Tableau Workbook Optimiser vs Tableau Exchange Accelerators!
I ran Tableau's own Accelerators through Tableau's own Workbook Optimizer to see whether the templates actually pass the company's best-practice tests.
- Build a baseline by running the Workbook Optimizer on the three default Tableau workbooks (Superstore, Regional, World Indicators) — they average 10.3/12, or 86%, which becomes the pass mark.
- Most accelerators sit around seven out of twelve, and every single one fails the unused-fields check, so I'd argue that test should be ignored unless you're at final production stage.
- Recurring failures are huge numbers of LOD calculations (one finance workbook had 253), excessive hidden sheets and views over ten per dashboard — much of that work belongs back in your ETL pipeline.
- Running 'Compute Calculations' on an extract materialises calculations and instantly lifts the optimiser score, a quick free win you'd miss without the optimiser.
- Hiding unused fields after building (with the show-hidden-fields toggle to bring them back) is best practice, and a genuinely well-designed accelerator focused on one question scored 11/12.
0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, we're
0:01back after a short break and we're going to
0:03be testing
0:04Tableau accelerators using the Workbook
0:07Optimizer test that Tableau released in the
0:09latest version
0:10of Tableau. So we're going to see how the
0:12Tableau accelerators themselves actually
0:14fare in Tableau's
0:15own performance testing capabilities. Let's
0:17get started. Now in order to do this test,
0:20we're going
0:20to need to set a baseline. We need to sort
0:22of normalize our sensors to see what the
0:24Workbook
0:25Optimizer scores something that you know
0:27has been built by Tableau as a default. And
0:29also we need to
0:30come at this as if you're a new user.
0:31Essentially you're going to be starting at
0:33Google, you've
0:34maybe heard about Tableau accelerators, and
0:36we're going to find what Tableau is pushing
0:38to you as a
0:39user. So in Google, I'm just going to go
0:41ahead and type Tableau accelerators, if I
0:43can actually spell
0:45that, let's say Tableau accelerate, you can
0:47see I've actually searched it in the past.
0:49So when you
0:49hit that you get this top link now. I've
0:51disabled ads so you might see other things
0:53being sort of
0:54pushed up and down here. But for me at
0:56least, the Tableau accelerators hit that's
0:58at the very top
0:59is this page, I'll go ahead and click on it
1:01and you'll see this particular page. This
1:04is a
1:04marketing page that I think is pitching a
1:06bunch of accelerators in different sectors
1:08by department,
1:09by industries, and then by enterprise
1:12applications, essentially tools like Sales
1:15force,
1:15ServiceNow, and so on and so forth. But
1:18before I get into these accelerators, what
1:20I'm going to
1:21need to do is to sort of have a normalized
1:23baseline. So the best baseline I always
1:26think
1:26to use is the default workbooks that come
1:28with Tableau desktop. So if I just go to
1:30Tableau here,
1:32I'm talking specifically about these three
1:34workbooks. So to get a baseline, I'm going
1:37to take
1:38all three of these workbooks, I'm going to
1:40open them, run the optimizer immediately,
1:42see what score they get, then I'm going to
1:44average that score to basically get my
1:46baseline score. And
1:47in essence, we want to try and see if the
1:49accelerators pass this baseline score. And
1:52we'll basically just see what we find out.
1:54So the first one, I'll open up Superstore
1:56sales,
1:57we'll get that open, and we'll get the
1:59score. Now for this, I might cut in between
2:01sections,
2:02so you won't see every single sort of
2:03chronological thing that I do just to make
2:05it
2:06better to watch on YouTube. So stick with
2:08me or you can jump ahead in the timestamp
2:10and catch
2:10something else that you're more interested
2:12in. So I'll go ahead to server here, select
2:14run
2:15optimizer, we instantly get a score, we get
2:1710 out of 12. So the first one got 10 out
2:19of 12.
2:20The one that failed is unused filled
2:21multiple data sources have unused filled,
2:24and it's just
2:24a couple of fields. So this, this to me is
2:26like a full pass in many ways, this should
2:29be 11, because
2:30you're never ever going to sort of fully
2:32remove all unused fields unless you're
2:34really, really,
2:35really, really in production. And it's, you
2:37know, been completely locked down. The
2:39other thing that
2:40needs review here is calculation uses
2:42multiple data sources. Now this isn't a bad
2:45thing.
2:45Sometimes you have to use multiple data
2:47sources. Let's say you have targets, maybe
2:48let's say that
2:49blending is the only way you can do
2:51something, or maybe you're doing a cross
2:53data, cross database
2:54join or anything like that, you might need
2:56to use multiple data sources. So again,
2:58this doesn't
2:58sort of worry me. So in many ways, this is
3:01a good pass, 10 out of 12, perfect score.
3:04So we're going
3:05to do the rest a lot, lot quicker than that
3:07. So let's go ahead to regional, we'll open
3:09that it
3:09actually chucks me back into the existing
3:11workbook. And we'll go ahead and do that.
