Tableau | Data visualisation Replay animations
Tableau 21.4 finally lets you replay an animation with a single button, no filter fiddling required.
- Tableau 21.4 adds a replay button that lets you re-run an animated transition without manually changing filters or parameters
- Animations show an animated transition between states when the dashboard author has enabled the feature
- For animations to work when published to server, you should filter down to a much smaller subset of data
- The replay button works by stepping back to the previous state and forward again to the current state
Tableau 21.4 adds a replay button that re-runs an animated transition on a dashboard without you having to manually toggle filters or parameters back and forth.
The demo uses a sample workbook that ships with Tableau, filtered down to a small furniture dataset so the animation works cleanly when switching between years.
- Animations show transitions between states 0:00
If a dashboard author has enabled animation, switching a filter or parameter (like a year) triggers a slow animated transition illustrating the change between states, rather than an instant jump.
- Filter down to a small data subset first 0:21
For animations to actually render properly once published to server, you need to filter the view down to a much smaller subset of data beforehand — this is a prerequisite for the animation to work at all, not an optional tweak.
- Use the replay button to re-trigger the animation 0:40
Once animation is working, a new replay button appears on the viz. Clicking it replays the transition without you needing to manually flip the filter or parameter back and forth yourself.
- How replay works under the hood 1:01
The replay button steps the view back to its previous state and then forward again to the current state, effectively re-running the same animated transition on demand.
- Animation only works if the author has enabled it on that dashboard — it's not automatic on every viz.
- You must filter to a smaller data subset for the animation to render correctly once published to a server.
Reach for this when you've built an animated dashboard and want viewers to be able to re-watch a transition (say, a year-over-year change) without them having to manually re-trigger it by changing filters themselves.
How this Rollup was made provenance & method
A Rollup is drafted by AI from the video's transcript, then reviewed and edited by Tim. Everything used to produce this one is listed below — the model, the exact prompt, and the source video — so the process is transparent and reproducible.
- Transcription
- On-device — NVIDIA Parakeet v3 for recent videos, OpenAI Whisper large-v3 for earlier ones. The transcript never leaves the machine or gets published.
- Drafting
- Claude Sonnet 5 in the cloud, from that transcript.
- Prompt
- The exact Rollup prompt (v2) — the full system prompt, unedited.
- Source video
- Watch on YouTube
- Drafted
- 5 July 2026 at 09:38
- Reviewed & edited
- 5 July 2026 at 09:41 · by Tim Ngwena
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