Tableau Pulse Latest Updates Jan 2025 | Goals, offsets, sorting, grouping and more

0:00We're going to check out some of the latest updates to Tableau Pulse.

0:03These came out in 2024, but I didn't get a chance to cover them, so in this video we're going to go through them.

0:08uh in quick succession we're gonna just check them out in a relaxed way I haven't actually logged into Tableau Pulse in a couple of months since I think November 24 so it'd be cool to see what it's like some of the new updates and uh how it's going in general

0:20As ever, let's get stuck in.

0:22Okay, so if we head to Tableau Cloud, I'm logged in here.

0:25You can see this has not changed.

0:27I kind of describe this interface as the legacy tablet

0:30I know everyone at Salesforce will hate me saying that, but it's just true because this is a very different chrome and setup to what we're

0:38going to see in Tableau Pulse and what it feels like all of the Tableau demos have been about going forward, there's definitely a different interface.

0:46I think it is a big deal because I think it's like it's like a tool that you've been using for a while.

0:50When it changes color you you lose that sort of what is

0:53the connection, the mental connection you had with that thing, the the the memories, all of the things you're associated with that just have a different

1:01sort of context in your mind.

1:02So it's a small thing, but it's a big thing.

1:04Anyway, if I head over to Tableau Pulse, I you typically go to that by clicking.

1:09If I go back to Tableau Cloud, you click on Tableau Pulse just here.

1:12When you click that it opens it in the same window.

1:14I actually don't like that.

1:15I prefer if it opens

1:16opened it in the a different window.

1:18And here we are.

1:19We got that notice as well telling us that we're using Tableau AI.

1:22You do need to enable Tableau Pulse and Tableau AI in order to be able to use this feature.

1:27So it's super important to make sure you go and do that.

1:29I've already

1:30done a video about how to do that as well.

1:32So here we are in the standard experience.

1:33Now if you're not familiar with Tableau Pulse, it's essentially a metrics focused setup inside of the Tableau ecosystem

1:39It connects to a data source and then allows everyday analysts to essentially set up these metrics to follow things that they're passionate about.

1:46Now when you set up a metric, you get a bunch of different options that allow you to choose how that metric can be

1:51sliced and diced and you know you also get a a bit of control with with with things like date context.

1:56So go ahead and check out my video where I go through this.

1:59I also have a course on LinkedIn learning which is a little bit more structured that goes through this in much much more depth so go ahead and check that out.

2:05if you have a linkedin premium subscription but nonetheless um here we are on uh the landing page now i don't notice anything like you know massively different it's definitely a little bit more polished up

2:16There's a couple of features that you know are worth calling out.

2:18And if you're wondering, well, how do you know what's new and how do you know what was there before since you last checked?

2:23I'm using something called the Tableau Release Navigator.

2:26This is a a

2:27feature of tableau it's actually officially supported feature it was part of a release cycle and tableau updated with each release showing us what's been updated and so it's just a dashboard and tableau it could

2:37be a lot nicer it could be a lot neater I know there's a few examples of this ready in the community that are a lot sort of nicer designed but if you filter to Tableau pulse on the left hand side and

2:47All you do is you essentially go and choose all the product versions.

2:50Essentially, by by just selecting all here, you'll basically get all the updates that have ever been you know launched for Tableau Pass, including the original launch.

2:58So if you look here on the left-hand side

3:00We get everything going back from I think we have September 24.

3:03I don't know why that's down there, but March 24 is when it launched.

3:06And then you have September 24 there.

3:08And then you have all the updates basically in sort of chronological order.

3:12I don't know why September 24 is down there, but

3:15That's good to know.

3:15So I last used this in in I think w I would I would say November.

3:21So if I just look at this, there's a couple of things to a couple of things to be aware of.

3:26Number one, Tableau Pulse launches

3:29Uh on a monthly schedule.

3:30So you can see here you've got updates virtually every month.

3:33They don't wait for the cadence of releases to update Tableau Pulse.

3:38So you'll see here you have January twenty-five, which is literally just um about to end.

3:43You have February.

3:4424 and you know there are sort of infrequency you have August 24, you have September 24, so you have August September, November's here, December's there

3:54But August was really sort of the big update really in real terms.

3:57This is when we got a bunch of what I would say meaningful features.

4:01The first one here is Tableau Pulse Goals.

4:03If I just go ahead and click on that

4:04You'll see it says create a goal in Tableau Pass to track your metrics progress towards that goal.

