Figma to Tableau: Accelerate Your Tableau Dashboard Design with Figma!

0:00Design, formatting, layout.

0:03These three things take too long in Tableau.

0:06And in the third part of my discussion with Tristan, he

0:10Showed me a tool called Figma to Tableau.

0:13If you haven't seen it already, he just announced it.

0:15I'm releasing this video the week after he's announced it and

0:19It's a tool that decouples those three things from the activity of actually making your workbook.

0:24So in short, what you can do is you can take your workbook.

0:27Put it into Figma.

0:29Get Figma to do all the styling and the layout in the way that you want to do it.

0:33And it can export a workbook with those formatting, design, and layout things applied, ready to go.

0:39And so what that does is it makes it actually an enjoyable experience to get consistent designs easily and quickly.

0:45And the best thing is figurance free.

0:47So this is not going to be something that

0:48You know, costs you an arm and a leg to do.

0:50You can go on a browser, use Figma, you can download Figma to your laptop and use it.

0:54Uh, needless to say, at least Tristan is putting some energy into this particular thing.

0:59And I'll just also say this

1:01It boggles my mind that in all the years of Tableau, this one area has never had time.

1:08I just don't get it.

1:09And even in the fourth wave, we didn't see anything about the layout system.

1:14I mean

1:14If you use Tableau for half a day and you're passionate about it, you'd know that is the area, at least I think, that needs the biggest amounts of improvements.

1:23People do silly things just to get nice layouts in Tableau.

1:27That shouldn't have to be the case, but thank God.

1:29Tristan is answering that question.

1:31In this video, he walks through a demo, he shows some examples, and hopefully I think you'll think that this is a really powerful tool that you can use to enhance the way you build Tableau Workbooks.

1:41As ever, let's get stuck in.

1:43So let's let's talk a bit about the Figma plugin.

1:47Where did that idea come from?

1:48Because I know Figma is big in the Tableau community.

1:51has been for a while.

1:52I'm I'm personally frowned upon it being used for design, but I know that people use whatever they have to get the that the their job done and I'm not going to be the one to say don't do it.

2:00So yeah, where did you get this idea from and sort of what is so

2:04Like I told you in the in a previous part, like really at some point I was okay, I want to be better at data visualization.

2:11What tools can I learn?

2:12And

2:13As you say, Figma in the even right in the design world, it's super big, right?

2:18Every these kind of not every but most of the designer today are on Figma.

2:23if you work with company it is likely that they will also tableau use figma like tableau build tableau is building tableau with figma right yeah it's just their design yeah so

2:35I was using it to build my dashboard, my public dashboard mostly.

2:40And I was using the kind of okay, well the the um

2:44the rounded corners, all of those things you want them, so you kind of need to make them in Figma, then export as a background image and and then put your charts on top.

2:54Or also I would just see with auto layout, so it's a way to make frames in Figma, how more efficient I could be at at building a dashboard if it was in Figma, right?

3:09And to also come back to the point that we we took last time uh

3:15Before it was difficult like Tableau is missing something, right?

3:19Yeah.

3:19And I think everyone will agree that well, these extensions are great because we have new capabilities, but making dashboards in Tableau is still painting.

3:28Yeah.

3:29Yeah.

3:29People don't like containers.

3:36If the way to make

3:38containers was like enjoyable was enjoyable right and then if you if you drag if you just m move the things with the arrow to align it should not break your container those kind of things yeah so for ears

3:52I have asked Tableau to give us an API, like a kind of like the dashboard API, but like a UI API that would allow

4:01us to make an extension, some kind of extension on the dashboard level that will allow us to rearrange the element on the dashboard level.

4:09Yes, yes.

4:10Because you can just add

4:12Things to the dashboard you cannot programmatically rearrange your element.

4:19Then

4:20I think just by doing the the other tools like the the advis and the the tool to generate the KPI, I kind of noticed that okay by modify tableau is just an XML file.

4:31Yes, yes.

4:31So as long as you can rewrite the XML, you could rearrange the element, right?

4:35Yes.

4:36And eventually that's how it started, the idea of like

4:39Well, if Figma is also you can also use Figma API to get each nodes that you have in your design.

4:46So if I could use Figma to really quickly build my dashboard with all the nice

4:53feature like capabilities that Figma has to to like something super simple multi-select different containers.

5:01Yeah

5:02to add the same padding color on all of border all of them at once right this is if you have been using Sigma this is yeah it's like of course I can easy yeah you cannot

5:13You need to go one by one, you cannot multi-select containers, that for me is like right?

5:18So if I could design in Figma

5:21And then with one click convert that UI.

5:24So just the UI, right?

5:25I don't care about the data.

5:26I don't care about the sheet.

5:28Just the UI of my dashboard.

5:30And I could just write the equivalent XML of what I have in Figma that would save me a lot of time.

5:36And every tool that we have created is always initially for us.

5:43As a way to be more efficient with our client.

5:46It's like if if I can build something in in half a day instead of two, it's better, right?

5:53So how can we be more efficient?

