.

4:11So this does make more sense in this context.

4:13It just feels like the previous page sort of hasn't really been configured properly.

4:17But here this makes total sense context.

4:19So they've got a B swarm, a Stream Graph, a network, and a Radior Sankey.

4:22Um if I go back one more, let's go look at infotopics as an example, just for fairness, because I know someone will say something about that.

4:29Uh power KPIs, which is a capability built by them

4:33If we go down and look at this, you'll see that it's also referring to theirs.

4:37So um really contextual information.

4:39Now this point about where it's being hosted is super important.

4:43Essentially there are two types of extensions.

4:45There are sandbox extensions and then network connected extensions.

4:49The sandbox extensions are hosted by Tableau and are therefore offline.

4:54They live in AWS and are simply called on

4:57From Tableau when they're needed.

4:59They don't need any call out to the internet to do anything.

5:02Network connected extensions call out to a specific service.

5:06You can see here the developers are telling you where that capability is hosted.

5:10So

5:10These developers are hosting the extension and making it work.

5:13So if we go back, let's just go back to the Sanky, let's use Tableaus as an example.

5:17When we go ahead and open this, you'll see that it doesn't have that uh capability of where it's being hosted because it's sandboxed.

5:24So that's a couple of things you have to get at get through mentally and sort of just try and understand what your company policy is going to be about that

5:31Server admins will be trying to dig into detail for that, and I think there's a lot of good questions being asked from conference, so go ahead and check out those sessions.

5:39But let's get to the meat of this.

5:40Let's actually open up the Sankey.

5:42and start building this properly.

5:44So let's do this.

5:45And by the way, when I did that, nothing happened.

5:47It was very quick, it was very native.

5:49The way this has been designed is that

5:51The Viz extensions are calling standard elements of the visualization API that Tableau uses, which means everything you'd expect from a visualization like actions.

6:01Filters, interactivities just going to work the way you'd expect.

6:05The developers are hooking into those APIs to bring in Tableau into their charts

6:09So because I've built a Sankey, uh I've selected Sanky, what we can do is go to Superstore, we can choose a simple one.

6:15I've done a demo of this before if you haven't seen it already.

6:17I'll bring category, I'll put it on level.

6:19You'll see the first one appears.

6:20I'll bring product name, I'll put it on level again.

6:23And uh it has a little bit of a think process.

6:25Uh uh this is a beta, this is not live yet, so what I'll do is I'll I'll maybe put subcategory on

6:31there.

6:31I think I maybe put too many items.

6:33Yeah, I put too many items and it was it was is it was proving difficult to render.

6:37So that's my mistake.

6:39That's not a product issue.

6:40Um but you can see here very simple it's sanky it's not showing much because I've just put in two items from the same hierarchy.

6:46Let's swap in subcategoried segment.

6:48There you go, it starts to come to life.

6:50And maybe we can put in region as a third element.

6:52Let's put that on level again.

6:54And you can see this is working as you'd expect.

6:56The interactivity interactivity works just exactly as you would want.

7:00As you click on these, everything's sort of uh linking out and you start to be able to get the relationships and everything working quite nicely.

7:07It's exactly what you'd expect.

7:09So

7:09Super simple.

7:10That's one extension setup.

7:12Now, one of the other things you'll notice is to format the extension, there's this new capability here, and that actually opens up what is a mini browser window.

7:19And you can go off and format the extension now.

7:21Uh in this one, there's only one formatting capability, so I can change the width, and you can see it changing ever so slightly, but that's essentially it.

7:28Nothing sort of crazy, just very simple.

7:30Now

7:30If we go back and we choose a different chart, let's go ahead and do this.

7:35And I'm going to do this in flow.

7:36I've built a stanky here.

7:38What I want to do is see, can I convert this to a tree diagram?

7:41So I'm going to go here

7:42gonna select tree diagram we're gonna select open and you'll see that it just reset so the working the the workbook contains the following network enabled extension

7:52That's the official term, which is a web-based application that expands the capabilities of Tableau to allow this extension to run.

7:58Select OK, and you can go ahead and select OK, and now you're pretty much done.

8:03Now, in doing that

8:04I didn't change what was on the visualization.

8:07It took the dimensions that I previously had and it's ported them on here.

8:11In the previous setup, I hadn't put any dimensions or anything.

8:14It was just there.

8:15If I go back.

8:16It's not going to open up that other page.

8:17It's going to go back to the previous visualization.