4:08After a goal is created, you'll see your progress toward that goal in your Tableau Pass digest

4:13and on your Tableau Pulse homepage.

4:15So essentially the homepage that we see Tableau Pulse.

4:18So let's go ahead and try and take a look at how to do that.

4:21So I have some metrics set up here.

4:23They're all updating.

4:24The way I did this is I went into Tableau Prep

4:27and I took superstore and I basically offset the dates by a certain amount of time.

4:31So basically every day as Tableau Pulse checks that dataset, there will always be something in that dataset.

4:38for the current date.

4:39Now there is a new feature that allows you to offset dates that's sort of different but kind of the same thing.

4:44So let's go ahead and just look at profit as an example.

4:46We'll go in here

4:47And you'll see that this is pretty pretty nice.

4:49And you can go ahead and do some things like ask questions about this metrics, observe it, and generally sort of work with it now.

4:56If I go back to the home page, you'll see these again just the metrics that I'm following.

5:00If I go to browse metrics, this allows me to see all the metrics that have been created.

5:04So I've got three metric definitions.

5:07These are the definitions that drive the metrics, and I have

5:10four metrics.

5:11So one metric definition can serve multiple metrics.

5:14You can see here I've got profit and it's got two metrics.

5:18So if I go ahead and click on that I'll see the two metrics that have been created from

5:22the one metric definition and if I want to change the definition I can absolutely go ahead and do that and you get this interface.

5:29And so when we get to this page you'll notice that now we have a slightly more

5:33tiered approach.

5:34I like this setup because I think it's really really good.

5:37You have the sort of stage that you're at on the left.

5:40You have the core definition which is

5:41just basically map into what we've selected here then you have the metric sort of being created on the right hand side so I don't have anything to change in here the core definition more or less stays the same as as I would

5:53generally sort of keep it for now.

5:54We'll come back and look at some of the other features a little later on.

5:58But if I go to the goal section, now we get to see this new ability.

6:01And this has actually been recently

6:03changed to be made available for everyone.

6:05Setting a goal was something that was mentioned at the DataFime Europe event as being

6:10kind of essential to all analytics tools and so that was a bit of feedback that got taken back and it became a standard feature of all of Table Pass.

6:19So everyone who has Table Pass gets that

6:21Capability.

6:21So what we can do is we can go and say, hey, look, let's go ahead and set a goal.

6:25Now the interesting thing here, the values for this measure are summed based on the metric time range to produce an aggregate goal.

6:31So my metric is profit.

6:33It would suggest that I can set a goal that's different to my metric.

6:36That would be counterintuitive for this profit profit goal.

6:39So let me just go ahead and select a profit and I'll go ahead and choose

6:44uh the same order date uh here we go and then uh let's see granularity of gold a measure that's fine okay

6:53Um what this is basically showing is that your goal has to be a measure.

6:58So for example, the goal could be a budget, the goal could be um

7:03a sudden percentage so I don't have that um as a field in this but you can see that as I've chosen the profit and then ordered it in a day

7:10you can see that it basically has that component.

7:13Now, I actually think this is really powerful for two reasons.

7:16Because if you think about how this data source is built in the first place,

7:19What that means is you can go ahead and build a good data model that has your raw data, which basically has your transactions

7:27And then you can have a data model that's linked by date and let's say department, and that can be aggregated to the department and it can be maybe set to a monthly level, whereas your transactions are coming in at a daily level

7:39And what this allows Pulse to do is track against budgets or targets that are aggregated at different levels as long as you're using something like the data model.

7:49You wouldn't want to go ahead and join your budget to your transactional data source because they might not necessarily be at the same level of aggregation

7:56So this allows you to set that up in a really, really good way.

7:59We don't have that example here, but that's sort of how I would think through this problem, and that's sort of how I'd set it up.

8:04So I think this is really, really nice.

8:05It's really well set up, and I think you can

8:08You can you can use this to your advantage and then if we go ahead and hit next, I think it allows us to then go to the insights pane, which was previously sort of part of the definition piece, but now it's a little bit more

8:18Thorough.

8:19You've got all the same controls, they've just changed sort of how the interface works and go ahead and hit save.

8:24I want these changes to take effect.

8:26We'll save this metric, and now you can see here the metric definition that we've changed

8:31has now also updated the original metric.

8:33So with each metric definition you immediately get one metric.

