Power Tools: Desktop

Power Tools: Desktop - User Guide

This guide contains information about the various tools in Power Tools: Desktop.

Power Tools: Desktop - Best Practices Ana-

lyzer Tool
l Introduction
l Step 1: Select Your Workbooks
l Step 2: Analyze
l Step 3: Filter Options
l Step 4: Finish
l Export to Excel
l Open the Excel Report
l Open the Best Practice Analysis Rule List
l Understanding the Rules

Introduction
The Best Practice Analyzer is like having a team of Tableau consultants on demand. By ana-
lyzing your workbooks, you can pinpoint potential issues that might be inhibiting your dash-
board’s performance. These best practice guidelines have been standardized by
InterWorks’ award-winning team of experienced Tableau consultants.

The Best Practice Analyzer will examine your workbooks using a customizable list of best
practice guidelines to help you optimize your dashboard for performance.

In This Section You Will Learn How To …

l Analyze your Tableau Workbooks
l Export the Analyzer report to Excel
l Customize the Best Practice rule list

Sound fun? Great! Let’s get started.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Step 1: Select Your Workbooks

Select the Best Practices Analysis option on the Desktop intro screen. You will now
select the workbook or workbooks that you wish to analyze. Desktop gives you three
options to find the workbook(s) you wish to analyze:

Option 1:

Select from the Recent Locations in the left-hand sidebar. Selecting any of these locations
will bring up all of the workbooks in that folder.

Option 2:

Select from your local workbooks using the Browse Folder… option in the left-hand side-
bar. It will bring up a collapsible tree folder menu. Select the folder with the desired work-
books.

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Option 3:

Select from workbooks located on Tableau Server by using the Connect to Tableau
Server… option, also located in the left-hand sidebar. You will need to have a Tableau
Server license for this option rather than just a Tableau Desktop license.

Once you have made your selection, all of the workbooks in that folder will appear in the
selection box. By toggling the Display option, this box can be organized in as a Thumbnails
view, which will give you a slideshow preview of worksheets (above), or as a List view, which
will give you additional file details (below).

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 Power Tools: Desktop

You can choose all of the workbooks in the selected folder by clicking on the Select All but-
ton. Once clicked, you can deselect individual workbooks. Or you can choose each work-
book individually by clicking each.

Once you have your desired workbook(s) selected, click Next at the bottom right-hand
corner.

Step 2: Analyze
The Best Practices Analyzer will now examine your selected workbooks and return its res-
ults on the next screen. You will see a summary of the number of issues found with an item-
ized list of issues beneath in the box with the vertical scrollbar.

Each issue is detailed with a number of fields under the following columns, which can be sor-
ted by clicking the column header:

Severity: The degree of the issue, ranging from Suggestion to Warning to Critical.

Workbook: The workbook containing the issue.

Sheet: The specific worksheet of the issue, if applicable.

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Power Tools: Desktop

Message: Brief explanation of the issue.

Critical issues should be dealt with immediately as they might significantly impact the per-
formance and/or the reliability of your dashboards.

By selecting any of the issues, you will find a hyperlink labeled More Information in the sum-
mary of information. Clicking on that link will take you to a topical support article written by
our team of experienced Tableau consultants. The article will give you a further explanation
of the issue and will suggest potential fixes.

You can find all of the support articles for Desktop on the Power Tools blog 1.

Step 3: Filter Options

On the right-hand side of the screen, you will find the Filter By menu. If you have a lot of
issues, then the filter options here can help you organize your view. You can filter by severity
or by workbook by clicking on the checkboxes.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

The grey oval above each will indicate how many issues are selected with each filter option
check marked.

Step 4: Finish

You can export the Best Practices Analyzer report to excel (see below) to save your ana-
lysis. Once you are finished, click Done to return to the Best Practices Analyzer intro
screen.

Export to Excel
Once you have performed an analysis on one or more of your Tableau workbooks (see
above) you can save your report to Excel. On the issue summary screen, click on the Send
To Excel button at the bottom of the screen.

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Power Tools: Desktop

A Save As window will appear prompting you to choose the location and the name of your
analysis. Once you click Save, a File Save Complete dialogue box will appear to confirm
that you have successfully saved as well as noting your saved location.

Open the Excel Report

The same File Save Complete dialogue box that appeared on a successful save is also
hyperlinked to your Excel report. Click on it and your report will open. Alternately, you can
simply find the Excel document where it was saved and click to open it as usual.

The Excel Analyzer report includes an additional field from the issue summary in the Best
Practices Analyzer issue summary screen:

Description: Offers more information on how the issue can impact your workbook

Again, be sure to visit the More Information links found in the issue summary screen inside of
the Best Practices Analyzer from more information and tips from our team of Tableau
exports.

Open the Best Practice Analysis Rule List

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 Power Tools: Desktop

In the top right-hand corner of the Desktop screen is a gear icon. Clicking on it will bring up a
menu.