8:19And you see here we haven't got any sort of volume.

8:22So let's put sales on link and you'll see that the proportions start to change.

8:28And now we have a little bit more of a general reflection of what a Sankey is.

8:31And so I'm going to go back to the drop-down and in this particular case, I'm going to go ahead and add an extension.

8:37Small bug there didn't actually add the tree diagram uh for some bizarre reason.

8:41So let's go ahead and add it again.

8:43And you'll see that it should just change this again.

8:45Let's go ahead and hit OK.

8:47It should just change this uh to reflect what's going on now

8:51Annoyingly it's put sales on the end uh sort of outer element.

8:55We don't want that.

8:55What we actually want it to do is put that sales on size.

8:58So maybe a little bit of work to be done

9:00on how it transfers dimensions and measures.

9:03But you can see that it's just working.

9:05And again, if I open up the formatting capabilities now, this has different formatting options because of course you can do a lot more.

9:12So if we go down here, select vertical, you can see you can change the design.

9:16Um it's really, really fast.

9:17And this is this is generally as fast as you can see me working.

9:20I'm not sort of

9:21pre-rendering anything.

9:22I'm just customizing this, making it work exactly how I want.

9:26And you can change sort of a lot of detail here.

9:28I'm really impressed with

9:30the level of uh detail developers have put into some of these because these don't have to be sort of standard options, but the fact they've put them in means they they they use Tableau.

9:38They know what people are going to want to do with this

9:41So I can create something really impactful here and uh you know just just just just be on with it.

9:46So there we go, we've got a chart now.

9:48How does this interact with ShowMe?

9:50Yes, you guessed it.

9:51I hate show me.

9:51I've made a video about how you shouldn't use show me.

9:53But for those of you show me, you probably want to know, well, can this just transfer to another chart type?

9:58So let's go to show me here on the right hand side, select show me, and let's see, oh, what happens if I make this a tree map

10:03Well, Tableau translates all of that and it just works.

10:06Now, annoyingly, Xiaomi doesn't have any of those Viz extensions, so you can't sort of simulate the other way around where you can go from

10:13uh this tree map to another chart very easily but you can just go back and again it remembers all those settings and where things were and you can just go back to your chart.

10:21So really full capability of what you can do.

10:24Now if I go to a dashboard, let's go over to my overview because this is probably the easiest one.

10:29I'm gonna say I don't like this chart here.

10:31I'm gonna get rid of it.

10:33I'm gonna uh delete the worksheet because I don't want it.

10:36And we're gonna bring in sheet uh which which one which sheet was that?

10:39Was that sheet 17?

10:41Yeah

10:41Um there's a little bit of a caching issue.

10:42You can see this diagram is not updating.

10:44So if we just go ahead and bring that here at the bottom, we'll see that sheet 17 does come in and it's a really awful sort of spacing problem.

10:52So let me just fix this.

10:53Let's just get this sort of working

10:54And yeah, this is where sort of layout is sort of just so frustrating in Tableau because oh God, I'm gonna have to fight with layout containers here.

11:01Why is this not working as I expected?

11:03Um because

11:05Someone has set this container to distribute evenly and it's hiding behind Show Me.

11:09So let's go ahead and connect that and now I can do this.

11:12You see, you just you just have to

11:14Leah containers catch even people who've been using this product for a decade out.

11:18It's just so frustrating.

11:19So here's our chart.

11:20Now you can see this is all working.

11:23It would be nice to be able to format this here because

11:25If you format it in the other page, it's not as ideal.

11:28Whereas here I'd love to be able to just open up the formatting option.

11:31So in order to solve this, what you have to do is go out here.

11:35And what we'll do is we'll change the nodes, we'll change the size, we'll change the smallest one right down, and then we'll do this

11:42So that's a little bit more spacious.

11:45Um notice I don't have any controls uh to to sh to to sort of

11:50control how labels overlap so you can show them all or hide them all but you can't do sort of the middle one so that's sort of frustrating so um

11:59I think I don't know if that's a tableau thing or a developer thing, but it would be good to have that thing where if you have too many labels, it automatically hides them.

12:07That would be a really nice addition.

12:08So if I leave them all on and we go back to our overview

12:12You can see that it's kind of worked, but it's not it's not sort of perfect.

12:16So you do have to sort of play around with these quite a bit and just make sure you're customizing them.

12:20But fundamentally, it's a really good capability of Tableau.

12:24Now

12:25I've shown you this.