8:36There's sort of always a one-to-one relationship in that first definition that you create

8:41Subsequent metrics generated from it are basically generated by changing the filters.

8:45And so these create new metrics as off the back of that.

8:48So there we go.

8:49I have my goal for the profit.

8:50Now if I go back

8:52and i go back to my home page let's just go back to the following page here and let's go find let's just refresh this oh it's actually already there you can see

9:01You can see here that it's saying here that 100% of the goal has been met.

9:05And because I had two metrics off that first definition, actually

9:10Both of these metrics have sort of carried over that specific goal.

9:13There's actually a bunch of different metrics.

9:15See this one doesn't have a metric related to it, so it looks like I've actually created three metrics from that one specific set.

9:24Let me just go ahead and browse.

9:25Uh I'm not sure that's the case because I've got only two I've got two profit metric definitions, but here I seem to be seeing

9:34three metrics.

9:35That's an interesting one because I don't I don't I don't know how that's working.

9:38I'm somehow following three things month to day, month to day.

9:44This is furniture filtered.

9:45Okay, so

9:47I'm not seeing sort of three items here.

9:50I think it just might either be that the definition is driving these metrics, but maybe one of them doesn't count as a metric.

9:56I'm not 100% sure why that is.

9:58But nonetheless, I think this is pretty good.

10:00So that's metric goals.

10:01I think this is a super super valuable feature and I think it's gonna be

10:06uh quite handy to have.

10:07Now another thing you can do is you can now sort on this home page.

10:10So let's go ahead and try this.

10:12It's actually right here on the right hand side.

10:14So you can see here that I can I can sort uh by specific

10:18um elements.

10:19Now this is sort of sorting and grouping.

10:22So sorting basically arranges them based on like an item so it would be like a

10:27a time range, uh when you recently follow them, basically based off metadata.

10:31But you can also essentially sort by metric definition, which is in real terms a kind of grouping.

10:35So metric definition and data sources are going to be groupings.

10:38So if I go ahead and do that

10:40you'll see that it actually performs this grouping and this grouping is actually quite nice.

10:43You can see that I can expand it and collapse it and kind of get it working really really nicely.

10:48So I kind of like that

10:49But again, this to me is just, you know, very, very standard.

10:53It's nice to have it by data source because I think what this allows you to do is sort of troubleshoot sometimes when you have metrics that

11:01can potentially come from two different data sources have the same name but you actually want to sort of whittle them down a little bit it's just another way of being able to cut through the noise a little bit better

11:10And then obviously the time range one allows you to basically look at look at metrics that are operating at slightly different contexts.

11:17So for example, this one

11:19I think is a weekly value.

11:20So it's basically showing you this this metric last updated last week.

11:23And these ones are operating on a monthly basis.

11:27So you you kinda get that time element as a way of grouping.

11:30So it's quite a quite a quite a nice way to be able to sort of cut

11:34cut through that as well.

11:35Recently followed is obviously the default one and you can set this as a default or order by just selecting this option here.

11:41I think that's quite a nice touch as well

11:43If I go to date source range, I can again set that as a default.

11:46And so by doing that every time I come back to Tableau, you'll see that it just gives us that as the default option, but not just when we're looking here, but also on mobile as well.

11:54So

11:54If I was to click on let's go if I if I try and go back to I think this is the homepage, so it's kind of weird.

12:00This is the homepage you see, but if I just go to browse metrics and come back

12:03you'll see that the sorting has persisted essentially.

12:06So that's pretty good.

12:07Again, that's just a nice quality of life improvement to be able to have to just make things a little bit neater and tidier.

12:13The other thing they've done is they've enhanced the type of questions you can ask.

12:17You can for example ask about different time elements within the ask function.

12:21So let's go ahead and let me show you the ask function.

12:23Let's just do a refresher.

12:24The ask function is a little bit uh a little bit of a tricky one to

12:27fine because it just falls below the fold on the standard screen and for the record I have like a 1080p screen but I actually have a 4k screen so when I'm using this it looks more like this so I'm always able to see ass but I appreciate if you're using a laptop your screen looks more like this which is why I record video

12:42and demos like this.

12:43So just scroll down here and you'll see that the ask capability is available here.

12:47So we can ask look what what segment decreased the most.

12:50And it will give us that question here and I can go in here and and and ask, well, what about what are we doing?

12:57What what's yeah, what about last month?

12:59And I think this is due is we'll create

13:04The link to this and it will just create you that sort of that that perspective.

