0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, we
0:01just want to answer a very brief question.
0:03What happens when you hide a section when
0:05using zone visibility? This was a question
0:08that someone asked in the comments. And I
0:09thought, let's try and make a video and
0:11show you how I'm going to try and answer
0:13the question. It might not be the official
0:15answer. Obviously, we'll reach out to Table
0:17au to see if that's the case. But I can show
0:18you how I might be able to find out the
0:20answer using performance recording. Let's
0:23get stuck in. Okay, so here we are in Table
0:25au. Now the key to doing this test is you
0:28want to make sure you do the performance
0:29recording.
0:29At the very start, so you don't actually
0:32open your workbook, you open Tableau
0:34without opening a workbook. And then you go
0:36over to the top. And this is how you open
0:38the performance recording option, you go to
0:40help, you go to settings and performance,
0:42and then you select to start performance
0:44recording. Once you do that, nothing
0:46happens. It essentially runs in the
0:48background. But the performance recording
0:50is running because if you go to help go to
0:52settings and performance and stop
0:54performance recording is there. That means
0:55it's already running. Now, we've done that
0:58we can actually go ahead and do that.
0:59And open the workbook. So I'm opening up
1:02the demo work that I used in that
1:04particular demo. And you can see it loads
1:06up the workbook, I'm going to wait a few
1:08seconds and just fill the air because what
1:11I'd like to do is have a gap between when I
1:13loaded the workbook and the next activity
1:15that I do. So I can see very clear moments
1:17in time, when I did activities in the work
1:20book, if you do things too quickly, it's
1:21actually quite hard to see it very clearly.
1:23So now that that's been running for a while
1:26, I'll go ahead and select furniture.
1:28Furniture is actually a different zone that
1:30's enabled using a parameter actions, go and
1:32check the video to find out how that works.
1:34But go ahead and select furniture, you'll
1:36see it loads up a different part of the
1:37chart. I'll wait a few seconds, fill some
1:40air for some time. Maybe I'll skip ahead in
1:42the video by cutting it right here. Again,
1:45we're back. And now I'm going to go ahead
1:47and select office. We're going to wait a
1:49while again, and I'll cut away the gap.
1:51Okay, and now we're back, we've let the
1:53recording run for some time. And now I'm
1:55going to select technology again, to let
1:57that run for a
1:58bit. And that's pretty much it. That's all
2:00we're going to do, we're just going to
2:02click on the different zones, I've done
2:04nothing else, I've not used any filters, I
2:06'm not generating anything, just to show you
2:08what a filter would do, what I will do is
2:09go ahead and deselect accessories and cop
2:12iers from the technology section. So we can
2:15see that working on the technology works
2:17heet. But nonetheless, I think we're pretty
2:19much good to go, we can go ahead and stop
2:21the performance recording. To stop a
2:23performance recording, you just go up to
2:24the help option, again, go to settings and
2:26performance and select stop
2:28performance recording. That's pretty much
2:30it. Now, Tableau will open up a workbook,
2:32which shows you a performance recording. So
2:34let's just wait for that to load. It
2:36actually loads it up on a different screen
2:38for me. So I'll bring it up here on the
2:40main screen and just wait for it to load.
2:42And we'll set it up full screen. Now, the
2:44tricky thing with this workbook is just
2:46understanding I need to do another video on
2:47this because I did do a video on
2:49performance recording. But I realize I didn
2:51't explain this clearly enough. So we'll
2:53definitely do that again. But nonetheless,
2:55you get two things out of this, you get
2:57this dashboard, which
2:58shows you an overview of all the different
2:59events, you can see here now while I was
3:01leaving gaps in between the different
3:02recordings, because you can see there's a
3:04there's a timeline here. And then there's a
3:06second dashboard, which is the detailed
3:07view, essentially, from top to bottom
3:10showing you all the activities that
3:11happened when you load the workbook. And
3:13each of those happens at different times,
3:15you can actually see the different gaps I
3:17created between the activities. So you can
3:19see this is the first time I open the work
3:21book, then there's another activity, then
3:23there's another activity, then there's
3:24another one. And then there's these two
3:26filter actions that I quickly clicked
3:28on at the very end, in quick succession. So
3:30I clicked on technology, and then I des
3:32elected the filter. So that actually did a
3:34did a little bit of a change to the way
3:36this is working. So it's kind of like an
3:38interesting workbook to sort of dig around.