5:55Well, if we could

5:56Um try like if we could export Figma design to Tableau, we'll be much more efficient.

6:01So we did it for us and then package it into a product.

6:05Nice.

6:06So that that was really how it started is and also um as a as a consultant when we work with clients

6:16A lot of them already have a designer that has made a dashboard.

6:21They usually come with us with like, hey, this is what we had in mind for the wireframe.

6:26So the title, the button, the navigation, the image, blah blah blah.

6:30And okay, you want that in Tableau?

6:32Okay, just give me ten minutes, I will just rename the things as they need to be named and and export it.

6:38And yeah.

6:39Half a day of work to make all of the containers is is done in one chick.

6:44Exactly.

6:44And it's repeatable.

6:45This is the big thing about your your your your setup.

6:48It's like you can get to that.

6:50Very quickly every single time.

6:52Whereas in Tableau, unfortunately, you have to restart that effort every single time.

6:57And it's just it's so painful.

7:00Uh

7:01Uh I've made videos about layout containers for years.

7:04It's one of my fourth most watched videos, like silly how to play around with this empty container so that you get the spacing.

7:12You know, all of this stuff.

7:14And again you've you've solved it.

7:16So yeah, this is incredible.

7:17And I guess yeah, go for it.

7:19Sorry.

7:19No, no, that that was the main idea.

7:21And then

7:22Now it it kind of evolved.

7:24It's not released yet, but because we were a bit focused on V extension, but it will come very, very soon, like by the end of the month, as is really what we aim for.

7:31Yeah.

7:32We have that new capability that we showcase at TC that

7:37Not every Tableau developers know how to use Figma.

7:40Correct.

7:40Right?

7:41Especially doing auto layout and those kind of things.

7:44But

7:45What we want is like Figma is free first, so everyone could use Figma.

7:50Everyone can have it.

7:51And if you are able to generate a dashboard.

7:55In just one click and export it like you generate your tableau dashboard in Figma and then you export it to Tableau, you automatic and you don't need to know how Figma works.

8:04Correct.

8:05But

8:05Just Figma gives we in within Figma we have the tools to generate the design you want.

8:13Exactly that we don't have in Tableau.

8:14So basically right now is like you use Tableau, use Figma to generate your dashboard, and then you export it to Tableau and you already have

8:22half a day of work that is behind you, right?

8:24Yeah, yeah.

8:25And what we wanted to do is currently still called templates, but I want to get rid of that name because it's not a template.

8:32Right.

8:33The because the main idea is you are not stuck

8:37In color or whatever, right?

8:40It's really a generator.

8:41So for us, it's like it's not something that in our mind is not a template that you can recreate, but it's more like you want to generate

8:49as many dashboards with different style as you want.

8:52And you can really each that can be unique, but the way you create it can be really pertinent.

8:57So it's more of a building tool than it is like a

9:00um like a copy tool, right?

9:03It's uh it's a creative tool.

9:04Yeah.

9:05I will I can I can of course we will also show it quickly, but the the main idea is that is like you are not

9:11You don't start with something that is pre-existing necessarily.

9:15You can make your own pre-existing settings.

9:17Yeah, amazing.

9:18Amazing.

9:19Yeah, and I think

9:20Again, two areas where Tableau has been screaming for new energy chart.

9:26We talked about Viz Extension last time.

9:28Today

9:29dashboarding and layout and and and templating and formatting actually probably 60% of people's time not part of the visual analysis at all.

9:38So if you can decrease that amount of time and the outcome is better and the product is better.

9:43Fantastic.

9:44Fantastic.

9:45Good.

9:45Right.

9:46I'll I'll give the the stage to you and then uh you can you can show us how it works.

9:51Yeah.

9:52Let's do that.

9:54So to explain it, I like to start with like an an exist the existing sales, the dashboard, the tableau.

10:01I just changed the color because I made another demo recently.

10:04So this one has two

10:06Two worksheets, sales and product, and it's in sales dot com, right?

10:10Um and we have here KPI, sales map, sales by product, sales by segment.

10:15So really standard worksheet.

10:17So the main idea is here in Figma, you can make your design, like build a design in Figma and then export that in tab.

10:28Okay.

10:28So let I'm going to start with this simple export.

10:32So I have um I have my my dashboard here, okay, with an image, we have some text, and then those gray elements are like sheet.

10:42slash something, right?

10:43So here sheet slash total sales.

10:46This is sales by sheet sales by product.

10:48Right.

10:49Sheet sales by segment, etc.

10:51So what you can do is, well, let's so for our plugin you find it inside Figma, right?

10:57So you click on the plugin here and you have Figma to Tableau.

11:00And I'm going to open the development version so we have the new capabilities.

11:04And the way it is like well, you click on on the the chart.

11:08the chart the the dashboard and then you can directly express right so currently I'm just missing one one worksheet here so you can do what so let's put things like the sale sale map something

11:22Let's add and then it add a new sheet element, right?

11:27That you can put and then add in your design.

11:32And then once you have that, you export your dashboard.

11:35It creates a new template file.