13:10So this is profit, uh, it's got no filters, uh, it's opened up this specific view.

13:14But if I go back to my original one, you can see this is profit month to date.

13:19So it's essentially uh gone and and explored other bits of context that it you can kind of get from this.

13:26Um let's just try something uh interesting.

13:29What about

13:30last week and you can see that it's got another context there so it's it's basically it's basically creating these what I would call dynamic metrics sort of off the back of this now

13:42If I follow these, let's just go to that one and follow that one, and let's go to that one and follow that one, I should theoretically have two new metrics.

13:51So if I go back to the Tableau Post homepage

13:53you'll see that it has increased the number of metrics that I've got here, which is kind of good.

13:58If I go to the browse metrics, we should see that that's increased by two to four.

14:02So you can see that just by asking questions, you're actually able to additionally build new metrics.

14:08It's kind of a smart way of doing it.

14:09It's a smart way of sort of allowing people to naturally be a little bit more again free with the way they use the tool.

14:15So I think that's quite a cool.

14:17Let me just double-check the capability, just see if I miss something here.

14:20So

14:21You can zoom into technology.

14:22Okay, cool.

14:23California last week, zoom into technology.

14:25Okay, so yeah, I think you can just be a little bit more kind of expressive.

14:29Now I expect that to get better and better and better with over with with time as these natural language models kind of better understand what we do.

14:36It makes sense that you can do more kind of niche things like that.

14:39That makes total sense, okay?

14:41Let's look at date offset.

14:42So let's see this description.

14:43So you can now add a date offset to your metric definition to change the final point and the time series from today.

14:50to a certain number of days okay so let's go ahead and look at that metric definitions place because I think I I haven't actually I can't remember seeing that so if I go back to uh my metrics here go to profit

15:02It brings us to the metric definition with the metrics that are feeding it.

15:06I'll go ahead and edit the definition.

15:08And now that I'm here

15:10Um the core definition is where I think I'd be able to change the date offset.

15:14Now if I go down you can see the time dimensions right there, order date.

15:19Now if I go here to the advanced uh time settings, what I can do is I can actually say look can you look back

15:25Um one month, okay.

15:28So what I think this will do is it will take us back to the beginning of January in essence.

15:32So it basically assumes that we are going back in time.

15:35This is a really good way of handling data sets that maybe don't update to to the current.

15:40current date and time because Tableau Plus grounds itself on today's date.

15:43So if you update if your data updates weekly, what you can do is you can set up this metric to always be sort of a week behind so that it's always basically up to date.

15:52So if you're working in sales or you're working in uh consumer

15:55Consumer goods or you're working in banking or insurance, real-time data doesn't really literally arrive in your data system on the same day, but you tend to have end-of-week, end-of-month reporting cycles.

16:06So this is a really good way of having a metric that actually locks itself to those scopes.

16:10in a very neat way.

16:11So I think this is really nice.

16:13These are these are important quality of life improvements and I think it actually makes this metric

16:19definition setup one of the best places to be able to do this stuff in ta in tableau so I wish we had this in the desktop actually talking of that I think we do I think we do have the ability

16:29to add this to the desktop you can now add a pulse metric to your dashboards when you add this object you can choose from metrics that connect to the same published data source that are used

16:39by the workbook so in order to do this what I'm going to do we're just going to go back to online.

16:44table.

16:45com.

16:45This is the tableau cloud

16:47URL one day they'll call it cloud.

16:49tableau.

16:50com but that will come with a lot of change and an upheaval.

16:53Let's go to explore and they've they've got this sort of new interface that's slowly sneaking in here as well.

16:59I've never I've never seen this like little little view here.

17:02it's kind of it's it's a cheeky little change but I appreciate the kind of getting people familiar with this I think upcoming change in in in Tableau itself so

17:10The thing I'm looking for here is actually data sets because I think I have eight datasets and there's my Tableau Pulse demo dataset.

17:16So what I'll do is I'll go ahead and create a new workbook using this data source.

17:20Now the reason I'm doing this is because I also have a

17:24A pulse metric that's using this data source.

17:27So when I go to the dashboard object, let's just go straight to the dashboard here

17:32you'll see that we have a whole list of objects here on the left hand side and there we have the pulse metric so if I just go ahead and grab and drop that

17:40in we should see an interface that gives us the ability to choose from Tableau parts.

17:44Now you can see that I get my three metric definitions right here.

17:48So you have profit now we've created four.

