# Web authoring improvements

> 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:** 2020-12-15
- **Format:** Video · 12 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, dashboards, extracts, filters, maps, sets, web authoring)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/web-authoring-improvements
- **Watch:** https://www.youtu.be/KmepK8rroxE

I walk through the web authoring improvements in Tableau 2020.4, demonstrating each one inside Tableau Online using a map I built previously. I cover highlight actions, mark label controls, creating extracts in the browser, applying filters across worksheets from a dashboard, and creating fixed sets.

## Key takeaways

- You can now add highlight actions directly in the browser, though the highlighter legend can sit awkwardly under labels in a worksheet (a dashboard gives you more control to remove or reposition it).
- Mark labels work as on desktop by holding Command/Control and dragging a field to Label, and you can control what gets labelled (e.g. only highlighted marks), but performance in the browser is noticeably slower.
- Uploading a static Excel file keeps it as a live local connection rather than auto-converting to an extract; you create the extract from the top-right of the data source connection window, and it gets queued in the background.
- Filters can now be applied to selected worksheets from a dashboard using the same Apply to Worksheets menu as Tableau Desktop, making proper dashboarding viable in the browser.
- Fixed sets can be created by lasso-selecting marks on a map and choosing Create Set from the context menu; sets can't be edited, so to change one you reselect marks and add to or remove from it, or delete and recreate.

## Chapters

- 0:00 What's new in 2020.4 web authoring
- 0:43 Adding highlight actions in the browser
- 2:02 Controlling mark labels
- 3:41 Creating extracts in the browser
- 7:13 Applying filters to worksheets from a dashboard
- 9:17 Creating fixed sets
- 10:54 Why these features matter

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/web-authoring-improvements

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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