# Tableau Prep Tiles: New in Tableau 2021.4

> 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:** 2021-12-08
- **Format:** Video · 10 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data prep, Analytics
- **Tools:** Tableau (calculated fields, ntile, prep)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-prep-tiles-new-in-tableau-2021-4
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGaUQ0-VQNI

I walk through the new tiling capability added to Tableau Prep in 2021.4, which lets you split your data into equal groups using the nTile function. I build a calculation that groups customers by sales into five tiles, and explain how partition, order by and data granularity affect the result.

## Key takeaways

- Tiling in Tableau Prep isn't a new object but a function used inside a calculation, found under the analytical functions as nTile
- nTile must be combined with partition (defines the grouping) and order by (sets the rank and ASC/DESC direction) to work
- The number you pass to nTile decides how many equal groups are created, each labelled with a sequential number
- Groups are equal by the partitioned field (e.g. customer name), not by row count, so the level of granularity strongly affects how rows distribute
- You can use rank instead of order by, but the syntax differs and these analytical functions are easy to get wrong, so test your assumptions carefully

## Chapters

- 0:00 What tiling is and where to find it
- 0:33 Adding a clean step and calculation
- 2:31 Building the nTile calculation
- 4:17 How partition, order by and grain interact
- 6:45 Inspecting groups with an aggregate step
- 8:47 Using rank and final caveats

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-prep-tiles-new-in-tableau-2021-4

---
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