Select the Settings option will bring up a dialog box.

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Power Tools: Desktop

Select the middle option, Best Practices Analysis. This will show you all of the embedded
Best Practices rules. You can decide which rules you wish to run or not to run by selecting
the checkbox next to each. By default, all rules in the list are selected.

Understanding the Rules

To find more information on specific rules, click below:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

We recommend that you take the time to read each of these entries for your understanding
of the Best Practices Analyzer’s capabilities as well as a general best practices guide for
Tableau Software.

Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

In this post, we’ll talk about the perils of automatic dashboard sizing.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

In the dark days of Tableau (prior to version 3.1), you didn’t have much control over dash-
board sizing. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. Up through version 7, we’ve had the abil-
ity to control how our dashboards are sized. Still, there was a problem. The default setting
for dashboard size prior to version 8 was “Automatic.” Automatic dashboard sizing presents
us with a couple of minor problems and one very big problem. Let’s break them down:

Unpredictable Results

With automatic dashboard sizing, it’s really hard to predict how your dashboard will look on
different screens. We know some people really don’t like “wasting” screen real estate. With
the huge monitors some folks have access to, there can be a lot of screen real estate to

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work with. The problem here is that if we design a dashboard on a gigantic 23 inch monitor
and you look at it on your laptop, it’s going to look … how can we put this … NOT good. It will
look very, very NOT good.

We have the same problem if we design a dashboard on a laptop and you then look at it on
your 30 inch HD Flat Panel Apple Cinema display. Things won’t be where we expect them to
be as the designers. The experience of one analyst could be wildly different from the next just
because of how the dashboard renders on screen. NOT good.

Poor Performance

The bigger problem here, bigger even than unpredictable layouts (which is saying a lot), is
performance. Tableau Server does some pretty cool stuff in the background to try to min-
imize the work it’s doing, therefore maximizing performance. Tableau Server will remember
every dashboard it renders and the sizes it rendered them at.

If you have one dashboard that is being viewed by five different people on different sized
screens, Tableau will consider that one dashboard to be five different dashboards from a ren-
dering standpoint. If you design your dashboard with a preset size, Tableau Server will be
able to reuse its model-level cache. In other words, it will render the dashboard into memory
once and then simply serve each new request for the same dashboard from memory instead
of rebuilding it from scratch each time.

Of course, this only helps us the second time the dashboard is requested and only if that
dashboard still exists in the model cache. I’ll take that over the alternative (not reusing cache)
any time.

Lessons Learned

In the end, it’s simple. Get in the habit of setting a defined size for your dashboards (NOT
automatic), and you’ll have more control over the layout of your dashboard when it renders
on different size monitors. Even better, if your audience is consuming your dashboards
through Tableau Server, they will (probably) get better performance!

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length

l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific per-
formance issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on
improving workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Work-
books."

Conditional Logic Can Complicate Your Query

Your workbook has been flagged due to a calculated field using IF or CASE conditionals
inside of functions that are being passed in a filter. This logic is creating a complex query
that could be causing performance to deteriorate due to the potential of generating a nasty
“where” clause within the filter.

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Power Tools: Desktop

Simplification Is Better

Most database engines will try to optimize each query it processes. Each uses a different
algorithm for this, but (for the most part) they all have one thing in common. When the data-
base encounters an overly complex query, it will simply pick the first query execution plan
that will return correct results. This execution plan might not be the fastest or most optimal
solution. Whenever possible, if you can simplify any query the database will process, you will
get better results.

Don’t Ignore Indexes

Many database engines will not be able to take advantage of common optimization tech-
niques if you use a lot of functions or if those functions are overly complex. For example, a
best practice to achieve maximum performance would be to have an index on the fields in the
query’s “where” clause. In many cases, indexes could be ignored completely if the field that
has been indexed is being referenced by a function. Ignoring indexes can have a hugely neg-
ative impact on performance.

Below are some examples of calculations that would be flagged:

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in

14 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop

Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

Creating Filters

Filters that you create in Tableau are calculated independently by design. This means that
each filter accesses all rows in your data without concern to other filters created in the same
view. However, you can create a dimensional context filter that will cause all other filters to
be dependent because they now must process the data that has passed through the context
filter. Herein lies the issue with context filters and why your view was flagged.

The Issue with Context Filters

When you set a dimension to context, Tableau creates a temporary table that will require a
reload each time the view is initiated. For Excel, Access and text data sources, the temporary
table created is in an Access table format. For SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle data
sources, you must have permission to create a temporary table on your server. For mul-
tidimensional data sources, or cubes, temporary tables are not created, and context filters
only define which filters are independent and dependent.