3:13It's actually
3:14opening in another window, it's gone to
3:16another screen. Let's get this on this
3:18screen here. Let's
3:19go to server run optimizer. Again, 10 out
3:22of 12. That's two 10 out of 12. This
3:26average might be
3:27really easy at this rate, because I'll just
3:28close that previous one there. We'll open
3:30up world
3:31indicators, this will open up in another
3:33tab as well. Let that run. And once that's
3:36done, we will
3:37get that going. Yeah, that's open on
3:39another screen. Here we are, this is
3:41actually got a
3:42couple of sheets on its own. But it does
3:44have some dashboards. If you look at
3:45tourism, business and
3:46global indicators, then that's all there.
3:49So we'll go to server run optimizer and
3:52drums 11 out of 12.
3:53So our average if I get my calculator out
3:56is going to be 10 plus 10 plus 11 divided
4:00by three, 10
4:01plus 10 plus 11 equals divided by three,
4:05the baseline score is 10.3 out of 12. So 10
4:10.3 divided
4:11by 12 gives me 86%. So the pass mark for a
4:15good workbook is 86%. I'll use the
4:18percentage as the
4:19past month because that's easier when we've
4:21got different scores sort of running
4:23through. And
4:24it'll also be easy to sort of get a general
4:25average for each of the sections that we
4:27saw
4:28previously as well. So the baseline scores
4:3086%. That's essentially 10.6 out of 12. So
4:34we're going
4:34to go ahead with that we're going to close
4:36all of these. And what I'm now going to do
4:38is access
4:38accelerators like I'm just a newbie. Let's
4:40say I've heard about these accelerators
4:42that Tableau
4:43Cloud can offer. And I'm just going to go
4:45ahead and go to the Tableau accelerator
4:47page here,
4:48I'm going to scroll down and I'm going to
4:50probably take two out of each section. Okay
4:53, so I mean,
4:54I could say here going through all of these
4:55, it's actually quite tedious, because there
4:57is no API
4:58at the moment. That's an idea on the ideas
4:59page, I'll put a link to that in the
5:01description,
5:02please vote for it. And but essentially,
5:03there's no API. So I can't just upload
5:05these all to Tableau
5:06server and then get a score coming back,
5:08that would be a really, really nice feature
5:10to have
5:10it be able to do that. But nonetheless, I
5:12'll just download some of these and then we
5:14'll run the
5:15score. Now, I'll make a general point about
5:17these later on, if you haven't already done
5:20so look at
5:21my previous video where I talk about
5:22accelerators, you can see that I've been
5:24rather quite negative
5:25about them. And I think this will probably
5:28be a good video to sort of try and normal
5:30ize that a
5:30little bit using Tableau's own tools to say
5:32, Okay, where could these be improved and
5:34start to try and
5:35be constructive rather than be 100%
5:37critical. So let's go ahead, let's start
5:39the very top
5:40departments is the first sector, let's say
5:43I work in sales, and I'm an expert,
5:45according to this,
5:46let's go ahead and click on that. What it
5:48does, it sends you to the Tableau exchange,
5:50Tableau
5:50exchanges like the ecosystem is the App
5:52Store for this particular setup. And you
5:55get a bunch of
5:56things, you get a description, you actually
5:58do get a version of the dashboard just down
6:00here,
6:00it's got quite a lot of tabs, a lot going
6:02on. But what we'll just go ahead and do is
6:04download it
6:05right from the top. And once we're in, we
6:07should get the workbook, and I'll create a
6:10new folder
6:10here. And I'll call this accelerators. Now
6:13I've actually previously downloaded all
6:15accelerators
6:16in the past. But we won't go into that now.
6:19We'll worry about that some other time. And
6:22just to make
6:22sure I'm using the latest and greatest of
6:25Tableau, I'll open up 2022. I've got such a
6:30weird thing to
6:30say 22.1. Let's just say it that way. And
6:33we'll bring it back, you can see the three
6:36previous
6:36dashboards that I've created. Let's just go
6:39ahead and close all of those. And what I
6:41will do for
6:41this particular case is I'll go to my
6:43desktop, I'll open up this which I can't
6:45spell, I'll drop it in.
6:47And this will mean that I am definitely
6:49opening up that accelerator directly. And
6:52when we get there,
6:53we don't actually need to go through each
6:55and every tab, there's quite a lot of tabs,
6:57a way you can see everything in one go is
6:59if you go to the very bottom right here,
7:01there's this
7:02thumbnail view. And actually, if you click
7:03on that, you get this view, which kind of
7:05gives you
7:05an overview of all the tabs in a nice place
7:08, a little hack, if you're in this view, the
7:11quickest
7:11way to get Tableau to refresh all the data
7:14sets is to actually right click on this,
7:16refresh all
7:16the thumbnails. And in order to refresh all
7:18the thumbnails, it has to ping all the data
7:20sources.
7:21So this is actually a really good way of
7:22refreshing all your data sources, making
7:24sure
7:24you have the latest and greatest data from
7:26your data sources. That's a free tip for
7:28you. But anyway,
7:29we don't care about that we're going to go
7:30to server. Actually, it's not gonna let me
7:32do that
7:33in this view. So let's go to one of the
7:35views. I've just selected view now it won't
7:38let me do it.
