0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, I'm
0:01actually going to cover a feature I
0:02completely missed in 22.2,
0:05which is actually an extension. Let's get
0:07stuck in. So the term extensions has been
0:09flying around
0:10in lots of different places. You've got
0:12dashboard extensions, which add
0:13capabilities to dashboards,
0:15you've got analytics extensions, and table
0:17extensions have actually just done two
0:19videos
0:19on those particular types of extensions.
0:21But the way to think of an extension is
0:23just something
0:23that adds a capability onto Tableau in a
0:26particular area of the product. So for
0:28dashboard
0:29extensions, there was one added in 22.2,
0:32which allows you to let the user choose
0:34what elements
0:35of the dashboards can be used. But weirdly,
0:38it's called add filters. Let me show you
0:40how this works.
0:41So to do this, I'm in WebEdit. This is
0:42probably the easiest and quickest way to
0:44show you this,
0:45I'm going to go ahead in and edit this
0:47particular dashboard. It's a default
0:49dashboard,
0:49you can find it in Tableau desktop, it's
0:51basically the Superstore workbook. And the
0:54exact tab we're
0:55on is shipping trends. Okay, so this is the
0:57dashboard we're on, I'm going to move my
0:59face to the top left hand side, because I
1:01don't want it to get sort of in the way of
1:03what I'm
1:03doing. Now, the interesting thing about Web
1:05Edit, if you look to the bottom left is that
1:07it has a
1:07slightly different layout. And I think this
1:09is the way desktop is actually heading,
1:11dashboarding
1:12and desktop will probably start to follow
1:14what WebEdit is doing. So if I drag the
1:17extension
1:18to the right hand side, you'll see that we
1:19get an extension pop up. This was actually
1:21another
1:21capability added recently where you have in
1:24product extension galleries. And then if I
1:26add
1:26the top extension, he can see it's the top
1:29one by 5000 downloads. So it's it's by by a
1:32country mile,
1:33there's another one here, dynamic sunburst.
1:35But if you just go ahead and select this
1:36one here,
1:37hopefully it will tell us a bit about the
1:39extension. And if you read this,
1:41it's called add filters extensions. But it
1:44does more than add filters, the add filters
1:47extension,
1:48let's dashboard authors customize which
1:50filters are visible on a dashboard,
1:52and power dashboard consumers to customize
1:54the dashboard by adding filters that meet
1:57specific
1:57needs. It aids in quicker exploration of
1:59data without the need to contact the
2:01original author
2:02to drive change requests. And filters is an
2:05object that authors add to their dashboards
2:08,
2:08which then opens up this new capability for
2:10consumers. Once end users have a filter
2:13configuration that suits their needs, this
2:15is the Corvette, they can create a custom
2:17view to save
2:18their work. So once they have what they
2:20need, they can save it. But I think this
2:22description is
2:23actually slightly misleading, either the
2:25either the extension has changed, or it
2:27doesn't actually
2:29do what this description says. So let's go
2:31ahead and let me show you why. For those
2:33head and add
2:34it to the dashboard, you'll see that it
2:35gets immediately added here to the bottom
2:37right hand
2:38side. And let me just switch to my red
2:39highlights. I don't like the green one, it
2:41's not easy to see.
2:42There it is. That's the extension we've
2:44added. And initially, what I don't like
2:45about these
2:46extensions sometimes is that it's not
2:47obvious that you need to do something to
2:49set them up. So this
2:50one I've added it, it just sits there. But
2:52of course, this hasn't been set up, I
2:54actually need
2:54to go into this little drop down, select
2:56configure. And now we can actually set up
2:59this extension.
3:00And what this extension seems to imply is
3:03that you can add filters to the dashboard.
3:07But what it
3:07doesn't clarify is those filters need to
3:09already be on the dashboard, if that makes
3:11sense, they
3:12need to be already available on the
3:13dashboard. So you can see here, the filters
3:16that it lets me show
3:17and hide our order, order quarter or the
3:20year region and ship mode. These are just
3:24the same
3:24filters that I've got here. So you see
3:27order year, order quarter region and ship
3:29mode. Those are the
3:30only filters that are showing me so I can
3:33go ahead and take these. And we pretty much
3:36have the feature
3:37set up. But then here's the interesting
3:40thing, you can also let the user hide whole
3:42sheets. So let me
3:43go ahead and select the sheet. So you can
3:45see what those look like in the interface.