Tableau Software 15
 Power Tools: Desktop

How to Improve Performance while Using Context Filters

If you see performance degradation while using context filters, there are some general
guidelines to help improve performance:

l Using a single context filter that significantly reduces the size of the data set is better
than applying multiple context filters. A context filter should, at a minimum, reduce the
size of the dataset by 1/10 or more. Not reaching this could cause performance to be
worse as the performance cost to compute the context temporary table is not valu-
able.
l All data modeling should be complete. Changes in the data model, such as switching
dimensions to measures, will require re-computing the context.
l You have the ability to set a continuous date field to context, yet using discrete binned
dates will most likely be more effective.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your

16 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop

Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

Let’s begin by talking about the pros and cons of Custom SQL connections.

We know, it’s so tempting. Trust us, we get it. For a long time, many of us used Custom SQL
connections as our personal default when working in Tableau. We were wrong. In most
other tools, this would actually be a way to increase performance. Unfortunately, in some
cases, using a custom SQL connection in Tableau can actually degrade performance.

More Flexibility

Yes, you do have more flexibility when you write your own query into the Custom SQL dia-
log. In some cases, you can write a query here that you can’t get otherwise (like a UNION
query or in some connections a FULL OUTER JOIN). The best practice in these cases is to
move that query you would have used in the Custom SQL connection into your database and
save it as a view or stored procedure. If you don’t have the option of saving to the database,
you need to understand that the flexibility of the Custom SQL connection comes at a price.

Poor Performance

Imagine you have a view that shows sum of Sales by Region:

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Normally, Tableau would write a query like the following to build this view:

In cases where you’ve used a Custom SQL connection, Tableau will return the result set for
the query you put in the Custom SQL dialog. THEN, it will filter that result set to only the
fields it needs for the view you’ve created. In other words, your query will become a sub-
query to the outer query that Tableau writes in order to build the view you designed. That
query might look more like the following:

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As you can see, this would be more work for the database and would probably result in poor
performance.

Lessons Learned

If you can move a query from the Custom SQL dialog to the database, do it. If you can’t AND
you’re working from an extract, don’t worry about it. You might have a slightly slower query,
but it will only run once as you build (or refresh) your extract. If you can’t move the query to
the database and you have to use a custom query (maybe for a UNION join), understand
this: with great power, comes great responsibility.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard

Sheets
Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific per-
formance issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on
improving workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Work-
books."

Too Many Worksheets Slow You Down

Has your dashboard been flagged because it has more than four (4) worksheets on a single
dashboard? Here’s why: Having more than four (4) worksheets can cause slow load times.
Each sheet generates at least one query on the dashboard. The more queries you have, the
slower your load time.

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The solution is simple. Consider optimizing this dashboard by combining worksheets where
possible, reducing the number of generated queries. In the example screenshots, the Sales
and Profit charts were combined into a dual axis chart to make one less sheet on the dash-
board.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Hidden Worksheets

Many Tableau dashboards use hidden worksheets, which also increase the number of
views on a dashboard. Consider if building a separate dashboard with a targeting action is a
better design than hiding multiple sheets within the current dashboard.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes

22 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

Image or Shape Size Is Too Large

It seems your dashboard has been flagged due to a shape or image in your dashboard being
greater than 50KB in size. This may present an issue. Your load times may now increase,
depending on the number of marks being presented to Tableau for rendering.

For views with multiple marks, the file size of an export to PDF or image is also a per-
formance consideration. An image export encodes your information by pixel while a PDF
encodes by object. Each mark in a PDF is considered an object, so a multiple mark view can
affect the PDF size unintentionally and slow the process.

Things to Consider

If you find that your shape or image is too large, you can verify a couple of things:

1. You have the ability to make a shape larger using the Size shelf within Tableau
Desktop, but the suggested size for shapes in Tableau is 32 x 32 pixels. Having a high-
resolution file may not be necessary to achieve the desired result. See if a lower res-
olution gives adequate visual representation.

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 Power Tools: Desktop
2. If you desire to color your shape and use it within a visualization, it’s important to
remember and verify that your image has a transparent background.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

24 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop

Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

The Flag

You’ve just been notified by Best Practice Analyzer that your dashboard has been flagged
due to a calculated field being used that is greater than 500 characters in length. It can be
tough to stay under 500 characters sometimes, but this length can cause slow performance
and increase the time a view takes to render.

Points to Consider

When creating such lengthy calculated fields, consider the logic behind your calculation. Is
this something that could be added into your data to begin with? Are you trying to accomplish
multiple things with this calculated field rather than separating it out into multiple fields? Are

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you experiencing slow performance currently? If so, consider breaking your calculations out
into multiple fields or cutting out any additions that aren’t absolutely necessary.

This flag is just a suggestion, but be sure to take note. This could be an issue resulting is a
loss of performance, but in most cases, it’s an easy fix.