7:38Let's go to customer insight. Let's go in
7:40there. And now that we're there, we can run
7:42the optimizer.
7:43I'm curious why we can't do the optimizer
7:44in thumbnail view. That's a strange one.
7:46But let's run the optimizer and first score
7:49six out of 12. Okay, so let's see what this
7:53one has
7:53failed on. So unused fields. Okay. How many
7:56unused field? Okay, quite a few. Alright,
8:00so this this
8:01one has an absolutely massive data sources
8:04here with an absolute sort of sea of unused
8:06fields. Now,
8:07to be fair, if you're making a template for
8:10someone to download and get started with,
8:13you're probably going to leave all the
8:15fields available. Because if you hide them,
8:17then it's actually more work for the user
8:19to go in and find them and re enable them.
8:21So
8:22I will sort of give this a pass because
8:25actually that that is a good thing to do.
8:28And what you
8:29probably want to do is have some
8:30documentation to then tell the user, hey,
8:32according to our best
8:33practice, once you've finished designing
8:35this, remove the fields you don't need. So
8:38the unused
8:38field, it fell on that one now five need
8:40review. And so five need review. These aren
8:43't necessarily
8:44failures. These aren't bad things. These
8:45are just things to look at. But we want to
8:47look and see
8:47what they are numbers of views within the
8:49dashboard. So multiple dashboards contain
8:51more
8:52than 10 views. Okay, so all of these dash
8:54boards contain 10 sheets. Well, look at that
8:56top
8:57performers contains 21 shades. Now, it's
8:59strange because obviously, this is Tableau
9:01's own best
9:02practice. And the template has gone and
9:05sort of infringed on this multiple times, I
9:08would,
9:08I would say it's okay if you do this a
9:10couple of times. But when you've got it six
9:12times,
9:12and you're sort of breaking habit, you
9:14could start to maybe put together an
9:15argument that maybe
9:17these should be separate dashboards with
9:19interactivity between them. So you can go
9:21to
9:21those things. But again, in order to
9:23deliver this as one thing, it has to be in
9:25one dashboard. So
9:27this could be a workbook that's been
9:29designed around the deficiencies of Tableau
9:32itself,
9:33because for it to all be one experience has
9:34to be in one workbook. So that's a little
9:36bit of
9:37commentary for me, I don't know if that's
9:39true. If you click the learn more link, it
9:41actually tells
9:42you what these checks are doing. So number
9:44of views in a dashboard, there's a specific
9:45bit of
9:46documentation. So it actually gives you a
9:48little bit of context around each of these
9:51things. So
9:53if you're number of views in a dashboard
9:55from the workbook optimizer, blah, blah,
9:57blah, blah,
9:57a dashboard must load all elements before
9:58it can be displayed, the more views a
10:00dashboard
10:00contains, the longer it will take to load,
10:02although it will often involve a redesign.
10:04Reducing the number of views in a dashboard
10:06is often the best way to boost its
10:08efficiency.
10:08So here's a story, you download an
10:10accelerator, you love it, you love
10:12everything in it. But then
10:14you start to have performance issues. And
10:16it turns out to fix the problem, you've got
10:19to redesign it.
10:20So I got asked, what is a template that you
10:23have to redesign? Maybe it's inspiration,
10:27maybe that's
10:27what it should be. But it's just something
10:30you have to be careful of, right? It's
10:32going to be
10:32a bit of work getting these to perform in
10:35the best practice way, you can't just sort
10:37of take these
10:38off the shelf. What I would love is to
10:40tablet to sort of take this and say, look,
10:42okay, what do you
10:43need from this dashboard, click a few tick
10:45boxes, and then dynamically generate the
10:48workbook, that
10:48would be something that this exchange would
10:51be really sort of showcasing that something
10:53unique.
10:54Otherwise, you just have a workbook, a
10:56website with workbooks, and that's tablet
10:58public, it's
10:59nothing new. So that would be something
11:01that again, I think would be a really good
11:03idea for
11:03this. So again, I'll put a link to that
11:05idea in the description below. So check it
11:07out. So that's
11:08one down five. Quite a few times here have
11:12things that need review number of visible
11:15worksheets,
11:16the workbook contains 13 visible worksheets
11:19. Okay, cool. That's good to know number of
11:21hidden
11:22workbook sheets. Wow, there's 114 hidden
11:25sheets. Now this 114 sheets to me that says
11:28, look, we need
11:29to split this up into multiple workbooks.
11:32And you can get into that in another video.
11:34But long story
11:35short, it's got quite a lot of sheets in
11:37here. calculation length, one of these has
11:39591 characters
11:41long. That's crazy. It could be
11:43documentation inside of the calculation. So
11:46active customer
11:47performance value versus reference. But 591
11:49characters isn't that much, especially if
11:51you've
11:51got nested calculations, or you sort of
11:53written out in a very weird way. So you
11:55know, I'm too
11:56shy. Nice to know that that's there. The
11:58data source sales data extract contains 78
12:02level of
12:02detail calculations. That to me just
12:05screams I should have maybe done this back
12:07in the backend.
