# How to start a performance recording in Tableau Desktop: Quick Tip

> 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:** 2021-08-17
- **Format:** Video · 10 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Productivity
- **Tools:** Tableau (dashboards, performance)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-start-a-performance-recording-in-tableau-desktop-quick-tip
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liPUV-zjYmg

I show you quickly how to start a performance recording in Tableau Desktop, run some interactions, and open up the resulting performance recording workbook. It's not a deep dive into optimisation, just how to find the feature and a quick look at what the recording shows you.

## Key takeaways

- The performance recording option is hidden under Help > Settings and Performance > Start Performance Recording, and there's no on-screen confirmation that it's running
- You confirm it's recording by going back to Help and seeing the option now reads 'Stop Performance Recording'
- Cycle through tabs and interact with filters during recording so you capture both live data source loads and faster cached loads
- The filter at the top of the recording workbook hides quick activities; slide it left to see everything, then sort by query performance to find the slowest tasks
- A common workflow is to record set steps before and after optimising a workbook, then compare activity times to measure improvement

## Chapters

- 0:32 What happens when you open a workbook
- 0:55 Why use a performance recording
- 1:42 Starting the recording in the Help menu
- 2:33 Running interactions and cached loads
- 4:16 Opening and reading the recording workbook
- 6:40 The detailed timeline view
- 8:16 Saving and the before-and-after workflow

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-start-a-performance-recording-in-tableau-desktop-quick-tip

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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