Video |

Tableau | Data visualisation | Tool strategy

Re-order layout items in web authoring: New in Tableau 2021.3

A small feature, but every step towards web-authoring parity means one less reason to open Tableau Desktop.

Tim Ngwena •13 September 2021 •1 min read •3 min watch •2.8K

Part ofWhat's New in Tableau 2021.3

In Tableau 2021.3 web authoring you can reorder layout objects from the hierarchy in the Layout pane, no longer needing Tableau Desktop for this task
Selecting an object highlights it with a grey box on the dashboard and mirrors the selection in the Layout pane on the left
You may need to scroll down within the Layout pane to find and see your selected item before dragging
Drag an item until the placement line triggers clearly, then release to swap the order of charts
Web authoring load times feel noticeably faster in this release, at least for standard dashboards

0:00Hey it's Tim here, in Tableau Web Authoring

0:02you can now reorder layout objects on the

0:05left hand

0:05side in the layout pane. I'll just jump

0:07into Tableau and show you. So here I'm on

0:10Tableau

0:10Online, I'm going to open up the default

0:13Superstore sales book and I'll go into the

0:15overview pane and

0:17we'll immediately get into the dashboard

0:18editing view so I can show you this feature

0:20. It's a very

0:20small thing but if you do a lot of editing

0:23in WebEdit you might actually find this

0:25useful. So

0:26here I am, I'm on a dashboard, everything's

0:28set up. Now I will say this, Web Authoring

0:30seems to be

0:31very zippy in this release. I'm on Tableau

0:33Online which has already been upgraded and

0:35I have to say

0:36the load times for the standard dashboards

0:39are just lightning fast, maybe because they

0:41're simple,

0:41maybe because they've been optimized by

0:43Tableau secretly in the background, who

0:44knows, but it's

0:45definitely a zippier interface.

0:47Nevertheless let's go to the layout pane,

0:49for this I'm going to go

0:50over to the top left here, you can see it

0:52says layout and let's go ahead and click on

0:54that and

0:55when we get there you can see there's

0:57really nasty sort of hierarchy of items

0:59down here, so it's all

1:00the way down here in the bottom left. Not

1:02enough people use this, I think it's a

1:04really great way

1:05of moving content around without messing

1:07with everything here on the right hand side

1:09. So let

1:10me show you how that works. What I'm going

1:12to do is I'm going to take this chart here,

1:14this monthly

1:14sales by product category and move it down

1:17so that it goes below this chart. So this

1:20chart will go to

1:21the top and this will go down. Now you can

1:22see that I've got it selected, you can see

1:24I've got

1:24this sort of gray box going around it here,

1:27that basically means it's selected and when

1:29it's

1:29selected I can see that it's selected by

1:31looking over here on the left hand side. If

1:34you can't see

1:34your selection you need to scroll down and

1:36make sure that you can see it there and

1:38then you'll

1:38be able to do that. So what I'll do is I'll

1:40just scroll down and again I'm focusing now

1:42down here

1:43on the left hand side and what I'm going to

1:45do is I'm going to grab my sales by segment

1:47and you can

1:47see the selection changes on the screen as

1:50I switch between these two and I'm going to

1:52drag

1:52the sales by segment above the sales by

1:55product and that didn't quite work so we're

1:58going to try

1:58it again. I think I didn't let go of it in

2:00the right place so let's go drag it down

2:02here. Now

2:02you can see that line does trigger a lot

2:04better and you can see that the order of

2:06those two changes.

2:07So here I am doing that in WebEdit, that's

2:09essentially it, that's a new feature. It's

2:12funny

2:12how these small things are features but

2:14they're important because the closer we get

2:17to parity with

2:17Tableau Desktop the more likely you are to

2:20not have to open desktop to get using Table

2:22au. So

2:23that's pretty much it from me on this one

2:25be sure to check out some of my other

2:27videos on this

2:28release Tableau21.3 and also be sure to

2:30check out TableauTim.com to find out lots

2:32of other videos

2:34with features and capabilities about Table

2:36au. Alright thanks for watching and I'll

2:37catch you

2:38in the next one.

In Tableau Online and Tableau Server, you can now reorder both tiled and floating objects in the Item Hierarchy list. You can also drag items both within their current containers and into other containers at any level. This lets you nest items with more flexibility than editing on the canvas, which limits you to placing objects in the innermost container.