# Building custom charts for Tableau | Developing Extensions and capability in Tableau

> 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:** 2024-06-22
- **Format:** Video · 1728 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Career, Data visualisation, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau (extensions, prep, pulse)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/building-custom-charts-for-tableau-developing-extensions-and-capability-in-tableau
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD7lI0mzLxA

This is the second video in a three-part series where I spend two hours talking to Tristan about Viz extensions and the Figma-to-Tableau capability he's building. Here we focus on his journey from computer-science graduate to Iron Viz champion and Tableau partner, and how Tableau's platform has evolved to enable external developers.

## Key takeaways

- Tristan studied computer science before moving into data visualisation, then added Figma and JavaScript skills to extend what Tableau could do rather than abandoning it
- Winning Iron Viz only two years after starting Tableau shows that beginners often bring a more fearless, rule-breaking creativity to a tool
- Tableau's strategy is increasingly about decoupling Tableau Desktop from the wider platform and exposing APIs so external developers can build the chart types and features Tableau won't build itself
- Big products are built brick by brick through small weekly incremental change; you overestimate short-term progress and underestimate what a year or two delivers
- Breaking a visualisation problem into parts and solving it through code or ChatGPT, then handing the calculated coordinates to Tableau, makes 'advanced' charts easier than data densification and table calculations

## Chapters

- 0:00 Series intro and catching up
- 1:38 Tristan's journey into data viz
- 6:45 Iron Viz and the beginner's mindset
- 10:01 How Tableau enables developers
- 12:42 Decoupling Desktop from the platform
- 20:53 Building tools for the community
- 24:34 Brick by brick and the role of ChatGPT

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/building-custom-charts-for-tableau-developing-extensions-and-capability-in-tableau

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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