3:46And then it also
3:48seems to have other elements on the
3:50dashboard. So let's go ahead and I'm just
3:52going to add all of
3:53these just so you can see like the sort of
3:55the crazy capability of this feature. And
3:57then I'll
3:58set a background to black so we can see
4:00that the button itself very, very clearly,
4:02we'll set this
4:03to white, set this to a nice large bold
4:05text, let's hit apply. There you go filters
4:08on the bottom
4:08right, nice, nice and easy to see. We'll
4:13say, click to change filters. Hit OK. And
4:17now we're
4:18pretty much ready to go. If I click on it,
4:20you'll notice that it doesn't actually do
4:22much here,
4:23because I'm still in the authoring view,
4:25what I need to do is publish it up, then I
4:27'll actually
4:27be able to use the feature as it's intended
4:29. So let's go ahead and publish this up. And
4:33once it's
4:33published, we get a nice notification here
4:35to say that it's published. And we can go
4:36to the workbook
4:37directly. Let's go ahead to the workbook.
4:40And once we're in the workbook, you'll see
4:42we see all the
4:43dashboards that are in this particular work
4:45book, we'll go to the shipping tab again.
4:47And we should
4:48see, we have our extension. Now, I didn't
4:51design the extension, I just set it to take
4:54up the entire
4:54bottom right hand side, I could have made
4:56it a much smaller button. But nonetheless,
4:58now when
4:59I click on it, it actually loads an
5:00interface. So did it load that? No, it didn
5:03't load that. Let's
5:04try again. Now it's working. So in all
5:06fairness, I take everything that was
5:09available in that list,
5:10because I wanted to show you what it can do
5:12. But what I don't like about this feature
5:15is that in
5:15that drop down list, we actually had a very
5:17nice hierarchy told me what everything was
5:19here, the
5:19filters here, the sheets, here are all the
5:21other things. But then here, that kind of
5:23reasoning goes
5:24completely out the window. And we can't see
5:26what anything is. So if the user is not
5:28familiar with
5:29these icons, and to be fair, an end user
5:31won't know what these icons are, because
5:33they don't
5:34build dashboards, why would they know that
5:36this is a tiled icon? Why would they know
5:38that this is a
5:38filter icon, they're kind of been
5:40introduced to this icon communication. But
5:42there's not something
5:43that ever been sort of familiar with the
5:45filters is probably the only thing they
5:47might have seen in
5:47a dashboard, but everything else is
5:49completely new to them. So they won't know
5:51exactly what these
5:52icons mean. And I think it would help just
5:54to have a little bit of like a hierarchy in
5:56there. So they
5:57could collapse open certain bits, and then
6:00maybe save the setting, there's sort of no
6:02save button
6:03here. And it would be nice if that save
6:05button actually spoke to the custom view
6:06feature that
6:07tableau mentioned in the description. So
6:09let's go ahead here. And let's just try a
6:11few things. So
6:12let's say add filters, you see, this is a
6:15weird one, because I'm actually able to
6:17show and hide
6:18the control for showing and hiding filters.
6:20It's a bit of a weird one. If a user dis
6:23ables that,
6:23how do they get it back? I just I don't
6:26know why that's an option. So we can kind
6:29of we can come
6:29back to that. And days to ship. This is a
6:31chart. So it's weirdly sort of pull the
6:33charts at the top,
6:34the horizontal tiled container that just
6:36takes everything with it. On premise
6:40shipment trends.
6:40What is this? This? This is an interesting
6:43one. What is this particular item? Actually
6:45,
6:46this must be Oh, wow, what is this? Is this
6:49a title? Is this a title? It is a title,
6:52you can
6:52just see my face over here. If I go to that
6:55, you can just see that it's that's that
6:57must be the
6:58icon for a title. We'll leave that on. But
7:01then the filter capabilities here and I'm
7:04not able to
7:05add filters that I can't see in the data
7:07set. Let's say I wanted to add a I don't
7:10know a postcode
7:11filter to this data set that's actually
7:12available in this data set or city is
7:14available in this data
7:15set. But we don't have that as a filter
7:17here. So this feature doesn't really let
7:20you add filters
7:21from the data source into the dashboard.
7:23What it really is is a show and hide filter
7:25. It's not even
7:26a show and hide filters thing because you
7:28can see hits showing and hiding elements on
7:30my dashboard.
7:31So what this should really be called is a
7:34dashboard show and hide element extension.
7:37That's
7:37what it really does. It lets you hide
7:39elements of your dashboards. It just so
7:41happens that filters
7:42are one of those elements because here it
7:44seems to even hide charts. This is this you
7:46would argue
7:47as part of dynamic zone visibility is a
7:49capability that sort of built into that.