An Example

In the example below, a goal is being set by Year. Due to the other fields involved to set the
goal, the calculation become very drawn out. Answering the questions above helps guide
us to possible solutions. If, however, the calculated field is your only option, this field is a
good example of breaking into 2014 and 2015 goals rather than ALL together.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections

26 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

The Flag

Upon running the Best Practice Analyzer, you receive the following notification:

One common issue we often run into as consultants is when comparing metrics across dis-
parate data sources, members of what should be the same dimension in either source are
not recognized as equals. More than likely, this has something to do with the way those mem-
bers are aliased in the data source. Often times, it has to do with case sensitivity.

Tableau recognizes dimensions or members of a dimension whenever Workbook Tools

sees dimensions that look the same, but have different letter cases ( i.e. bicameral vs. uni-
case). It will notify the user, potentially flagging what might have otherwise been overlooked.

Tableau Software 27
 Power Tools: Desktop

The Solution

Data blending is an invaluable tool within the Tableau toolbox; however, ensuring you have
clean data prior to connecting to a source within Tableau is essential.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific per-
formance issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on
improving workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Work-
books."

What Are Quick Filters?

Quick Filters, like many things in Tableau, are easy to use, quick to implement and, when
used properly, can be extremely effective. With the click of a mouse, they can turn a work-
sheet or even an entire dashboard into an interactive landscape. In such a landscape, an
end user can tell a story or drill down to a piece of information they may have otherwise

28 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop

missed. Like most things in life, there comes a point where one can have too much of a good
thing.

At what point does a quick filter reach that threshold? Surely we can’t expect to go through
each worksheet and manually check each of our filters. Luckily, there’s an app for that.

The Flag

Upon running the Best Practice Analyzer, you receive the following notification:

The Solution

Instead of utilizing drop-down or multi-select lists for your quick filter, try Wildcard instead.
Because Tableau does not have to query on each member of the dimension, load times
should dramatically improve.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Alternatively, you could choose to utilize dashboard actions as a quick filter method. Say, for
instance, your initial filter is set to allow you to choose from any of the countries in which
your country does business. Instead of using a quick filter, try creating a map. With this map,
end users can still select and view detailed metrics from each country.

Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of top-
ics to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections

30 Tableau Software
Power Tools: Desktop
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop - Word Clouds

Power Tools: Desktop Best Practice Analyzer rules

This set topics is dedicated to helping you improve the performance of Tableau in your envir-
onment, by understanding the various rules available with the Best Practice Analyzer in
Power Tools: Desktop. This feature lets you know exactly how you can improve your
Tableau workbooks to run faster and smoother. Each topic is related to specific performance
issues that are flagged by the Best Practice Analyzer. For additional guidelines on improving
workbook performance, see the Tableau whitepaper "Designing Efficient Workbooks."

Word Clouds with Too Many Marks

So, your workbook has been flagged due to the use of Word Clouds. Word Clouds that con-
tain more than 50 marks are a performance degrader. We have seen performance degrade
by up to 10 times for Word Clouds with more than 50 marks as opposed to those with fewer
than 50 marks.

Since a Word Cloud is counting the number of times a specific word has been used in your
data, a possible use case could be to find the top 50 responses to a survey. Once there are
more than 50 words in a Word Cloud, readability starts to become a factor. As shown below,
the distinction between the marks is vague and hard to comprehend.

Tableau Software 31
 Power Tools: Desktop

Branch Out

A Tree Map or other chart may be of better use in a scenario where greater than 50 marks
exist. It may also help with the comprehension of what you are trying to accomplish with
your visualization. The Tree Map below is the same visualization as the Word Cloud above,
but is much easier to understand for such a grand scale.

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Curious about other Tableau workbook performance best practices? We have a list of topics
to help you out:

l Power Tools: Desktop - Automatic Dashboard Sizing

l Power Tools: Desktop - Limit Calculated Field Length
l Power Tools: Desktop - Context Filters
l Power Tools: Desktop - Quick Filter Cardinality
l Power Tools: Desktop - Images and Shapes
l Power Tools: Desktop - Reduce Number of Dashboard Sheets
l Power Tools: Desktop - Conditional Filter Logic
l Power Tools: Desktop - Custom SQL Connections
l Power Tools: Desktop - Mixed Cased Data Connections

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Power Tools: Desktop - Data Source Audit

Tool

l Introduction
l Step 1: Select Your Workbooks
l Step 2: Audit Summary
l Step 3: Export Audit Results
l Step 4: Finish

Introduction
The Data Source Audit tool allows you to examine how your workbooks are connected.

Step 1: Select Your Workbooks

Select the Data Source Audit option on the Desktop intro screen. You will now select the
workbook or workbooks that you wish to audit. Desktop gives you three options to find the
workbook(s) you wish to examine:

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Option 1:

Select from the Recent Locations in the left-hand sidebar. Selecting any of these locations
will bring up all of the workbooks in that folder.

Option 2:

Select from your local workbooks using the Browse Folder… option in the left-hand sidebar.
It will bring up a collapsible tree folder menu. Select the folder with the desired workbooks.