12:26The worst thing you probably want to see is this filtering.

12:28So if I go ahead and do this, yes, absolutely.

12:31Just works.

12:31It just works exactly as you expect.

12:33You don't have to do anything funny or anything, no hacks basically.

12:37Um I was really funny in the session that they called out my thumbnail to the video that I did about hacks and how much I hate them.

12:43This is exactly the kind of thing I love because it's going to kill all those hacks and give people a structured way to actually use custom chart types.

12:50So that is in a nutshell how this works.

12:52Very, very simple.

12:53I cannot

12:55Uh I couldn't make a video long enough going through all the different extension types.

12:58You can see it's actually added it here now and there's a lot there's a ton more you could do.

13:03Um if I go ahead and look at this, it's it's it's sorting them in a very bizarre order.

13:07I think it's just in order of how they appeared.

13:09So you can do a ton of different types of chart types.

13:12a ton of different ch type of um sort of capabilities that get enabled.

13:16It seems there's only probably three developers here really sort of pushing it.

13:20So act envision

13:21Labatavers and InfoTopics are really the only developers that have sort of pulled through with this.

13:26And they're the developers maybe that have actually sort of been part of this wave before.

13:30Some of these have had these capabilities built outside of Tableau before

13:33So it's uh super cool to see them doing it this way and uh expressing how it works.

13:37Now, there is a way to access local Viz extensions.

13:41So these are extensions that you can literally get as a file and put on your machine to run a very bespoke chart type.

13:47just locally on your laptops.

13:49This could be a good way of testing a capability before you deploy it across the company, but it's also the way a developer can test their custom chart type.

13:56So

13:56If you're building visualization and you maybe want a very sort of specific way of telling a story, you can actually build your own chart type and make that work.

14:04And so

14:05This is a great way to sort of lead into the next topic, which is to talk about the different types of people that might want to build this.

14:11Obviously Tableau themselves will build extensions.

14:14You'll have third parties building extensions, that's very standard.

14:17And the final one is really community developers, so people building uh extensions for themselves, maybe within a business setting or maybe within uh the general community settings and just making them freely available

14:27The thing I'm concerned about is I don't want to see 15 versions of a Sankey chart in here.

14:32I don't want to see 20 versions of a tree diagram as an example.

14:36What I really want is chart types that genuinely have meaningful differences so I can make an informed choice about how that works and have that choice be easy to make.

14:46It's very hard to sort of click into all of these and and kind of get that context immediately.

14:50So that's something I think they still have to improve.

14:52If I have to read this, that's not great.

14:55What typically app stores have is a rating system and a way to sort of rank the good ones so that if you search for something and then you find a rating that's high and good,

15:03Trusted by lots of different people, maybe even see which companies and enterprise uh organizations are using that.

15:08That's a really good way of validating validating the good ones.

15:11And it reduces the incentive for people to use this as a way of, you know, getting exposure quickly or sort of gaming it as a marketing system, which I'm I'm sure will happen, right?

15:19That's sort of inevitable.

15:21So

15:21Um, it's super interesting to see this sort of come about.

15:24It's good to see this.

15:25Now there's a ton of questions that have uh been asked about this and there's no possible way I could summarize them all in this video.

15:31What I will say is that most of them are actually covered in the conference session.

15:35that's now available on Salesforce Plus about Viz extensions.

15:38So I would say go check that session out.

15:40Literally it's only 30 minutes and honestly there's probably only 15 minutes of it you have to really sort of drill into

15:46And it's the bit at the end where they talk about how they've built these, how they're different, and how they work.

15:51And I think that's super important.

15:53So go ahead and check that out

15:55I didn't sort of want to make sort of a big fanfare about this because it's not fully available yet.

15:59When it goes live, I'll make a video about the chart types I really like, but I just wanted to sort of give you an early preview of what is coming in terms of this extensions.

16:08And I think a lot of the thinking we're talking about here and a lot of the things we're saying, you'll need to spend time now really thinking about them in your enterprise context to understand what are we going to allow, what are we going to use.

16:18And are there third parties that we actually want to work with that we prefer that can help us build something bespoke?

16:24And lastly, I think from a creative perspective, if you're building a visualization that's going to have high exposure and high impact, it really does make sense to consider.

16:33Getting a third-party developer to help you build something bespoke if the impact and reach justifies the need.

16:38Right?

16:39So thanks for watching.

16:41We'll see you in the next one.