3:41And yeah, we're going to try and get to the
3:43bottom of this. So if I go back to this
3:45workshop, this timeline worksheet, this is
3:46actually the most useful one. So what are
3:48we going to use for this analysis? If I
3:50open it up, it's just a classic dash
3:52boarding problem, you see, you've got a
3:54timeline going across the tops with start
3:56time. And you've got the
3:57different rows. Now the rows are structured
4:00in the structure of the workbook. But that
4:02's not what we're interested in, we want to
4:04just see the chronology of all the events
4:06as they happen. So what I'm going to do is
4:08I'm going to drag a few of these items onto
4:10the detail pane, just so that we can see
4:12them more clearly. And we'll go ahead and
4:14just put them on detail, I don't want to
4:16lose them completely from the
4:19visualization, because I think it's a
4:21useful sort of visual element to have, we
4:22'll just put it on, we'll just put
4:24everything on here, the event is already on
4:26the dashboard. So we can go ahead and
4:28remove that. And the start index is going
4:30to be good enough for me. So the start
4:32index is basically sort of that vertical
4:35timeline that you see. And now when I do
4:37that, you'll see that each of the
4:39activities is very, very clearly kind of
4:42broken down. And actually, if I, if I show
4:45you this, if I go from the top, you've got
4:47the initial sort of elapsed time from when
4:50I open up the workbook, and you go down,
4:52there's a bunch of things that happen right
4:54at the beginning. And then there's another
4:56bunch of things here. And if I move my face
4:57to the left, you keep seeing each of these
4:59activities. So each time I click on
5:02something, Tableau is doing something
5:04different. Now, the key
5:05thing is, I don't know what those
5:06activities are. So let's go ahead and
5:08actually do this. Let's bring the events
5:11back on. So let's put this here in the top
5:13right hand side. And you can see the events
5:15here are these events here. So passing,
5:17executing query. So let's go ahead and is
5:21it the event name that we want? Let's try
5:23the event, let's just put the event after
5:25the starting index. So yeah, we do have a
5:27slightly better sort of context here. And
5:29then I think the next thing I want is the
5:31worksheet. So let's go ahead, we'll keep
5:34the worksheet on
5:35there. But let's go ahead down here and
5:38bring the worksheet just after to see what
5:40's going on. So anything not related to
5:43worksheet comes up as null in the worksheet
5:46column. So you've got the passing, which is
5:49basically processing the workbook. That's
5:51what the XML essentially is based on. You
5:53've got the connecting to data source, you
5:55've got the query that runs. And then you've
5:57got the compilation of the query. So
6:00executing and compilation, I just think of
6:02them all as query activities. And then here
6:04, this is the
6:05secret answer, you're computing the layout.
6:07So actually computes the layout for
6:09furniture, office and the technology line
6:11as well. So it actually computes the charts
6:13. But interestingly, it doesn't say it's
6:16rendering them at all. So it computes the
6:18charts, which means it's doing all the
6:19calculations required for them. But it
6:22doesn't render them. At that point, there's
6:24a couple of rendering activities. Now,
6:26these aren't necessarily linked to a chart.