Option 3:

Select from workbooks located on Tableau Server by using the Connect to Tableau
Server… option, also located in the left-hand sidebar. You will need to have a Tableau
Server license for this option rather than just a Tableau Desktop license.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Once you have made your selection, all of the workbooks in that folder will appear in the
selection box. By toggling the Display option, this box can be organized in as a Thumbnails
view, which will give you a slideshow preview of worksheets (above), or as a List view,
which will give you additional file details (below).

You can choose all of the workbooks in the selected folder by clicking on the Select All but-
ton. Once clicked, you can deselect individual workbooks. Or you can choose each work-
book individually by clicking each.

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Once you have your desired workbook(s) selected, click Next at the bottom right-hand
corner.

Step 2: Audit Summary

The next screen provides a summary of the audit.

Initial Audit Window

The top half of the screen shows a data source summary for the selected workbooks:

The initial audit screen has five columns of information: the name of the data source, the field
name from that data source, the field type (field, calculation, group, etc.), the number of
sheets in which the field is used, and last the number of calculations that use the field. You
can sort any column by clicking on the column header.

Secondary Audit Window

If you click on any field in the data source summary table, the secondary table at the bottom
of the screen will provide additional information.

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There are four clickable links across the top of the secondary audit table: field details,
sheets, calculations, and calculation lineage.

Field Details: This link provides more specific detail on the field itself, including the field
name, data type, folder (if applicable), remote name, any comments, and the calculation if
the field is a calculated field. On the second column, summary information on the data
source is offered (data source name, type, and the workbook file name).

Sheets: This link alerts you to all of the workbooks, worksheets, and/or dashboards that util-
ize that particular field.

Calculations: This link provides further detail on any calculations that use the field, includ-
ing the workbook and data source.

Calculation Lineage: This link shows the inter-dependencies of the calculated fields that use
that field. All of the related fields that are used in calculated fields that use the selected field
are listed here.

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Change Filters

You can filter your results in the Initial and Secondary Audit screen by clicking on the Change
Filters link at the top of the screen.

You can filter your audit results by using the drop-down menus:

Tableau Project: If you are connected to Tableau Server, you can filter by project.

Workbook: filter to a specific workbook.

Data Source: filter by a specific data source.

Connection: filter by connection type, i.e. Microsoft Access Database or Tableau Data
Engine Database.

Server: filter by the location of the data source. This is particularly useful for workbooks on
Tableau Server.

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Database: the drop-down menu will list all of the data sources connected to the workbooks
you have audited.

Column: filter by any column in the selected data source in the database field above.

The checkbox for Only show unused fields will show fields that are not used within any work-
sheets or calculated fields in your selected workbooks.

Step 3: Export Audit Results

There is a great deal more detail available with the Data Source Audit tool than the initial
summary screen of the audit. You can access this additional information by exporting the
audit results:

When you click on any of the Send To options, you will get a prompt if you have filtered your
results.

If you select Filtered Results, then only the results of your Filter By menu selections will be
exported. Otherwise, All Workbook Results will send all of original workbooks you selected
in Step 1 to the exported audit detail. Click Export to continue to choose a location or Cancel
to return to the audit summary screen.

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When you have successfully exported your file, a dialogue box will appear to confirm the
save and a notification will appear in the Files menu at the top of the screen. You can click on
the file name to open the exported file or open the containing folder.

Each export option is covered in more detail below:

TABLEAU: Click on the Tableau button to export the Data Source Audit report into a pack-
aged tableau workbook, a .twbx file.

The Audit Workbook has two tabs:

Audit Exploration: This dashboard provides interactive audit information on the selected
workbooks.

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Contact: This tab provides different channels to receive help across many different ser-
vices.

imageimage.png801x713 101 KB

EXCEL: Click on the Excel button to export the Data Source Audit report into an .xlsx file.

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The audit detail Excel workbook has a great deal of granular information spread across four
tabs:

Audit: This is a table of all the columns in the data sources, JOINed with the worksheets.
The Audit tab includes the following columns:

l Workbook Path: file name or URL to the workbook

l Workbook Name: name of the workbook
l Worksheet Name: name of the worksheet
l Worksheet Title: title of the worksheet
l Worksheet Caption: caption of the worksheet
l Worksheet Hidden? true or false whether the worksheet is a hidden sheet in the work-
book
l Data Source Name: name of the data source
l Data Source Inline?: true or false depending on the value of the “inline” attribute for the
data source in the TWB. Legacy detail that may be removed in a future Desktop
update.
l Data Source Version: Tableau document version number of the data source
l Connection Name: name of the connection in a data source that supports cross data-
base JOINs (Tableau 10 and up)
l Connection Type: type of connection
l Connection Driver: connection driver (specific to certain connection types)
l Connection Expected Driver Version: expected driver version (specific to certain con-
nection types)
l Connection Workbook Auth Mode: workbook authentication mode of the connection
l Connection Server: connection server name
l Connection Database: connection database name
l Connection Username: connection username
l Connection Port: connection server port
l Connection Custom SQL: custom SQL used by the connection (caveat: only the first
custom SQL is shown for connections that have multiple custom SQL statements in
their connection)
l Connection One Time SQL: connection initial SQL
l Connection Directory: connection file directory (specific to directory based con-
nections, such as the legacy text file connection)
l Connection File Name: connection file name (specific to file based connections, such
as the Excel connection)

