Animated transition enhancements
I crank a Tableau viz up to 10,000 marks in Web Edit just to see how the new 2020.3 animations hold up.
- Tableau 2020.3 improves animation performance specifically for Server and Online, not just Desktop
- You can enable animations via Format > Animations and tune duration and style, though Desktop still generally outperforms Web Edit
- Pushing a viz to around 10,000 marks (using product name, customer name, colour, size and opacity) is a good stress test for animation responsiveness
- Filtering and selecting feels more responsive once Tableau begins caching some of the animated responses
- Step line animations now adhere to transitions correctly, fixing the buggy behaviour from earlier versions
0:00Hey, it's Tim here. And in this video, I'm
0:04going to be talking about enhancements to
0:06animations in Tableau 2020.3. Now, one of
0:09the things they've been doing is to try and
0:10improve the performance. And so it's
0:12actually going to work a little bit better
0:14on server
0:14and on online. I can't say that. Server and
0:18online. And also in terms of the features,
0:21they've also improved the way it behaves
0:23specifically with step lines. But I'm
0:24actually not seeing
0:25that behavior, probably because I'm still
0:27using the pre-release version myself. But
0:30I'm going to do this here in the web window
0:31so you can see how the performance is on an
0:34actual server. Okay, so I'm going to go
0:36ahead to Superstore sales data source that
0:38I've
0:39got on my Tableau server instance here. And
0:41I'm going to create a new workbook so we
0:44can
0:44do all of this in WebEdit. I'm not going to
0:46be opening desktop at all. You tend to get
0:49better performance on desktop. And that's
0:50why I'm doing it on the web just to see
0:52what
0:52it's like. The first thing I'm going to do
0:54is bring in sales. And then I'm going to
0:57bring
0:57in some information about those sales. So
1:00probably going to bring the product name.
1:03So we get lots and lots of marks onto the
1:05visualization. Now, this looks awful. But
1:07let's correct that by putting profit on the
1:09columns. So we now have this chart. You
1:12might
1:12have even built this if you've done some of
1:14the fundamental training from Tableau. I'm
1:16also going to bring in a filter because I'd
1:19like to be able to see how this behaves
1:21with
1:22filters. So you can see here I've got the
1:24two filters. And the last thing I'm going
1:26to do is bring in the color for the sub
1:27category because that, again, makes it
1:29slightly more
1:30complex for the charts to render. And I'll
1:34also maybe put the quantity on size so I
1:37can
1:37see the volume of sales as well. And I'll
1:39even chuck in some opacity in there just to
1:42try and crank up the amount of information
1:45that we've got here as much as we possibly
1:47can. I think the only other thing I could
1:51do is potentially bring the customer name
1:55into the mix to create even more data
1:57points on the visualization. So there we
2:00have it.
2:00We've got 10,000 marks. You can just sit
2:02here on the left-hand side, very, very
2:04bottom left-hand
2:05side. It tells you how many data points
2:07there are in the visualization. So what I
2:09now need
2:10to do is enable animation. So I just go
2:12here to format at the very top. And then if
2:15I hit
2:15animations and then switch it on, you now
2:18have animations enabled. And again, I'm
2:20doing
2:20this in WebEdit. So it's already having a
2:22little bit of a think on these 10,000 marks
2:25.
2:25I think it's just the cursor actually
2:27hanging. So actually, it's done whatever it
2:28's done,
2:29and the cursor is just hanging on that sp
2:30inner. So if you don't move your mouse, you
2:32think
2:32it's still doing something. But actually,
2:34it seems to be fine. Now, if I go here to
2:37the duration and style, I think these are
2:39what I'm going to leave them at. I'm going
2:41to leave them at the defaults. And we're
2:42just going to start playing around with
2:44this. What
2:44I might do as well is just add in a
2:47category filter. So if I just bring that in
2:50here like
2:50though, I'm used to the little option to
2:53show the filter directly from the data pane
2:55, which
2:56is why I was looking for that. And then
2:58what I can do is just -- where is the
3:01option to
3:02show the filter? Is it -- oh, there it is.
