# Coming soon 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:** 2021-11-25
- **Format:** Video · 1995 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy, Industry trends
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, connected apps, dashboards, embedding, extensions, maps, prep, pulse, row level security, server, virtual connections)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/coming-soon-in-tableau-2021-4
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeRej_wXXBU

I walk through Tableau's 'Coming Soon' page for the 2021.4 release, giving a high-level overview of each headline feature and my take on what's useful. I cover everything from virtual connections and centralised row level security to copy-and-paste in dashboards, the Tableau Exchange, metrics improvements and various server enhancements.

## Key takeaways

- Virtual connections and centralised row level security work in unison: you create a connection centrally on Tableau Server and then layer security policies to control who sees which rows.
- You can now edit and rename published data sources directly in the web authoring interface on Tableau Online or Server, avoiding the old workflow of downloading to Desktop and republishing.
- Copy and paste in dashboards is limited to images, text boxes and web page containers across dashboards and Desktop/Online/Server, but does not yet cover charts or buttons (which still use duplicate).
- The Tableau Exchange is essentially a rebrand of the extension gallery, now housing extensions, connectors and accelerators (former dashboard starters from the Lyntia acquisition), and is already live.
- Map layers now support multiple data sources, letting you build a single map from disparate datasets without first joining them into one data source.

## Chapters

- 0:10 Overview of the Coming Soon page
- 3:27 Past releases on tableautim.com
- 4:16 Virtual connections and row level security
- 6:13 Connected apps explained
- 7:43 Slack integration and edit published data sources
- 9:35 Copy and paste in dashboards
- 11:58 Tableau Exchange and accelerators
- 14:07 Hire me on Tableau Public
- 18:00 Replay animations and Salesforce palettes
- 19:01 Formatting, mobile and map layers
- 21:30 Metrics improvements
- 22:41 Accessibility and inherited lineage

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