12:08Okay. When you have 78 LODs, you can
12:11probably push some of that work back into
12:13your ETL pipeline and
12:15sort of streamline your data sources as
12:17much as you possibly can. But all that said
12:20, it did pass
12:21these six things. So number of data sources
12:24, unused data sources, calculation uses
12:26multiple data
12:27sources, all good. Everything is pretty
12:30good on these fronts. So six out of 12. Let
12:33me open up a
12:33notepad here, let's open, let's open a
12:36brand new note. And then we'll get these
12:40going. So let me
12:41just open this up. We'll call this scores.
12:43I'm doing it off screen so you don't see
12:44all my notes.
12:45Now bring it in. And we'll call we'll call
12:48this what's this called a sales expert.
12:50Okay, we call
12:51this and this got a six out of 12. I again,
12:54another feature I would love link in the
12:56description below
12:58is the ability to copy this in some way or
13:01form. This is useful. But I would love to
13:04just take a
13:06PDF of this and put it somewhere and send
13:08it to someone, maybe to a user with all
13:11this good best
13:13practice so they can maybe create a task
13:15list from it even better. What if you could
13:17export a task
13:18list? So you could say okay, here are the
13:20things I'm going to fix. I'm going to tick,
13:22tick, tick,
13:22tick, tick, tick, tick, create PDF outcomes
13:25a PDF with a task list, you can then send
13:27that task list
13:28to someone, maybe you're a reviewer, you
13:30want to send that to someone else. Let's
13:31make this
13:32optimizer actually useful. Let's take
13:33action from this. So I think that would be
13:35really, really cool.
13:36Anyway, enough on this particular one, we
13:38're going to have to go so much faster on
13:40the rest of these.
13:41Otherwise, we could be here for a while. So
13:42we'll do one more from this particular
13:45place. Now this
13:46is strange, because it's not sending me to
13:48actually where I came from. So there was
13:49there must have
13:50been a middle hop there between the pages
13:52to get to where I needed to. So we've done
13:54sales expert.
13:55Let's look at web traffic. Let's go to
13:57completely new world. Let's download this
14:00as well. And
14:01download is complete. We'll put it in the
14:03same folder. And then I'll open up my
14:05folder.
14:06I will open Tableau, we'll just put it in
14:07the background here. And I will get this
14:11back in
14:12and we'll go digital marketing as long as
14:13you just drag it into Tableau. Generally
14:15speaking,
14:16it grabs the file and open it in its own
14:17separate workbook. So just give that a bit
14:19of time.
14:20I can see that it's opening up here, it's
14:21going to open up and it's opening up in
14:23another window,
14:24because when I record videos, I have my
14:27recording window as my secondary screen. So
14:30pop ups and
14:31notifications don't sort of come in the way
14:33. So this is the web traffic dashboard. Let
14:35's go ahead
14:35to server run the optimizer six out of 12
14:39before this diamond eight out of 12. I'm
14:42gonna just
14:43ignore this unused fields option will be
14:45good to be able to tell Tableau Hey, this
14:48particular one
14:49that keeps coming up, just don't check it
14:51again in the future. And then just give
14:54people a tick box.
14:55And then they have to rerun it to get the
14:57items from that tick box if they've ticked
14:59it. But
15:00for this one, I'm just going to ignore it.
15:02So we'll call this nine out of 12. Three
15:04need review. So
15:04a bit better than the previous one number
15:06of views in the dashboard. More than 10
15:08views. Okay,
15:09number of hidden worksheets, 60 hidden
15:11worksheets, quite a lot of worksheets,
15:13calculation length,
15:13Oh, funny enough, exactly the same number
15:16of characters. So it could be a reuse
15:18calculation.
15:19But generally, everything else has gone
15:21pretty well. So let's go ahead and put that
15:23in our little
15:24thing. So we'll call that web traffic. We
15:26'll call eight out of 12. Okay, let's go
15:32back. And we can
15:33go back one more press the hold that let's
15:35go to the accelerator space. One more from
15:38the department
15:39section. Let's go to finance. Finance is a
15:43pretty big one. So let's go ahead and go to
15:46that,
15:46download it and get the score. And we'll
15:49get going. So let's go ahead and open that
15:52I won't
15:53double click it, I will open up the folder,
15:55I will open up Tableau. I'll get the folder
15:58in front,
15:58and we'll get the finance one into Tableau,
16:01that should get us going again. So that
16:04should be
16:04opening, give it a second. And once I've
16:06done this one, I'll close all three and we
16:09'll reset
16:09and go to the next section. So here we are.
16:13And here we go financial statement,
16:16everything's good.
16:17Got a lot of metrics in this one. So this
16:18will have a lot of sheets. Okay, and this
16:20got a seven
16:21out of 12. So let's look at it again,
16:23unused filters going to come up how many
16:25unused fields
16:26are some of these are not that many in this
16:29one. So it's not too bad for need review
16:31the same ones
16:32again. 253 L o DS what is going on here? Oh
16:37, wow, like 253 L o DS definitely,
16:41definitely should go
16:44back to the ETL pipeline. I mean, yeah,
16:46that's just that's just I've got to look at
16:48this. Sorry,
16:50I've got to look at this. Oh, wow. This is
16:52a huge data set. Okay. So first and
16:55foremost, it's
16:56actually good use of folders here. I really
16:58like that the folders are well used here.
17:00But look how
17:01many fields are in each of these. And they
17:04're all used. So it's funny, the list of
17:07unused fields was
17:08quite short, which means this is just a big
17:11data source doing a lot of things. And some
17:15of this
17:15should really be pushed back into ETL. If
17:17we look at this, for example, you've just
17:19got depth, depth
17:21to equity ratio, and you've got the current
17:22month, the previous month, blah, blah, blah
17:24, blah, blah.
17:25And the calculation for this is just going
17:27to be it's going to be dynamic, it's going
17:29to be looking
17:29back and forth based on the specific table
17:31and the context if you're looking at table
17:33calculations.
17:34But if you're doing this amount of
17:36calculations, and you want to keep it
17:39dynamic, fine, do it in
17:40Tableau. But then normally that the way
17:42people asking questions is normally well
17:44defined. So you
17:45can probably bake some of this into the
17:47data set without having to do all of this
17:49stuff, make it
17:50easy for the person to build a dashboard
17:52definitely makes it a lot easier to sort of
17:54track the field.
17:55And all the metadata will be visible to
17:58other tools, not just Tableau, because you
18:00've got to
18:00remember all of these calculations, unless
18:03you're working pretty heavily with the
18:06metadata API and
18:07pulling these out, these calculations only
18:09live in Tableau, they're not available to
18:11you elsewhere.
18:12So maybe do this in Tableau prep, then push
18:15it to Tableau as a data source. And then
18:18other people
18:18don't have to recreate these calculations.
18:20It could also use a published data source
18:22to do
18:23the same thing. But yeah, okay, that's a
18:25pretty interesting workbook there. So if we
18:28go back to
18:29that, that was why is it saying six out of
18:3112? Has it changed? Has it changed? Did I
18:34just score this?
18:35No, I didn't score it got a six out of 12.
18:38So we'll call this finance finance. I'm, I
18:43'm absolutely
18:43adamant something's changed there. And we
18:46'll have a look in the replay, but I think
18:48it went from
18:49seven to six, I think, who knows. But
18:53nonetheless, the workbook loads really,
18:56really fast. What I am
18:57not doing in this analysis is making any
18:58judgment on the design. Okay, I'll come
19:00back to that point
19:01later on. But that nonetheless, that's
19:04everything in the section. So let's go
19:06ahead and close the
19:07three that we've got in here. And we will
19:11get an overview of what's going on with the
19:16section. So
19:17let's go ahead, I'll leave this one open.
19:20And what we'll do is we'll go back to our
19:22score here. So
19:24we'll call this the which section was this,
19:27this was departments. So we did three out
19:31of the six,
19:32and for three out of the six. So 2036
19:37equals 55%. So, you know, how do I know? I
19:46'm being a bit I'm
19:47maybe I'm being I'm being a bit unfair. But
19:49these definitely don't sort of hit the
19:51baseline score.
19:51Now, if you look at some of the reasons
19:53that don't hit the baseline score, those,
19:56you could argue,
19:57those are the bits you have to customize,
19:59those are the bits you have to really make
20:00the template
20:01your own. And but it's interesting. And the
20:04other thing is that the workbook optimizer
20:06is not
20:06testing the kind of things that, you know,
20:08an advanced user would test, it's testing
20:11most of
20:11the things, but there's definitely more to
20:13add to that workbook optimizers. So there's
20:15a good chance
20:16that these scores could get worse over time
20:18, definitely some improvement on the three
20:20that
20:20we've just looked, okay, so that's the
20:22department section. Let's go try some of
20:24the industry
20:25dashboard. So for this one, I'll try to
20:26because I think you're getting the point of
20:28what I'm trying
20:28to get across here. So let's go to wealth
20:31management. This is another probably quite
20:33a popular sector that uses Tableau in lots
20:36of different ways. Sometimes, sometimes
20:38there's an
20:38embedded capability inside of a platform.
20:41So we'll go ahead and save this. Now this
20:43is called
20:44financial services, wealth management. So
20:46they've cut these up into sort of sectors,
20:49if that makes
20:50sense. So let's go ahead, open up the
20:52folder financial services. And let's just
20:54make sure
20:54that's the right one wealth management,
20:57yeah, drop that in. I've got a previous one
20:59open. But we'll
21:00make sure that this new one opens, it opens
21:02up in a new tab. And what I'll do is I'll
21:05close this one,
21:06I'm not going to save it because I now have
21:08my new one on a new screen, wealth
21:10management dashboard
21:12run optimizer. Seven out of 12. Okay, so
21:16let's just go and get that score in. Let's
21:19go to score.
21:21Here we go. So, well, what got a seven out
21:26of 12? What did it fail? Unused field, that
21:32's fine.
21:32Number of using a dashboard, 150 LODs.
21:35There's a pattern to these, there's a
21:36pattern to these,
21:37just sort of starting to build up. And it
21:39makes sense if they were built by the same
21:41group of people with the same sort of
21:42mindset. And it could be also really good
21:44to have a sign
21:45that because these are templates are all
21:47going to have the same sort of problems.
21:48So let's go ahead and test. Let's test a
21:51couple more. So we've tried wealth
21:53management,
21:54point of sales, let's do that. Let's grab
21:56something with a little bit more sort of
22:00fast moving consumer goods focus. Let's
22:03drop that in a straight and tableau. And
22:06then I'll go back
22:07to this and retail point of sales. This is
22:10point of sales is technically till data. So
22:14let's say
22:14you're at the supermarket checking stuff in
22:16point of sales essentially data from this
22:18system. So
22:19let's go ahead and get that in. Okay, so it
22:24crashed. I've just opened tableau again
22:27from
22:27scratch. I'm just going to drop it in. We
22:30'll see what happens again. I've opened up
22:34my activity
22:35model. So just to see if anything starts sp
22:37iking. There we go. That worked this time
22:39around. I can
22:40just blame that on quirks. Sometimes
22:42sometimes these things happen. You are you
22:44ask too much
22:45of your computer and it causes a bug or an
22:48error elsewhere. So let's go ahead and run
22:51the optimizer.
22:52Let's actually select tableau in this
22:53particular case, run the optimizer six out
22:56of 12. So a little
22:57bit lower. Okay, so let's call this POS six
23:01out of 12. So you know, this causes
23:04consistently getting
23:0550% unused fields fine. Number of views in
23:08a dashboard 10 number of usable worksheets
23:1112
23:11number of hidden workbook sheets 101. That
23:15's a lot of sheets in one workbook. Same
23:17number of
23:17characters looks like the same calculation
23:20again, 96 LODs. There's a lot going on.
23:26You know, if I go on this LODs suggestion,
23:28let's see what it actually says.
23:29Competing results of complex calculation
23:32can impact performance. The workbook
23:34contains,
23:35that's just an example error. Often LODs
23:38are used on the fly to address issues of
23:40granularity in
23:41the data source that could be handled prior
23:43to analysis. So exactly what I said earlier
23:45on,
23:45consider tailoring the data source to the
23:48analysis to avoid the needs of many LODs.
23:51So yeah, Tableau tells you right there,
23:53optimizer data source for the question in
23:56hand. So I don't
23:57need to tell you that. Let's go back to the
24:00web page and go back. Any others? I want to
24:03do one
24:04more. I want to do three here before we go
24:06to the next one. I'm going to use this one.
24:08Okay. And for
24:09the last one, I actually want to make a
24:11point about the design, which I haven't
24:12made a point yet.
24:13So just bear with me while I download this,
24:16we test this one, this will be the last one
24:18,
24:18and then we'll go ahead and test and
24:20actually a good looking one as well. So
24:23public set,
24:24citizen service requests. Let's drop that
24:26in and wait for that to open. I won't ask
24:29anything else
24:29of my computer whilst that opens. Give that
24:32a second. So open up on my other screen.
24:34Boom,
24:36there you go. It's loaded up. Let's drag it
24:38onto the screen. There we go. Server, run
24:41optimizer.
24:43I should create a macro to do that seven
24:46out of 12. So again, oh, to fail the unused
24:49fields,
24:49multiple data sources have been have unused
24:52fields, fine, non materialized calculations
24:55.
24:55So this is actually good practice to do. So
24:57essentially, what they're saying is the
24:59data
25:00source public sector CRS citizens has not
25:02been pre computed. What you can do
25:04sometimes in some
25:06data sources, you can go ahead and actually
25:08pre compute calculations. So what that
25:09means is
25:10essentially it's going to go ahead and
25:11calculate them in advance. So if I right
25:13click on this
25:14particular extract, you can see that I can
25:16select compute calculations. Now, if I do
25:18that, it
25:19basically runs the data source and it kind
25:22of has a think and now that that's done
25:24that we can go to
25:25the run optimizer again, and we should get
25:27a better score. There you go. So eight out
25:30of 12, because we
25:31did that fix, it's no longer part of this
25:34one. So that's a very simple free step
25:37there. You typically
25:38do that the end of your workflow,
25:40essentially just goes and pre calculates a
25:42bunch of things that it
25:43can pre calculate and then bakes that into
25:46the part, I'm going to say metadata and the
25:48data
25:49sources kind of two things together. And
25:51then when it's done that runs through the
25:53data source
25:54a lot quicker. So that's a little thing
25:55that maybe you wouldn't have known if you
25:57didn't run the workbook
25:58optimizer. So you had to get another good
26:00thing to do, just run the workbook optim
26:02izer and you might
26:02even learn something. It passes a lot more
26:05this time around. So there's a lot less
26:06than this sort
26:07of orange area. So this is actually a
26:09decent workbook. I'll probably put it in
26:10the as probably
26:12the one the best performing one we've got
26:13so far. Eight out of 12. Let's go ahead and
26:15look at our
26:16scores. It's not it's as good as the web
26:18traffic. So this is the public sector one.