3:05It's WebEdit. It's kind of weird because
3:07you
3:07can't really control much of what's going
3:09on. So I can't even change the order of
3:10these
3:11filters. I think potentially if I bring it
3:13up to the top here, I can't even do that.
3:16I think it's just the order that's in there
3:19. So now watch what happens as I unfilter
3:23some
3:24of these. Now, we should see improved
3:26performance. It is slightly better. I've
3:30got 10,000 marks
3:31here, and you can see it's doing a slightly
3:33better job of sort of animating things in.
3:35And now let's just take office supplies
3:37back in. What I'm going to do is I'm going
3:39to reduce
3:39sort of the outliers that we have in our
3:41data set. You can see that's almost
3:43instantaneous.
3:44And again here with this slider for sales,
3:47let's bring that in. That kind of gives us
3:49a little bit of scope. If I just keep going
3:52down the profit and just really kind of
3:54narrow
3:55in on a particular range here -- there we
3:57go -- that will just help spread this out
3:59a bit more. Now as I bring in more sales,
4:02you should get sort of the right-hand side
4:05moving out. But there's actually not that
4:06many transactions. So let's just leave it
4:08at that. And now this is kind of cool. You
4:10can see that it is actually more responsive
4:12.
4:12I have to give it that. I wouldn't have
4:14typically done this in WebEdit myself. I
4:17wouldn't have
4:18taken the risk because the performance is a
4:21little bit of an expensive thing to do.
4:23As I select these, also this is quite nice
4:25actually. So yeah, this seems to be working
4:28quite nicely, and it's quite responsive. I
4:30'm clicking, I'm clicking things. You do
4:32have
4:32to wait a little bit longer. I'm not going
4:34to lie. It's not the same as just being
4:35able
4:36to add and remove things. But actually, I
4:38think once it starts to cache some of these
4:41responses, it's a little bit faster anim
4:43ating those things back in. So if you see
4:45here,
4:45let me take an untick furniture. It's a
4:47little bit faster to respond. Or maybe I'm
4:50just making
4:51that up. It's one of those things where
4:53perception can sort of be relative, right?
4:55Relative to
4:56what you've seen before and also what you
4:58haven't seen before. So that's pretty much
5:00the enhancements. Now I haven't had much
5:02luck with the step line feature. This is
5:04also supposed
5:05to have improved. I'll just show you what I
5:07mean in terms of not having much luck. I
5:09just put sales on here. I'll change this to
5:11a month to give it sort of a decent time
5:14frame.
5:14And you can change the path here to a step
5:16line. Now I have animations enabled already
5:20.
5:20If I put this on to filters, click all, hit
5:23apply and then OK. You don't have to hit
5:26apply
5:27and OK. You can just hit OK. Show filter.
5:30And what's supposed to happen is as I
5:33remove
5:33office supplies, I can add this didn't
5:35happen before. It's clearly something good
5:37is happening
5:38for this demo. So here you go. Step lines
5:40now behave a little bit better in terms of
5:43this animation mark as well. So yeah, this
5:45is a little bit buggy. Obviously, I tried
5:47honestly try this 10 minutes ago and it
5:49didn't work. I tried it twice. It didn't
5:51work twice.
5:52I opened a new window. Now here we are on
5:54the final cut and it's working perfectly.
5:56So there you have it. This is how the step
5:59line features also been improved to perform
6:01a little bit better. It was buggy before
6:03and wasn't sort of adhering to the
6:04animations.
6:06So that's pretty much it for this animation
6:08enhancements in 2020.3. If you enjoyed this
6:10video, be sure to check out more videos in
6:13the playlist and be sure to subscribe and
6:15check out some of the other content that we
6:16're going to be producing over the coming
6:18months.
In 2020.3 Tableau have focussed on performance improvement, enhancing performance on the server or online and also fixing a few bugs with the step line animation transition.This video is part of a larger playlist on Tableau 2020.3. Be sure to check out other videos in the playlist and subscribe for more content.https://tableautim.com -------Join my Discord Server. https://discord.gg/shBuxXr it’s a little sparse at the moment but hang in there.