11:38And then if we open that template, we will have the same look and feel as we are we see in Figma, but this time in Tableau.

11:45Nice, there's your charts.

11:47Nice and easy.

11:48So we have the exact same dashboard that we had in Figma.

11:51And it's not like a background image or something.

11:54Everything is it's true, right?

11:55This is like an image that you can modify.

11:57This is the text that you can change.

11:59Like it it doesn't there is no no uh magic behind is really recreating all the hierarchy elements and just putting them in different elements.

12:10Yes.

12:10Yeah.

12:10With the same name that you have them in in the Figma.

12:13So everything is named, everything is in its correct place.

12:15That's the name everywhere.

12:17Exactly.

12:18Yeah, because because our Figma layout is really clean, right?

12:23So it's exactly the same layout.

12:25Every sheet that we had here in our design sheet element are converted to uh worksheet in the in the template.

12:35Yeah.

12:35that you export and of course you can then replace right so if you are in tableau you could import your sales dashboard and then well let's let's do it quickly let's import I think it was

12:48uh this one was sales dashboard so let's open sales dashboard and then we can um quickly replace so let me just find

12:59It's this one.

13:00And then you can go ahead and be like, okay, this is KPI.

13:03Oh yeah.

13:05Yeah.

13:05And so right.

13:06So you can really quickly put here it's my map.

13:10And this is a new feature.

13:11Swap sheets for everyone's reference is a capability that was added I think a year or two ago.

13:16And yeah, you can just quickly re replace this.

13:18And even um

13:20They added another functionality which is related, which is you can swap the data source for a single sheet as well.

13:25So sometimes you used to have to do those separately, but now

13:29You can just swap the data source if it's using a separate data source, bring it in, and boom, like that.

13:34It's just very cleanly formatted and

13:37Ready to go.

13:37And it's got the style and everything.

13:39Nice.

13:40So we we just have saved a lot of time because you would need to go to every of those one and be like, okay, this is especially if you want to respect

13:48What is in the in the in the design, right?

13:50And the designer spend a lot of time putting okay, this is three, this is seven, seven, yeah.

13:56Very strange numbers, but they make sense when you do the design maths.

14:00And designers do all these maths and it comes up with sometimes very

14:04non-logical numbers, but it's to do with how many components you've got on a page.

14:08Yeah, yeah.

14:10Yeah, exactly.

14:11So

14:12So and and of course in Figma when you have this auto layout, right?

14:18You can, for example.

14:20You can change something and it changes the rest, right?

14:22Yeah.

14:23So for example, you could you know play with the the size between all of the elements and if you have those two things that's uh demo that I like to do is um

14:32with people who are uh familiar with with tableau.

14:35So you could be like, well, this here you can just turn from horizontal layout to vertical layout, right?

14:41Something that in Tableau you would not be able to do

14:45But here you can just that's just one way.

14:50Of course, what we have tried to do over time, just like for the Viz extension, is build more and more capabilities.

14:55So instead of

14:57Replacing inside like replace the worksheet, you can import a tableau file.

15:02So if I was using my sales dashboard

15:05Here I can see already the list of the worksheets that exist in my platform and then start to replace.

15:13So for example, it's not

15:14Sale uh here put sale map, right?

15:17But actually what we need is sales map.

15:19So we will change the name.

15:22This is not total sales, but I think it's the KPI, so now it's replaced

15:27And now if we export this dashboard, uh it's no longer saying template, but it sells uh sales dashboard Figma to Tableau.

15:36Yeah.

15:36And if we save that and open this time we don't need to have all of the replace and import workbook.

15:43We just have exactly

15:45So we have a product on sales and our sales one because we have the same name and now everything is already.

15:50Everything's already there.

15:51Wow, this is

15:53Not every client wants to import a workbook inside Figma, correct.

15:58Even though it it's in Figma, but is like um

16:02You can import like a TWB, so something that is just the tableau without the data.

16:07Without the data, exactly.

16:09Yeah, that's something people don't know.

16:11So Tableau is just a zip folder.

16:13with XML, your data, and a bunch of other things.

16:17The XML and your data are the two most important bits.

16:19So you're just working with the XML.

16:22You don't need their data or their connection details or the, you know, none of that needs to come up.

16:26You just have um the the the TWB which contains the raw design information.

16:32It does have connection details, but it's not

16:34You're not actually being you're not actually sharing the data.

16:37It's not kind of going up to Figma.

16:39So it's very clean.

16:39Yeah.

16:40It's like the TWB, and I could use the the and that that is just the XML.

16:44Like you can really just open that with like a

16:48uh code editor and that's your workbook and there's your workbook exactly exactly your work and what we do the Figma to really enter in the heavy duty detail of how the Figma it's go and change all this right

17:00Exactly.

17:01Something that is called dashboards.

17:03And here you have the dashboard.

17:05And that's that's how a dashboard is defined is is

17:10Written and what we do is we transform Figma to that language and we recreate all the zone elements.

17:16That's that's what the plugin does.