6:29So it's difficult to know if this is the
6:31rendering of the entire dashboards,
6:33including the hidden
6:34zones or not. So let's go down here, there
6:36's a computing layout. And this is basically
6:39the first time we click, there's a bunch of
6:41rendering, there's another computing layout
6:43, a bunch of rendering another computer in
6:45layout, a bunch of rendering another
6:47computing layout. So we don't see any other
6:50sort of query events, essentially. And so
6:54my gut instinct is that it's actually
6:56loading all of the different jobs in the
6:58background, it's computing the layout, it's
7:00doing the maths, loading the data set. And
7:03it's doing the rendering,
7:04but it's just not showing it. And so the
7:06when you actually switch between them, that
7:08's when it draws the shapes that you
7:09actually see. So it's doing all the work
7:11that it needs to, apart from rendering that
7:13visualization right in front of you. And
7:15then it's switching between the different
7:18tabs. That's what I think this is saying to
7:20me, I think that's what I think this is
7:21sort of coming to you. Now, it's really, it
7:24's really hard to be absolutely clear about
7:26that. And because some of these activities,
7:28you know, the way Tableau is built, I don't
7:30know how it's built. So I don't actually
7:31know all the quirks of sit behind some of
7:33this. But that's
7:34what this data seems to suggest. And what I
7:36what is interesting is all the query is
7:38done at the beginning, all the queries are
7:40being done in the beginning. So if you've
7:42got a new zone visibility, and you've done
7:44some nasty queries behind one of the sheets
7:46, it still looks like it's going to be
7:48loaded at the beginning, it's not going to
7:49wait until you activate the zone to sort of
7:51set it up. So that's my thought on this.
7:54That's what I think is going on. I'm going
7:56to ask tableau the question, and we'll try
7:58and put a semi official answer in the
7:59comments below. Once I get sort of a bit of
8:02clarity on that. But nonetheless,
8:04that's how you can sort of find out what's
8:05going on. And this might help you debug
8:07what's going on with the slow workbook.
8:09When you open it up, you can actually use
8:11this technique to go and find what's going
8:13on inside of a workbook and hopefully get a
8:15better perspective of what's sort of
8:17slowing you down what's taking time. This
8:19workbook was pretty fast. If I loaded
8:20something from a database, you'd see much
8:22bigger query sections as well. And don't
8:24forget, if you're if you want to see what
8:27some of these things look like. So if I go
8:29down here, for example, I want to see what
8:31the queries actually look like, I can click
8:33on the
8:33green query items, and it'll actually load
8:35the query here. So I can see the sequel
8:37that's actually being sent to the database,
8:39in case I want to debug that. So that's,
8:41you know, hopefully a really useful trick
8:43that you guys can use. But I just wanted to
8:45show you how I'd sort of come to that
8:47conclusion and how I'd find the answer.
8:49Hopefully you found that video useful. If
8:51not, let me know in the comments below,
8:52nonetheless, and I'll catch you in the next
8:54video. So you made it to the end of this
8:55video, I always add bloopers. And for this
8:57one, I think it needed context. So many
8:59times I record a video, maybe 234 times,
9:02and I'll
9:03basically reject every single version of
9:05that video until I get the version of the
9:07video that I want. Because as you know, a
9:09lot of my videos are done from start to
9:11finish for that very few cuts. So this is
9:13one of those rare videos, will actually
9:16show you the start and end of a previous
9:18take that I did. And there's always
9:20something funny that I do at the end of a
9:22take that I know I'm going to reject as
9:23soon as I started because I sort of get the
9:25feeling that the video is going to be a bad
9:27video. So I can I can really feel it. But I
9:30finished the video nonetheless, just for
9:32the
9:32practice of doing the video. And then once
9:35I get to the end, I always end up by saying
9:37, Ah, this isn't good enough. I cancel the
9:39take. And then I, you know, get rid of the
9:41clip. But in this case, this is what you
9:43see. Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video,
9:46we're going to answer a very, very brief
9:48question. What does zone visibility do for
9:51so it's a it's a little bit of a mindmaze
9:53to sort of explain everything. And I don't
9:54think I did a great job. So I'm actually
9:56going to record a second take of this video
9:58because this wasn't this wasn't good enough
10:00.
10:01[0]0
10:02Transcribed by https://otter.ai
10:02Transcribed by https://otter.ai
10:07[ Silence ]
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