# Tableau Exchange & Tableau Accelerators: New in Tableau 2021.4

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-12-07
- **Format:** Video · 16 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy, Community
- **Tools:** Tableau (accelerators, connectors, extensions, public)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-exchange-tableau-accelerators-new-in-tableau-2021-4
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trtriwa4-Rs

I cover the new Tableau Exchange and Tableau Accelerators introduced in Tableau 2021.4, explaining what the Exchange marketplace offers across extensions, connectors and accelerators. I then give an honest, critical assessment of the accelerator templates, which Tableau acquired via Linato SA, and argue they fall short of Tableau's own best practices.

## Key takeaways

- The Tableau Exchange is a central marketplace bringing together extensions, connectors and accelerators, none of which are genuinely new features, just rebranded and easier to browse.
- Connectors are third-party built using the connector SDK, so partners can build their own Tableau connectors without Tableau doing the heavy lifting.
- Accelerators are essentially preconfigured dashboard templates with connections built in, originally from Linato SA which Salesforce acquired and dropped in largely unchanged.
- The accelerator content lacks quality assurance and visual best practice, which risks setting a poor de facto standard for new Tableau users since everything is branded 'by Tableau'.
- For higher-quality templates, look at the Tableau Public community and search function, where authors share well-designed, thoughtfully built dashboards.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Introducing Tableau Exchange and the Tableau Economy
- 1:11 Browsing the extension gallery
- 2:30 Third-party connectors
- 3:26 What accelerators actually are
- 5:14 The Linato acquisition and lack of QA
- 7:33 Concerns for the community and new users
- 10:13 Loading and quality issues in practice
- 12:42 Better templates on Tableau Public
- 14:59 Closing thoughts

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-exchange-tableau-accelerators-new-in-tableau-2021-4

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena