Tableau Drive Time Selection: How It Works

0:00This feature from Tableau is such a flex.

0:03Literally no other BI tool can do this.

0:05I've got the buffer selection capability.

0:08I've done a video on this before.

0:10using the 2015 New York tree census.

0:13And I'm going to use this data because it's a good way to demo this capability.

0:17Here I have a buffer capability and you can see that if I just change the radius here I expand the radius of my selection

0:23and it selects all the objects that meet that criteria.

0:26Now one of the things you'd want to do if you're using a map is use the information that's available in the map to do the selection, specifically drive time analysis.

0:36Check this out.

0:37If I go to the second sheet, you'll see I already have a selection here and I didn't make this selection manually.

0:43I used the new drive time selection tool.

0:45To show you where to get that, just go over here to the top left

0:48Go to this second to last option, you'll see it has a little clock and it has a shortcut the letter T.

0:54And what it allows you to do, just look at this part of the screen on the left.

0:57If I just start dragging

0:58It draws a drive time radius on your selection and then also shows you the route that it would take, the shortest route it would take.

1:06Now there's obviously a criteria behind this, but

1:09That is absolutely wild.

1:10And by the way, I have over 683,000 marks on this sheet.

1:16This is just not possible in any other BI tool.

1:18If you have a BI tool that can do this many marks and that analysis at the same time out of the box for free, let me know.

1:25Anyway, this data set here, this is New York.

1:28Obviously, if you know geography, you'll you'll be able to tell this is New York

1:32This is every single tree in New York based on the 2015 census.

1:36And so all I've done is I've just put it back on there as a way of showing you that you can do the selection on actual data points

1:43So if I plot, actually if I zoom out a little bit, let's just zoom out and and um there are a lot of marks on this, so I want to bring Central Park in here because you can kind of see that very clearly.

1:53Um there are obviously s uh trees in Central Park, but they don't do that in the census because it's the park.

2:00What they're actually doing in the census is tracking trees outside of the park.

2:03So

2:03If I just start to draw a circle here, you can see that even on this many marks, the drive time analysis, I think my my MacBook Air is absolutely creaking, and I'm only in a MacBook Air, I'm not in a MacBook Pro, anything advanced.

2:14I've just got a basic MacBook Air here running this analysis.

2:18And it's able to crunch half a million records, over half a million records, and still make the selection based on that selection that I made.

2:26Now

2:26There is a few things I would love it to do uh that would make this feature just like absolutely perfect.

2:32Because you know me, nothing's perfect until it's absolutely right.

2:35When you make the selection, it shows you the drive time that you've got here.

2:39And it's it's a little bit sort of picky to draw this.

2:42And I wish you could make the selection and store the value that it's essentially got there.

2:47So the 10 minutes, the 30 minutes

2:49whatever it is available somewhere so you can actually store that as a value.

2:54I'd love to store it in a parameter, I'd love to store it in other bits of Tableau, maybe sets, whatever it is

3:00I'd just love to be able to use that number.

3:02I am not aware of a specific way to do that.

3:04So if you know, let me know in the comments.

3:06But needless to say, this selection tool is absolutely fantastic.

3:10Like the other selection tools have always been good.

3:12We've always been able to do a radius like so.

3:14And you see that draws much, much faster.

3:17But to be able to do drive time analysis on a map

3:21with uh with data in Tableau for free is absolutely wild.

3:27And I say for free because there's a new addition of Tableau Desktop.

3:30It's called desktop free edition.

3:31It essentially means you can use all of the capability of desktop without paying for license.

3:36Uh the only restrictions you can't use it in partnership with Tableau Cloud, which is essentially the enterprise feature.

3:41So if you are going to use this for business needs

3:42you're going to need Tableau Cloud.

3:44But needless to say, you can use it for pretty much everything else, your projects.

3:47Anyone in your team who just wants to mess around with desktop, build their own analysis on their machine and do it and save it locally and connect to databases.

3:54It's all available.

3:56It's wild.

3:56And this is one of those features that just makes you realize we are so lucky to have this capability in a BI tool.

4:02Here we are, Year of the Lore 2026.

4:04It's available.

4:05Enjoy.

4:06Thanks for watching.

4:06I'll see you in the next one.