7:51But here you can't
7:53you kind of get it as one tick box. So if
7:55you've got zone visibility because you want
7:57to, you know,
7:58let people choose which charts they want to
8:01use. Honestly, just if you could load this
8:03add filters
8:04button right at the point where you load a
8:05dashboard and they could just choose what
8:07charts
8:07they want to see and boom, they're ready to
8:09go. Could do a much simpler job of that
8:11than
8:12zone visibility. Probably not as nice and
8:13not as interactive, but it would still do
8:15the job.
8:15But yeah, you can even hide whole tiled
8:18sections. And so this is this sounds like a
8:21great feature.
8:22But then when you really dig into it, I
8:24think it's just lacking that extra mile.
8:26Like it's just
8:26lacking that extra sort of in sort of app
8:29design. And when you talk about technology,
8:32they always
8:33call it delight, as it were. It's lacking
8:35that little bit of delight to make this
8:36what it
8:38actually sounds like a way for users to add
8:40filters that don't currently exist on the
8:42dashboard to the dashboard and let them
8:45choose what they want to replace the
8:47current filters
8:48with. So at the moment, I couldn't add the
8:50city filter. I've shown you that already.
8:52Maybe I'm
8:53using it wrong. That is always possible. I
8:55've only I've only just made the video even
8:57though this
8:58came out a long, long time ago. But what is
9:00also interesting is this didn't sort of pop
9:03into my
9:03mind. I didn't see a use case for this. I
9:05didn't see someone in the community using
9:07this to great
9:07effect. You know, to even prompt me to make
9:10a video sooner than I did. So super
9:13interesting feature,
9:14don't sleep on it, because it can help fix
9:16certain problems. If you want users to be
9:18able to choose
9:18certain filters, this would be a really
9:21good way to do it. One thing I wonder is if
9:23for example,
9:24let's go back into editing this, let's put
9:26this on the top right, let's go back into
9:27editing this.
9:28If I enable preview mode, let's go into
9:32preview mode is that no, no, no, no, no,
9:36where is the
9:36preview mode here? Where is the preview
9:39mode? This must be the preview mode. Open
9:41and edit is working
9:42desktop. I don't want to do that. Where is
9:44the preview mode? I have no idea where the
9:49preview
9:49mode is. This is like this is the problem
9:51with web edit. How do I just preview this?
9:53How do I preview this?
10:02I don't know. Okay, let's try something
10:04else. Let's. Okay, so what I've done there
10:07is I held
10:08option on my Mac, and I clicked on the
10:10filter, which basically I think makes it
10:12behave as if
10:13it's actually in like a preview mode. Then,
10:17if I go and hide these filters, okay, then
10:24I publish
10:24this up. Perfect. Then I come to my
10:27dashboard, I refresh this, this should all
10:32disappear.
10:32There we go. And now the user can add
10:38filters, but they already existed. If we
10:42look at the workflow
10:43of what I had to do as an author, I
10:45actually had to add them in, then disable
10:46them, then I could
10:47add them in. So that's that I think is what
10:50what they're really sort of showcasing this
10:54feature
10:54with. So yeah, what do you think? Let me
10:56know in the comments below what you think
10:59of this.
10:59It's super interesting. I like this kind of
11:01capability. It's weird that it's an
11:03extension.
11:03Extensions have this sort of, I guess,
11:06tainted history, because when they
11:09initially launched,
11:10they weren't previously sandbox. So a
11:12sandbox extension just means that this
11:15extension doesn't
11:15need to communicate through the internet
11:17with anything at all. It's basically very
11:19secure,
11:20and Tableau themselves have validated this
11:22security. And I think what it technically
11:24also
11:25means is that the extension itself can't
11:26communicate with the outside world. It
11:28doesn't
11:28need to communicate with the outside world
11:30to work. It just works on its own. So yeah,
11:34super
11:34interesting. Let me know what you think of
11:36this extension. Let me know if you're using
11:38it in your
11:38organization, what use cases you might be
11:40already using it for. And yeah, hopefully
11:42you like this
11:43very informal video. I simply forgot to
11:45make this video. So I'm glad I covered it.
11:48But it's also
11:49it's an interesting feature because I just
11:50don't think it does what it's supposed to.
11:52Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in
11:54the next video.
11:54Transcribed by https://otter.ai
11:56Transcribed by https://otter.ai
12:00[ Silence ]
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