17:50If you recall we started with two we created four they've

17:53They've shown up here straight away, so I think this is really, really nice.

17:56And then if we go ahead and maybe just choose month to date, you can choose two styles.

18:00You can link it to Tableau Pulse, which is a tick.

18:03I can also choose the style that's available in Tableau Pulse itself.

18:06That gives you this sort of rounded

18:08box version.

18:09I'll untick it because I actually think I prefer this.

18:11This is more subtle.

18:12It sits in a dashboard quite nicely and it makes it look like I built it which if you're a developer

18:17You you need to be building your metrics in here and dropping them in and then just walking away from the dashboard, just keeping the data source updated.

18:23No more dashboard updates for you.

18:25That's actually a good thing.

18:27We'll go ahead and add that to the dashboard and there we go we have this context.

18:31Now the really interesting thing would be to see if it sort of responds to categorical elements.

18:36So the quick thing I'll do is I'll just I'll build a basic chart with region and cells just to see if we can

18:42get this a working I'll go back to the dashboard I'll drag it in I'll drag it in just to the left here so you can see that

18:50It doesn't count as a sheet, it just counts as dashboard object.

18:52You'll see the sheets on the left here.

18:54You don't really have anything.

18:55And by the way, when you click on it, it takes you to Tableau Pulse, which is a little bit frustrating sometimes.

19:00But what I want to do is see if I can set this as a filter.

19:04So

19:04If I set this as a filter, it's not it's not really liking it, not it's not wanting me to use that as a filter.

19:10Um I don't know if it's because I don't have

19:12something else.

19:12Let me just build one more thing.

19:14I don't know if using this categorically rules out the ability to

19:20Do what I'm thinking of doing.

19:22So now if I've got that there, okay, that does work users filter, but I'm fairly certain that yeah, it's only gonna affect the bottom shoe.

19:30So the categorical the categorical filters don't pass through to the

19:35profit side here but I think this is good because you know there is this sort of this is this is annoying me now can I disable the click on this uh no I cannot uh I cannot

19:50I cannot get it clicking okay if I this is what I'm gonna have to do link to Tableau Pulse update so now I can click to my heart's content you can see that I'm doing that and nothing's happening

20:01And now I can build my dashboard and right before I publish, I'll then come in here, configure, and link it to Tableau Pulse so that if people want to go and look at it, they can do that

20:09But it's actually quite nice to have it as a static asset as well without having to do that.

20:12So I think this is quite nice and and it's nicely set up.

20:15So this is a great little feature.

20:17I love it.

20:17I love the way it's been set up.

20:19Good work, Tableau Pulse team.

20:21And I think this is man, this is just

20:23It's just so important to be able to to to build this stuff.

20:27This is the kind of stuff that we we waste a ton of time building inside of Tableau Pulse.

20:32So uh

20:33Tableau itself, sorry.

20:34So we looked at date offsets, we've looked at goals, we've looked at grouping and sorting, we've looked at the improved ask experience.

20:41There is a bunch of other stuff that I think I covered way back in February, so I won't touch on them again.

20:46There's a bunch of stuff in Slack and the Salesforce app, so I'll I'll have to

20:51Uh look at those in a different different video.

20:53Personalized insight tracking.

20:55So enhance your insights by letting Tableau Pass know which insights you find most valuable.

20:59Your thumbs up and thumbs down feedback on insights influence which insights you see

21:03first.

21:04But being available in 14 languages I think is quite useful.

21:06I think that's really important for global adoption as well.

21:10You know, large businesses tend to be multinational, so

21:14Having multi-language supports just makes the interface a little bit more accessible and easier to use.

21:19So there we have it.

21:20I've spent 30 minutes.

21:21I think that's more than long enough

21:22I've done timestamps so you can follow these along.

21:25I think it is important to keep in touch with Tableau Pulse and understanding what it's doing.

21:29I think this will will prove to be a pretty important part of the Tableau ecosystem.

21:35I wish it was just part of the system and not a separate site without, you know, all the other Chrome that comes into it.

21:41But nonetheless, it is what it is.

21:43We'll stop the video here.

21:44Let me head back to the Tableau Pulse landing page so you can see that.

21:49And and by the way

21:50There is a a link back to Tableau Cloud in case you get lost.

21:54So you can go ahead, click on that, and it takes you back to the Tableau Cloud experience.

21:58Okay.

21:59Thanks for watching.

21:59I'll see you in the next one