17:18It's kind of interesting because what you've shown there is

17:22Essentially a path where Tablet could make this better by instead of using the layout system we have today, use this approach of starting where Figma is and sort of trying to get it to work with the XML.

17:33But yeah, it's fantastic.

17:34Sorry, I cut you short.

17:36And no and the and that's why we ask for like a um a design like a UI API, because

17:44If if we can rewrite the XML by hand, we should have an API that allowed to modify that that parts, right?

17:53Yeah, yeah.

17:53So yeah, that that was just like an example with It's incredible.

17:58And and again, really the advantage is I multi-select and I say like okay I want I can modify all of the

18:07Like all of the padding at once, I can I could change all of the background color at once.

18:12Like you are you can really

18:15much more easily create things.

18:16And then if you go to design that are a bit more advanced like this one, I will just again this is not total sales but KPI and this is not

18:24This is sales map, so that's correct.

18:27So here we have like we have rounded corners, we have a bit of shadow, we have a gradient as a background, we have a lot of things that are not

18:34possible to do in Tableau, right?

18:36Yeah.

18:36So of course when you want to export that it will say well you want to export something that's that we cannot export as a container simply will not render.

18:45You cannot export you can export it as a floating, but if you export as floating, still your rounded corners are cannot be rendered, but you can export this as background image, right?

18:56So if you export this as a background image, let's

18:59replace the existing one then and that's mostly for tableau public right that's how we we win a lot of time in tableau public we just export and now we have background image

19:09Exactly.

19:12It's there in its nice space, yeah.

19:14It's not it's not perfect, but basically you like and that that is just because the worksheet has those those those lines to start with.

19:23But basically now we have just the element like you know floating on top of each other.

19:27Yeah and it's just um yeah but for tableau you can now really design your dashboard in fig ma in

19:36And then just place your worksheet where you want them and then export in one click and then you're you're happy.

19:40And you're done.

19:41And that and to be uh to be honest, that works for a lot of people because they want this.

19:45What's um this very what it let's say design branded experience, right?

19:50So you can easily see a world where, you know, an organization I've worked for a couple of organizations who have a UX designer who works through Tableau dashboards.

20:00um trying to understand what is it that people really need and they come up with a a a a style and it's you know these are companies with large bodies of tableau users but that that investment into that effort really makes sure the dashboards are clear and some of that

20:14It's about brand identity.

20:15But you mentioned in the previous video about embedded experiences, right?

20:19And I think embedded experiences are where people do want a very branded design, right?

20:24And this is exactly what you lean on to kind of enable that.

20:28there.

20:28And and the cool part is like every every small uh like the the weeds you hide that you've put in your Figma in in the Figma everything will be respected right like if you say

20:40This element is exactly this size and the text is this size.

20:44Everything is really we made sure that when you expand, you have the exact same size and the exact same experience as if you had anything.

20:52It's fantastic.

20:53So yeah, that that is everything, but you kind of need to know Figma, right?

20:58That is you need to know how to use auto layout because those are built using auto layout.

21:02You need to

21:03Make design, but for a lot of people, and and that's kind of the main question we had is like okay, I'm I'm not good at Figma, I don't know really sell how to use.

21:11Can I still use your plugin?

21:14And that's why we have this thing called now template that will be renamed uh generator.

21:18Yeah.

21:19And here is really well, I don't know how to make

21:22uh Figma dashbound.

21:25But I want to use the plugin.

21:27So let's start with let's say sales and I'm just going to call it sales Figma so we can differentiate.

21:32Yeah.

21:32And then do you I want do you want filter?

21:34Do you want navigation menu?

21:36Okay.

21:36How many worksheets do you have?

21:38So for example, in in our one we have four worksheets.

21:40And I think the layout kind of we have is this one, right?

21:43Yep.

21:45So let's select that layout.

21:48And then you can be navigation.

21:50Do I want to add a logo?

21:52And you will be able to input your own logo.

21:54Do I want the navigation on top, on the left, on the right?

21:57So you can really configure, and this is a bit like the Viz extension, this will be saved, right?

22:02Yeah.

22:03Number of buttons, so let's add two two buttons.

22:05You can select the color of your button.

22:08Um the design, same.

22:09You can choose the background color, the title color, the title size, the sheets, the so many options.

22:15I love it

22:16Exactly.

22:16And and we will add much more, right?

22:18This is really an an ongoing um process.

22:21Like if you go filters, right now we don't have any options, but we will add them, you'll add them, yeah.

22:25Yeah, yeah.

22:26And then you say, okay, generate.

22:28There we go.

22:30Nice.

22:31And then this what you can do is you can you are not um blocked.

22:36So for example, in our design we had this what that was much smaller, and here we didn't add a title, right?

22:42Yeah.

22:42And you can

22:43had you can still kind of make a guess.

22:45And actually this is I don't think this is too hard to figure out because Figma's not a complicated tool.

22:50And actually

22:52If you spent like 20 minutes just playing with this, I think you'd understand intuitively how it works with very quickly.

22:57And if you make a mistake, we'll just generate another one and start again, right?