26:20Let's give that
26:22an eight out of 12. Great. And then what we
26:25'll do now is we'll move into the next
26:27section. So this
26:28is the last one. And what I'm going to do
26:32with these is these, I happen to know some
26:35context
26:35behind these. Okay, so and you could
26:38probably argue that because I know the
26:40context with this
26:43section, I'm going to go specifically for
26:45this account engagement one. And I'm going
26:48to make a
26:48specific point about this one. So this
26:50account engagement one is not like the
26:52others. If you
26:53look at it, you can see that it has just a
26:55completely different feel. If I actually go
26:58back
26:58one page, and you just sort of scroll
27:01through, it's very, it's very obvious
27:05whether someone has
27:06spent a certain amount of time looking at
27:08specific things, just by looking at the
27:11workbook. And the
27:13only way I can put it is, it's a bit like
27:16looking at a workman's, you know, workspace
27:19or going to
27:19someone's desk and having a look at how
27:21their desk is laid out. It tells you a lot
27:23about that person,
27:24it tells you a lot about that individual.
27:26And from that you can infer a certain set
27:28of assumptions
27:28about how much care or how little care they
27:31put to their work. Now, I'm not saying that
27:33about these
27:34things. But you can infer that the same
27:37group of people, the same individuals built
27:40some of these,
27:41because I look at all of these, they all
27:44use the same sort of generic color palette,
27:46they even
27:47recycle certain charts and certain styles.
27:50They recycle certain layouts across
27:53multiple
27:53extensions. If you actually download a lot
27:55of these accelerators, you find there's a
27:56lot of commonality
27:58with sections just moved around the
27:59different sort of industry verticals.
28:01Whereas if I come to this
28:03one, this is a very different one. It's
28:06very different fields, much simpler. And
28:08what I will
28:09tell you about this, I bet you this will
28:10get the highest score. I haven't, I haven't
28:12run the test
28:13on this one, actually, I don't know the
28:15score. But my guess is whoever's built this
28:18has put a lot of
28:19thought into it, because there's a bit of
28:21design, there's a bit of layout. And there
28:23's a lot of
28:24simplicity, which actually takes a lot of
28:25work. Because when there's simplicity, you
28:27have to
28:28really think about what's left on the
28:30dashboard to aid the user to get to what
28:32they need to. So
28:33my big bet here is this is going to be the
28:35top scoring one, I'll even go as far as
28:38saying I
28:38think this is going to get a perfect score,
28:41apart from the unused fields. And debacle.
28:44It's also
28:44funny that it's named entirely differently.
28:46So that's, that's how different it is, it's
28:49the only
28:49one with one of these asset names. So it's
28:51obviously come out of a system, and they
28:53haven't
28:54just bothered to rename it. But nonetheless
28:56, you can really, really tell when something
28:58's,
28:58you know, has a different contributor sort
29:01of working on it. So let's go ahead and
29:03open this,
29:04I'm really curious what this gets. So my,
29:06my guess is it's going to get 11 out of 12.
29:08That's my sort
29:09of hunch. So let's wait for this to open up
29:11. So open up another screen, here we are
29:14full screen,
29:15drumroll, run optimizer, 11 out of 12. Like
29:19I said, and yeah, this this just proves my
29:24point,
29:24you can you can just tell when someone has
29:27spent time working on something. And whilst
29:30I haven't
29:30been looking at the designs previously, it
29:33's no surprise that this well designed work
29:36book,
29:37the person who's built it has also gone and
29:39spent a good amount of time looking at best
29:41practice,
29:41and has actually implemented it. And it's
29:44funny, because earlier on, I said, well, in
29:47a template,
29:47you might leave a lot of data sources and
29:50fields in there, so the user can customize
29:52them. But what
29:53this says about this one is actually the
29:55person who's built this has really focused
29:58this dashboard
29:58on the question in hand, account engagement
30:01, okay, so it's giving you a high level
30:03overview,
30:04it's giving you a starting point. And it's
30:06got a bunch of interactivity, click on an
30:08account to
30:09filter it. So if I go click on a singer,
30:11singer, lumber, it filters the whole
30:13dashboard, it becomes
30:14a bit of a story. And I can then go into
30:16some of these and start to enhance these.
30:19And there's only
30:20one tab, there's not 100 tabs, there's just
30:23the one tab. And if I go look at the data
30:25source,
30:25it's look at look how focused this data
30:28source is, okay, like, it's just so simple,
30:31and they've just
30:31gotten rid of everything else, because it
30:34just only uses what it's supposed to use.
