# How Tableau Pulse Works | New in Tableau 2024.1

> 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:** 2024-02-28
- **Format:** Video · 2045 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Analytics, AI & ML
- **Tools:** Snowflake; Tableau (ai, calculated fields, cloud, pulse)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-tableau-pulse-works-new-in-tableau-2024-1
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLC5U8TUvqY

I walk through how Tableau Pulse works following its launch in Tableau 2024.1, picking up from my first-impressions video. I demonstrate building a metric definition from a Snowflake-piped YouTube analytics data source, creating advanced calculated metrics, configuring insights, segmenting metrics, and exploring the generative AI summaries.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau Pulse separates creation into two steps: a metric definition (needing a measure, a time dimension and a data source) and the individual metrics that derive from it with added specificity and segmentation
- Pulse only draws data sources from Tableau Cloud, not Tableau Server, and metrics always base themselves on today's date, so data that doesn't run to the current date shows nulls
- The advanced definition opens a familiar desktop-style editor where you can build calculations (like net subscribers = subscribers gained minus subscribers lost) and exclude data subsets at definition level
- Dimensions added in the definition determine what end users can segment by, so poor upfront data prep (such as uncleansed YouTube tags) produces noisy, near-useless breakdowns
- Pulse generates insights as facts computed from raw data, then summarised by generative AI, and appears to cache results per data source linked to your Tableau Cloud instance

## Chapters

- 0:00 Pulse leaves beta in 2024.1
- 1:35 Metric definition versus metric
- 3:12 Connecting a Cloud data source
- 4:10 Setting measure and time dimension
- 7:24 Building an advanced calculated metric
- 11:37 Running totals bug
- 12:51 Configuring insight behaviour
- 14:52 Dimensions for user segmentation
- 16:04 Saving and browsing metrics
- 17:37 Segmenting and following metrics
- 24:31 Overview and breakdown views
- 25:30 Generative AI insights

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-tableau-pulse-works-new-in-tableau-2024-1

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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