23:01You don't have to be like a an expert.

23:03So it's really good.

23:04And then you know you know we had sales and we had like product with those two product detail and and table.

23:10So let's make another one.

23:11This one we have two and it's more like this.

23:14And

23:15Let's put product.

23:16And just for the sake of it, we can maybe change the background to something more reddish and maybe the sheet container can

23:24Like I'm afraid to do things that will be very ugly, but you can always try.

23:30Yeah, there you go.

23:31Financial times, perfect.

23:32Yeah.

23:33Exactly.

23:35So you have your two your two your two dashboards.

23:39Yeah.

23:39And of course you if you export them, they will all have you know the the standard um

23:45three like bar chart uh the template right so we still need to uh kind of say this is kpi this is our sales map but you will see that when uh when i replace that with sales map

23:57The title automatically changes.

23:59Changes so you're not messing around.

24:01Exactly.

24:02And to make it a bit more efficient.

24:05And this one.

24:06Yep.

24:07and this one was I think product detail and this should be the sales tape

24:16I think so.

24:16And then in any case when you select both, you should have a tick in front of every one of them.

24:21Ah, I don't have KPI.

24:22This one.

24:24This one

24:24I didn't put KPI.

24:26Yes.

24:26Right.

24:27Now I select and now we see I'm using all of the worksheet that I have in dashboard.

24:31Yeah.

24:31And they're gonna come in one workbook.

24:33Exactly.

24:34Nice.

24:35Um we had this small convert font to Tableau Font Family, also I didn't talk about it, but also if because people who are publishing to Tableau Online, they want the font to be.

24:43So let's make sure that it's same as Tableau, yeah.

24:45Yeah, I think it's Bebas or something like no, it's not Bebus, sorry.

24:48It's uh Benton Sands is the official tableau font.

24:51Okay.

24:52Yeah, there you go.

24:55Exactly.

24:56And then with currently that's something we I didn't talk about, but like we have those buttons that also can be converted to actual navigation button, right?

25:04So if you put it

25:06Yeah, it goes to dashboard basically.

25:07Yeah.

25:08And it goes to dashboard.

25:10So right now when you you generate a new template or you generate a new dashboard, of course it doesn't know where the button needs to go, right?

25:19So you can either do it manually, so replace dashboard by product Figma or Sales Figma.

25:24But what we also because it's always about saving time, you can go to navigation and here be synchronize.

25:30And now it's automatically changed in here and the the in the text, right?

25:36Such nice small like there's a lot of thought that's got into this.

25:40Exactly.

25:41Because we are using it

25:42Yes, exactly.

25:43You you actually have to use this yourself to to solve real work problems, I guess.

25:48And so you probably

25:50Doing these things, going, oh, it'd be great if we could do this.

25:52And you're going, oh, let's add it in, right?

25:53And then you keep going until you spend a week or two weeks and you haven't had to add in a thing.

25:58You're like, oh, maybe this is maybe this is useful, say.

26:02So I just exported it and now if you go to sales Figma, you will see that.

26:05Everything is there.

26:06Yeah.

26:07So I I should have made the map a bit bigger.

26:09Ah.

26:10But your buttons are working.

26:12They're all

26:13product figure.

26:16But you see that's it.

26:18Yeah, the color you could change and and do some other things.

26:21Uh exactly some other way.

26:22So yeah, because you you still just have exported like a

26:25Like it doesn't, it's just the UI, right?

26:27So your worksheets are still your worksheet.

26:29So you can be like, okay, let's not have a row bending and you can have those kind of things.

26:34but yeah you get the idea right so really you can make as many template like as many you can generate as many dashboards as you want with really your style so if your style are more like well i like

26:45Dashboard that have a blue, a dark blue background and the text is white, and my sheet are more on a blue, like really light blue color.

26:54And you want to generate this, you have it, right?

26:57Amazing.

26:58It's just so easy.

26:59It's just so funny.

27:00You make um building dashboards a commodity activity, whereas at the moment it's a very time consuming activity.

27:07At every point you'd be like, okay, this now I

27:10Whether you you have selected a an existing dashboard or not, I want just I want that in Tableau and then yeah, you you export it and you get it.

27:19Right.

27:19So it it has saved us a lot of time to work with our client because we can just think, okay, this is the the standard style that we have, and that's it.

27:29Um browsers.

27:31Gosh, Tristan, so much.

27:33I can't believe you've achieved this in just, I don't know.

27:35Like it seems like just yesterday you started with Add This and

27:39Each each week, each month you you come out with something new.

27:42I like I I I I can't imagine where you'll be in two years' time with all of this, right?

27:47Like it's crazy.

27:49Two years ago you weren't a Tableau partner.

27:54Incredible.

27:56So yeah, let's let's talk so and and that's that's really about a mix of tableau giving us tools.

28:02Yeah.

28:03it to achieve more and also I think if you if you and I think everyone who has done that

28:11has achieved great result if you dedicate most of your time to something then you can go really far right I think for you is also YouTube.

28:21And it could also be like look how far you is is the same.