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l Connection Field Separator: connection field separator (specific to delimited file con-
nections)
l Column Role: whether the column is a Measure or Dimension
l Column Data Type: data type of the column (e.g., Date)
l Column Data Type Customized?: true or false whether the column’s data type has
been customized by the user
l Column Calculated Field? true or false whether column is a Calculated field
l Column Group?: true or false whether the column is a group field
l Column Hidden?: true or false whether the column is hidden
l Column Calculation Formula: the calculation formula if the column is a calculated field
l Column Caption Changed?: true or false whether the column caption has been edited
by the user
l Column Caption: caption of the column
l Column Status On Sheet: column’s usage status on the worksheet (Active, Refer-
enced, or Inactive)
l Active: column is directly referenced by the worksheet – e.g., it is present on

the Rows or Columns shelf

l Referenced: column is indirectly referenced by the worksheet – e.g., it is used
by a calculated field that is used by the worksheet
l Inactive: column is not used by the worksheet

l Column Comment: comment entered for the column

l Column Folder Name: name of the folder the column is in
l Column Remote Name: name of the column in the underlying database
l Underlying Connection Type: connection type of the published data source when the
connection is a connection to a published data source
l Published Data Source URL: URL of the published data source used by the con-
nection
l Project Name: name of the project the workbook is in on Tableau Server

Connections and Tables: This is a table of all database tables used by the data sources,
JOINed with the workbooks. The Connections and Tables tab has the following columns:

l Workbook Path: file name or URL to the workbook

l Workbook Name: name of the workbook
l Data Source Name: name of the data source
l Table Name: name of the database table

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Worksheets and Dashboards: This is a table of all dashboards and the worksheets that
they contain. The Worksheets and Dashboards tab has the following columns:

l Workbook Path: file name or URL to the workbook

l Workbook Name: name of the workbook
l Worksheet Name: name of the worksheet
l Dashboard Name: name of the dashboard

Parameters: Finally, the Parameters tab has the following columns:

l Workbook Path: file name or URL of the workbook

l Workbook Name: name of the workbook
l Parameter Name: name of the parameter
l Parameter Data Type: data type of the parameter (e.g., Date)
l Parameter Comment: comment entered for the parameter
l Parameter Folder Name: name of the folder the parameter is in

PDF: Click on the PDF button to export the Data Source Audit report to a .pdf file.

The PDF data audit detail is an Audit Report on each workbook in your data audit.

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For each workbook, you’ll see a detailed summary of each worksheet and dashboard with
the following data source information:

l Data Source details (type, database name, custom SQL, initial SQL)
l Tables (any used tables from the data source)
l Measures (name, data type, field type, remote column name)
l Dimensions (name, data type, field type, remote column name)

There are additional appendices after the workbook summaries for additional information.

Step 4: Finish
Once you have exported your results to whatever platform most desired and you have fin-
ished with your data audit, you can click the Done button to finish.

That concludes the Data Source Audit walk-through.

Power Tools: Desktop - Supported Data Sources

Below is the list of Tableau data source connection types that are supported by the Data
Source Audit tool in Power Tools: Desktop.

This list was last updated on January 26, 2018 for Power Tools: Desktop v1.28.0.

l Actian Matrix (ParAccel)

l Actian Vector
l Amazon Aurora
l Amazon Redshift
l Aster Database
l Cloudera Hadoop
l EXASOL
l Firebird
l Google Analytics
l Google BigQuery

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l Google Cloud SQL
l Hortonworks Hadoop Hive
l HP Vertica
l IBM DB2
l IBM PDA (Netezza)
l MapR Hadoop Hive
l Microsoft Access
l Microsoft Excel
l Microsoft SQL Server
l MySQL
l OData
l Other Databases (ODBC)
l Oracle
l Pivotal Greenplum Database
l PostgreSQL
l Progress OpenEdge
l SAP HANA
l SAP Sybase ASE
l SAP Sybase IQ
l Spark SQL
l Statistical File
l Tableau Data Extract (TDE or Hyper)
l Tableau Server
l Teradata
l Text File
l Web Data Connector

Power Tools: Desktop - Workbook Merge Tool

l Introduction
l Step 1: Select Your Workbooks
l Step 2: Choose Your Destination
l Step 3: Understanding the Mergeable Elements
l Step 4: Selecting Elements to Merge
l Step 5: Review and Finish

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Introduction
The Workbook Merge tool can take separate workbooks and integrate them into a new
workbook or extract individual worksheets and dashboards into a new workbook. This is par-
ticularly valuable if you have versioning between a Server version and a local version of
your workbook. Or if different business units have their own visualizations and only a few
views are needed to merge into an executive summary. This eliminates a duplication of
efforts to build and maintain the same views.