30:37Now, I want
30:38to see if I can show the hidden fields. And
30:39there you go. So this is what you would
30:41have got. If
30:43you'd not touched it, okay, so this is the
30:45all the fields you would have got the gray
30:46ones have
30:47basically been removed or hidden,
30:49essentially. And some of these are also
30:50actions. But let's just
30:52ignore that for now. And if I untick that
30:54box, you can see that look, only the ones
30:56that have been
30:57used are actually left in there. So this is
30:59something you can do, hide all unused
31:01fields,
31:01once you're done building it, and you're
31:03certain that everything's there. But you
31:05can show them
31:05in case you need to right click and unhide
31:07them and bring them back. So that's a
31:09really
31:09important bit of best practice. So can you
31:12imagine that got an 11 out of 12? Okay, so
31:16for my overall verdict on these things, I
31:20think I think these have actually scored
31:24better than I
31:24thought they would. And that's again, not
31:26looking at design, not looking at
31:27functionality, I'm just
31:29looking at the workbook optimizer and what
31:31it thinks the workbooks worksbooks could do
31:34better
31:34to perform better. And it's telling if I go
31:37back to the accelerators tab here in Table
31:40au Exchange,
31:41you can see there's a whole ton of acceler
31:44ators in here. And I also wondered why they
31:48went with
31:49icons for a lot of these. And I part of me
31:53wonders if they went with icons, because
31:56they know that
31:57the thumbnails, the dashboards themselves
31:59aren't strong. I don't know. I don't know.
32:01I don't know.
32:01Is it me? Do you think that's the same
32:03thing? Am I just making that up? If you're
32:05actually someone
32:06who works on this, let me know. But I think
32:09if you're going to show people templates,
32:13why not do what you do on Tableau public,
32:15which is lead with the thumbnail, why not
32:17do what you
32:18do with Tableau server, Tableau online,
32:20which is now Tableau cloud, why not do what
32:23you do there
32:24and lead with the thumbnails. My hunch is
32:27that the thumbnails all looked very samey.
32:30And so they
32:30decided to go with icons because they felt
32:32they were more accessible and easy to look
32:35at. But I
32:35think if they were well designed and
32:37actually simple for people to use, people
32:39would be able to
32:40work with them. The other argument is you
32:42could say that maybe people have a stronger
32:44affinity with
32:45icons from tools they use. So for example,
32:47if I go over here to the top and I search
32:49Google
32:50and it goes and finds everything around
32:53Google. Well, I know that's Google
32:55analytics. I know
32:56that's Google ads. And you can sort of
32:59start to get a good sort of feel for stuff.
33:01Whereas if I
33:02just had dashboards, you could argue that
33:03that was sort of harder. Maybe that is the
33:05more likely
33:06reason. But if I go to the accelerators in
33:08general and I'll just scroll down and stop
33:11and click on
33:13one scrap cost based. I can tell you that
33:16this one is probably going to have a score
33:19of six out of 12.
33:21So let's go have a look. Download. Okay, it
33:23's opened up on another screen. Let's drag
33:26it in.
33:26Drum roll. I think it's going to get a six
33:28out of 12. Let's see what it gets.
33:30Nine out of 12. So I'm wrong. So that that
33:35theory is just completely out the window.
33:36You can't tell
33:37the score of a word, but just by looking at
33:40it, that's complete nonsense. But I still
33:43do think
33:43what I said before about just by looking at
33:46a word, but you can tell what kind of
33:49person has
33:50built it. I can't stress that enough. If
33:52you go to Tableau Public, you'll get a
33:55similar sense
33:56of where a user is in their learning
33:57journey just by looking at the dashboard.
34:00That is the end of
34:01the video. So all of these scored between,
34:05well, let's say on average, let's say like
34:09seven out of
34:1012. If I'm being sort of reasonable, seven
34:12out of 12 was the average scored out.
34:14Everything in the
34:15accelerators. If I was being a little bit
34:18more generous, I'd actually say seven out
34:21of 11 because
34:22every single workbook failed the unused
34:24field test. Not a single one passed it. So
34:27in my opinion,
34:28you shouldn't be checking it because it's
34:30actually quite a hard one to pass unless
34:32you're at the very,
34:33very, very final stage of going to
34:34production and you want to hide everything.
34:36So yeah, what do you
34:40think? What do you think of the workbook
34:41optimizer? What do you think of acceler
34:43ators? What I really
34:45like is that the community is now starting
34:46to build more accelerators. So you'll get
34:48to see,
34:49I think, a better sample of what workbooks
34:51can be. And hopefully these come with Table
34:53au Cloud
34:54and Tableau Server as well. So more of the
34:56goodness that the community has already
34:58been
34:58able to share in the past through Tableau
35:00Public makes its way onto people's everyday
35:03work setup.
35:06So yeah, thanks for watching and I'll catch
35:07you in the next video.
35:08[END]
35:11[ Silence ]
#tableau #salesforce #analytics #data
In this video, I take a handful of accelerators from the Tableau exchange and see what Tableau’s own Workbook optimiser thinks of them.
Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:00:18 Overview 00:01:24 Setting the benchmark 00:04:38 Finding Tableau Accelerators 00:05:38 Sales Expert Tableau Accelerator 00:06:54 View all tabs at once 00:07:41 Run the optimiser 00:12:57 Feature request to export Optimiser results 00:13:59 Web traffic 00:15:38 Finance 00:20:30 Wealth management 00:21:57 Point of sales 00:24:13 Citizen service requests 00:26:41 Account management 00:31:17 Overal score & Closing remarks