28:27It's like when you are on the everyday of like we are just having this conversation, then you have a lot of work to

28:34um edit it and to make it better and everything.

28:38And it's like every day you do a s a bit, even if every day you just work two or three hours.

28:43Exactly.

28:44Have it better, right?

28:45Exactly.

28:45Yeah, it's it's actually true.

28:46I've not changed the video template file that I've used in four years.

28:51What I do is every month I save a new version.

28:55And that version has one or two improvements that I wanted to make from the previous one.

28:59So when I start a new template, it already has all those changes.

29:03So

29:04You know, in the last year I've added four new templates, one for conversations like this, one for shorter videos, like so many things.

29:11But now that file

29:12That file has, I think it's the cumulative 40 hours of effort into it, right?

29:18And no one is gonna spend 40 hours of effort making their template file on day one.

29:22It just just not gonna happen.

29:23But this is how you start and yeah, it's crazy.

29:26You just keep chipping away, keep shipping away, keep one video at a time, and eventually, yeah, you you get to wait.

29:31And I think and and the more you do also, the more you

29:36Get better at doing it.

29:38You learn muscle memory and and sort of your reflexes know what's good and what's not.

29:44And you we you you waste less time and also you you're smarter about how you approach it, right?

29:49You kind of

29:49You go, oh to do that, I really need to do this.

29:51So actually when I'm recording Tristan today, I'll make sure that I've I've done this and this and this, right?

29:56And then that's why I use Riverside because I know I'm gonna make my edit faster than the first time I did this where it was awful in Zoom and I was like, okay, this is

30:03disaster.

30:06Let's say tomorrow like you will need you want to create your own custom Viz extension, right?

30:12You will take a good amount of time.

30:14I can cover it much faster.

30:16But my next YouTube video that I will that I still will release

30:21We'll take days of editing and for you to uh that that I could have done in twelve, but it's funny.

30:27It's one of those things right there's

30:29There is a ceiling.

30:30Some skills have a ceiling, right?

30:32There's like I'm not trying to be, I don't know, an editor for a film or an editor for like a huge YouTube channel.

30:38So there is a point where you have to say no.

30:41There's no point doing more of this because at that point I'm in another profession, right?

30:45Like this is a completely different league.

30:47So I'm also very humble about that.

30:48Like I'm like, okay, you know what?

30:50This isn't perfect.

30:51We'll just leave it at this, right?

30:52And I think we talked a bit about ambition, right?

30:54Trying to make things bigger and bigger for the sake of it.

30:57There's no need, right

30:58Exactly.

30:59So aren't like also if you look at the code, I'm sure uh an actual like not not like someone who has who who did code for the past ten years, we look at the quality of the code and be like this is

31:13Horrible, right?

31:13Yeah.

31:14Oh yeah, because we we spend time uh to refactor and to rewrite things.

31:21Yes.

31:22But

31:23For example, the first vis extension that I that I shared was like I think the network or something like that.

31:29And it was more like, hey, this is possible, right?

31:31Yeah.

31:31And then after we have built the other vis extension with the menu, I revisit it.

31:36the network and be like, okay, no, you can do this better.

31:40We could do much better.

31:49Always small small increments of of of changes.

31:52Yeah.

31:53And I think that's what also comes down to is the tools that we build.

32:01We are building them because it's fun.

32:05Because uh it solves an issue for us and it seems that it solves issue for other people.

32:13by the tools and be like, okay, this uh saves me hours of work and and that's really the idea behind it.

32:20But it's it will start to become

32:23Well it is a job, but I w I don't f necessarily feel a job, yeah.

32:28Well yes I do.

32:29I d but Oh of course you are a professional person, but it doesn't

32:33It's not a nine to five in the same way as it is you're building something that you're passionate about, like a mechanic word with a car, right?

32:40Like it's very And it's mostly that s someone is not also telling us what to build.

32:46Currently like we we like I think I have let me let me know what you think but for example I think there is currently a big

32:54issue like another pain point in Tableau in the way that you use your filters.

32:58I don't know if you already discussed that, but for me every time that you need to click and be like, okay.

33:03Show me the only relevant values and I want the selection multiple in a drag-down menu.

33:08Right?

33:10And an apply button

33:11Every filter that I need to go to click and click and click just to make those change.

33:15I want to make a really small tool that you put your workbook, you'll be all of my filters need to have this.

33:21behavior apply and and it's done and also maybe see all of the filters where they are applied and those kind of things right so yeah the it's more you build because

33:32It feels like what you want to work on and we don't want a big team, we don't want to have to manage people, we don't want to start to that that's a thing when you lose, yeah kind of uh

33:43I don't know.

33:44The s the fire, the passion.

33:46Yeah.

33:47It starts to become a job, uh starts to become a burden.

33:51And yeah, you know, uh it's an interesting it's an interesting kind of conflict because sometimes

34:00I think people talk about products, but there's also I also think you're building a movement.

34:06You've got

34:07a community of people behind you using what you're building.

34:10And it's actually that that you're building.