Workbook Merge is the answer.

Step 1: Select Your Workbooks

Select the Workbook Merge option on the Desktop intro screen. You will now select the
workbook or workbooks that you wish to merge. You will have an opportunity later to
choose specific elements from each workbook to merge, but for now just select the work-
book.

Desktop gives you three options to find the workbook(s) you wish to analyze:

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Option 1:

Select from the Recent Locations in the left-hand sidebar. Selecting any of these locations
will bring up all of the workbooks in that folder.

Option 2:

Select from your local workbooks using the Browse Folder… option in the left-hand sidebar.
It will bring up a collapsible tree folder menu. Select the folder with the desired workbooks.

Option 3:

Select from workbooks located on Tableau Server by using the Connect to Tableau
Server… option, also located in the left-hand sidebar. You will need to have a Tableau
Server license for this option rather than just a Tableau Desktop license.

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Once you have made your selection, all of the workbooks in that folder will appear in the
selection box. By toggling the Display option, this box can be organized in as a Thumbnails
view, which will give you a slideshow preview of worksheets (above), or as a List view,
which will give you additional file details (below).

You can choose all of the workbooks in the selected folder by clicking on the Select All but-
ton. Once clicked, you can deselect individual workbooks. Or you can choose each work-
book individually by clicking each.

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Once you have your desired workbook(s) selected, click Next at the bottom right-hand
corner.

Step 2: Choose Your Destination

The next step is to choose the destination for the elements to be merged from your selected
workbooks. As before, you can select you destination using a thumbnail view or a list view.

The thumbnail view above will show a slideshow preview of the contents of the workbook by
hovering your mouse pointer over the thumb. The version of Tableau for that workbook is lis-
ted in the bottom corner, as well.

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The list view is presented above. Rather than the thumbnail slideshow with a mouse hover,
the list view shows when the workbook was last modified. This view is helpful if you’ve got
multiple versions of a workbook with similar views.

To choose a new destination, simply click on the New Workbook button in either view. You
will automatically continue to the next screen. To choose one of the existing workbooks as
your merge destination, simply select it by clicking on it. When you are satisfied with your
existing workbook destination, click Next to proceed.

Step 3: Understanding the Mergeable Elements

There are five different types of mergeable elements. They are listed in the left sidebar:
sheets, data sources, parameters, shapes, and images. Clicking on any of these will bring
up different options in the main screen of the Workbook Merge tool. Before making any
selections, let’s first examine each of the mergeable elements in more detail.

SHEETS: The sheets element focuses on all of the items that might appear in the tabs of
your workbook – worksheets and dashboards. The worksheets and dashboards will appear
beneath the workbook.

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Clicking on any of these will expand the selection for more detail. Here is a sample dash-
board as an example:

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This dashboard is composed of two worksheets and a single data source with no para-
meters. There is a thumbnail preview of the view, as well.

DATA SOURCES: Selecting this mergeable element will show all of the data sources con-
nected to your selected workbooks. Clicking on any entry will expand the listing and reveal
the data source type.

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PARAMETERS: Any parameters in your workbooks can be merged individually, as well.

They are listed beneath their respective workbook name and clickable for more information –
the data type and any user-defined comments.

SHAPES: Any custom shapes that you have added to your workbook can be merged indi-
vidually. They are listed beneath their respective workbook name and clickable for more
information – width and height in pixels as well as file size.

IMAGES: Any images that you have added to your workbook can be merged individually.
They are listed beneath their respective workbook name and clickable for more information –
width and height in pixels as well as file size.

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Step 4: Selecting Elements to Merge

On any of the mergeable elements, you can click on an item and drag it over to your des-
tination. If you have selected a new destination, then that right-hand portion of the screen
will be empty.

Clicking and dragging over new elements will move the element to the destination side of
the screen and will change the background color of the element to be merged in blue.

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When you have made all of your selections that are to be merged, you are ready to proceed.
In the bottom right-hand corner of this screen are three buttons. The first is the Cancel but-
ton. Clicking this button will take you back to the workbook selection screen (step 1 of this
tutorial).

The second button is the Back button, which will take you back to the Select Your Merge
Destination screen.

The third and final button is the Review button:

This button is inactive until you add an element to be merged to your workbook destination.
Clicking on this button will take you to the final step of the Workbook Merge tool.

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Step 5: Review and Finish

Once you have exported your results to whatever platform most desired and you have fin-
ished with your data audit, you can click the Done button to finish.