34:12You're trying to enable more people to be able to use and do the things they enjoy in Tableau.

34:17faster and better so they can move on to the things that matter, which is doing data analysis rather than formatting, you know, a a visualization.

34:24You tried to make it easy for the people who don't have a design eye but know that something isn't quite right.

34:29So

34:30Give them a slider, give them a few options, and they know what to do and they can get to the right decision.

34:34That's that's sort of the movement that you're building and it's it's a completely different to

34:39to to a job job.

34:40A jobby job as they say.

34:42Yeah, I hope so.

34:44I think is is really great when you have the feeling of

34:47The it started with advis when you started to see the first visualization built with the tool.

34:53Ah I just managed to pist things to the tool and everyone's tagging you left, right, and center.

34:59That must have been like you probably didn't expect that.

35:02As much, right?

35:02You probably did it and you thought, oh, let's see what happens.

35:04And then, you know, I think there was a solid month where I just kept on seeing your name tagged in viz after viz after viz.

35:11And I was like, geez.

35:12your your Twitter feed must you must have it on mute by now because this is getting funny.

35:17But then on the same on the same token you're probably quite happy and excited and you're engaging with all of these and you're you're kind of inspired as well.

35:24So

35:25No, that's that's a tip for for everyone who wants to be productive.

35:29I have all of my notifications of all of my app on mute.

35:32Like I have zero notification of my

35:36Yeah.

35:36I started that uh a year and a half ago.

35:39I'm very bad on Twitter and LinkedIn.

35:41I just don't reply to people because I get there a week later.

35:43I'm like, what's that?

35:45Sorry, I missed that.

35:46Didn't have my notifications on.

35:47And I think everyone thinks that because you're on these platforms, you're very good at it.

35:51They expect you to be very responsive and it's sort of the flip side of what they

35:55But anyway.

35:56This has been an incredible conversation, Tristan.

35:59This is um so so many uh amazing tools.

36:02Uh obviously we spoke last time about Viz extensions.

36:04Today we talked about this as well.

36:06So

36:07Um I think absolutely incredible the work you're doing.

36:09I can't wait to see how the community takes all of these um products that you've done.

36:14Um

36:15uh you know, when they come out and uh maybe we'll be having another discussion in a year and uh we'll we'll see where things have gone.

36:21Yeah, like I think the future is exciting.

36:24Also from the tableau side, like I really hope that this idea of

36:30Allowing people to build on top of of what Tableau has continued to grow.

36:36Yes.

36:37You could imagine that what what

36:39We have shown right now in in the Figma plugin and in Tableau in with the Viz extension, ultimately it's no longer

36:47f like that you could build in Figma and instead of exporting to Tableau yeah we could have the worksheets and or your data your data source directly inside Figma right yeah so your bound could have live data

37:01So you don't need to run into dashboards.

37:11We can create a um experience for client.

37:13And there are people who will always want to stay within Tableau desktop.

37:16And that's true.

37:17But it's also how

37:19You can make customized experience for other people who want to have a slightly different or a slightly more advanced something.

37:27Yeah, yeah.

37:35Scale right now.

37:36Biggest context, yeah.

37:37Yeah.

37:38Yeah, yeah.

37:38And I think that is coming.

37:40Tableau are heading in that way.

37:42Um, definitely.

37:43You see it in the writings on the wall.

37:45Um

37:47This new fourth wave that they have, I think that's going to rely on developers being an integral part of that as well.

37:53And I think the the partner of the future is going to be doing what you're doing.

37:56You know, we we come from a world where Tableau partners were mostly just consultancies.

38:01I think things have changed now.

38:04Tableau partners need to be building on top of the Tableau platform.

38:07That's very much sort of clear to me, at least.

38:10It's clear to t to to the few people in Salesforce I've been talking to that want people to take the platform to new places, put it into things, embedding.

38:19Work with it, VizQR data service, uh take things in and out, metadata API, uh, you know, tear things up.

38:26There's so many things, analytics extensions, you know, call chat GPT whilst you're querying a visualization.

38:31Like

38:32That stuff is now all there for people to do.

38:34So incredible.

38:35Yes.

38:35Yeah.

38:36I I would say I agree with you, but that's really still a vision.

38:40Yeah.

38:40At that moment, I don't feel like a

38:42partner in like in Israel.

38:46I still believe that it's a struggle a little bit, yeah.

38:48Yeah, yeah.

38:49It will take time for Tableau to recognize the

38:52developer partner yeah as much as the reselling partner currently it's still a real it's still a struggle to become a partner to start with even if you want to develop things that's a big issue is like

39:04how difficult it is to become a partner.

39:06And even Sua Tableau at at that moment when we are talking today is not

39:13Let's say up to the standard of what you would expect if you want to partner with a big company like that.

39:19With a developer, yeah.

39:20Yeah.

39:21Just I will not enter in the detail, but just the the the experience between developing a Figma.

39:27Plugin?

39:28So inside Figma and then being accredited to have a plugin inside the Figma structure was done in 48 hours.

39:37Everything was tested, done, everything.

39:39Tableau took more than 10 months to get me to be able to publish on the exchange, right?

39:45There is such a discrepancy between the that vision of like we want to

39:50people to build things on top of it.

39:54Today where it's almost impossible if you don't know who to talk to and you don't have the right contact within Tableau that it's it's going to take a bit of time.

40:04Yeah, and I think yeah, well first of all, I know people from Tableau World I think I think Salesforce is secretly like thirty percent of my audience, I swear.

40:12Because every time I make a video, I get a message from someone at Salesforce, Oh, you mentioned you didn't have this, here you go, and like Slack, like literally a day later it's there.

40:20So

40:20If you're watching this at Tableau, yes, like uh you know I've I've looked into the the the Tableau partner ecosystem and it's always been this thing that I think was very much geared to the partner, the old type of partner, the partners that are in there at the moment, the incumbents.

40:33But um yeah, Tab you know, Tableau and Salesforce I should say.

40:36Salesforce is is the company now we really should be talking to.

40:40I think they've also they're a they're learning a lot about Tableau and they're trying to change Tableau in their image and that's obviously gonna take time

40:46So I'm hoping that energy can follow through.

40:50I always say to people that look, you know, we've been very unhappy with Tableau for a long time.

40:55Many of the features that we complained about.

40:58weren't features before Salesforce bought Tableau, right?

41:00So you know, those complaints go back many years and going forward it looks like Salesforce is trying to address them, which is a good thing, because again, in the last 20 years, we didn't see that movement as much.

41:12Yeah yeah you're right.

41:13And also for talking with Tableau developers internally, they also gamble a bit on to to see that it's not gamble but

41:22They also are waiting to see if what they have built will be used.

41:27So just for the case of the VZ extension, yeah.

41:30I am talking a lot with the develop like that the team that

41:35Yeah.

41:36API.

41:36And they were like when we released it, we were like really scared of like, well, we spent a lot of time building it, making it available, and then what if

41:45No one cares.

41:46But if no one uses it.

41:47Yeah.

41:48And from when I saw that, I I said to Jessica, I'm stopping everything that I'm doing right now and I'm and I will do this extent.

41:57And I think the same day that it was released or a few because it was we already had everything with advis it's kinda it's really really similar.

42:04Yeah.

42:04I sent a message to the devil, hey, I made uh the network available with this extension, the sale day, and they were like, Okay, okay, this is this is good.

42:13This is this is good.

42:16I think it's up also right now.

42:19when 2024.

42:202 will be released to start using it and letting Tableau Salesforce know how much

42:27How could I do that?

42:33This is something.

42:33Yeah.

42:34And this is part of the reason I wanted you here because I think um there is, yeah.

42:39We have to use it or lose it.

42:40It's very I know I know we're all uh developers here, but the funny thing is you and I don't buy Tableau.

42:46It's the CFOs and the you know chief financial officers of these orgs that that spend the big bucks on Tableau and they don't talk about these features.

42:54So as developers, what we have to do is we have to really showcase what's happening.

42:58We have to show what we can do with these tools.

43:00And it's not our responsibility to do that.

43:03Table have to make good products, developers have to build good tools.

43:06But based on what I've seen from you and based on what I'm seeing from Tableau, I think it is really a time now for people to start consuming what's being built.

43:15And this narrative that Tableau's dying, you know, I just I d I don't buy it.

43:19Obviously I'm I'm a Tableau hype machine.

43:21I've got a channel called Tableau Tim.

43:23Of course I'm gonna be like, yeah.

43:24Everything's good with Tableau.

43:26But no, I genuinely think that.

43:27I genuinely think if you think that Tableau's dying, you've not been paying attention for the last three years.

43:32It's like the exact opposite in my view.

43:34And

43:35Um it's the difference is that things are changing and the platform's becoming bigger and it's opening its arm to more people.

43:41That means there's a great opportunity for everyone to play a bigger role in welcoming those people.

43:45And then secondly, creating new opportunities like you have done and it's a perfect example of that.

43:51Good.

43:52Thank you.

43:53Thank you.

43:54No worries, no worries.

43:58I think Dableau is not dying.

44:00It could, but let's let's make effects.

44:05Yeah, I think it's everyone uh also the the dev's responsibility now to show that we can make it

44:12We can keep it alive.

44:14Give it life.

44:14Yeah.

44:14Give it life.

44:15Give it a little bit of a a kickstart, a jump start, and and until Tableau come up with their fourth wave and they'd show us what they're thinking.

44:24Good work.

44:25Well looking, we've been talking for nearly two hours.

44:27That's uh that's absolute madness.

44:29Um obviously people will see this in two parts.

44:32That's absolutely fine.

44:33Um I really appreciate your time uh and thank you again for yeah, show showing us what you can do with the extensions.

44:39Thank you.

44:39Thank you for having me.

44:41And yeah, maybe let's catch up again in another year with the new stuff.

44:46Exactly.

44:47Exactly.

44:47We'll do that.

44:49Right.

44:50I'll stop the recording.