When you click the Review button, you’ll be taken to the final step. The next screen will sum-
marize the elements that you are about to merge into your destination workbook. The
legend at the top of the screen lets you know if the element is ready to merge or if there is a
conflict.

Beneath there are two columns – Included and Excluded. In each column are all the ele-
ments that you have chosen to merge. You will receive a conflict if there is a problem with
one or more of the elements that you want to merge in the Included column. The example
below illustrates that two data sources with the same name have been selected to merge
into a new workbook. Because they share the same name, it creates a conflict.

Fixing this conflict is very easy. Simply pick one of the conflicting elements and drag it to the
Excluded column. When the conflict is solved, then both elements will turn to green and the
X mark will turn into a checkmark.

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Alternatively, you can right click on any of the files for a contextual menu of advanced
options:

There are three settings in the menu:

l Include: This option will include the workbook element in the merge. If there is a con-
flict, you cannot choose this option.
l Rename: You can rename the element to something else. Often this is all that is
needed to resolve a merge conflict.
l Exclude: This is the effect as dragging the file to the Exclude column. The element will
not be included in the merge.

When all conflicts have been solved and you are ready to finalize your new workbook, click
on the Merge button.

You can choose to merge, you will be prompted to save the new workbook as a Local File or
on Tableau Server. You can type in the location in the File Path or navigate to it with the
browse button.

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For Tableau Server, you’ll need the login credentials unless you have saved the Server con-
nection previously. In that case, you’ll only need to re-enter your password.

Click the Save button. You will be taken to the next and final screen. You will see a pop-up
confirming the merged workbook has been saved. In addition, the new file will be displayed.

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In addition, the left sidebar summarizes the elements that were merged into your new work-
book.

You have successfully created a merged workbook at the new file location. Click the Done
button to finish.

Good job! This concludes the Workbook Merge walk-through tutorial.

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 Power Tools: Desktop

Power Tools: Desktop - Performance Ana-

lyzer Tool
l Introduction
l Step 1: Select Your Workbook
l Step 2: Analyze Performance
l Step 3: Log Files

Note: The Performance Analyzer tool is now a legacy tool due to incompatibility with
Tableau versions 10.5 and newer. Due to breaking changes in Tableau that were required
for the tool to perform as expected, this tool will be removed when Tableau version 10.4 is
no longer supported with Power Tools: Desktop.

Introduction
The Performance Analyzer is designed as a diagnostic tool to optimize the performance of
your workbooks. It accomplishes this by allowing you to track the load times of all of the ele-
ments of your dashboards and worksheets to pinpoint the specific item or items that are
adversely impacting your workbook’s performance.

The Performance Analyzer differentiates itself from other Tableau diagnostic tools,
because it performs its load analysis in real-time.

When combined with the Best Practice Analysis tool, the Performance Analyzer is an essen-
tial step in creating the very best workbooks possible that are fast and efficient. In addition to
this user guide, a lot of great information is provided in the Power Tools for Tableau forum
for more tips and advice on how best leverage the functionality of the tools.

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Power Tools: Desktop

Step 1: Select Your Workbook

Select the Performance Analyzer option on the Desktop intro screen. You will now select the
workbook that you wish to analyze. You can only analyze one workbook at a time in the Per-
formance Analyzer.

Power Tools: Desktop gives you two options to find the workbook you wish to analyze:

Option 1: Select from your local workbook using the Browse Folder… option in the left-hand
sidebar. It will bring up a collapsible tree folder menu. Select the folder with the desired work-
book.

Option 2: Select from the Recent Locations in the left-hand sidebar. Selecting any of these
locations will bring up all of the workbooks in that folder.

You can only analyze a local workbook in the Performance Analyzer. If you have a server
workbook that you want to run through the Performance Analyzer, copy or move the server
workbook to a local folder.

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By mousing over each workbook in the selection screen, the Performance Analyzer will
show you thumbnails of the contents of the workbook (worksheets and dashboards).

By toggling the Display option, this box can alternatively be organized in as a List view,
which will give you additional file details (below).

As noted, the additional details includes the version of Tableau and the date last modified.

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Once you have your desired workbook selected, click Next at the bottom right-hand corner.

Step 2: Analyze Performance

When you click the Next button, the Performance Analyzer will attempt to launch the version
of Tableau Desktop that the workbook was saved in and open your selected workbook. As it
does, it will transition to a monitoring screen to capture and record all of the load events that
occur in your selected workbook. When you are currently analyzer a workbook, the Per-
formance Analyzer will denote this by including the following indicator in the bottom left-hand
corner:

Go to the newly loaded Tableau workbook and click around on your workbook to load the
desired worksheets or dashboards. When you have clicked on all of the dashboards and
worksheets that you want to analyze, go back to the Performance Analyzer and view the res-
ults. There are several different screens that you can view as your dig into your analysis.
We’ll cover each one and how you can get there.

WORKBOOK ANALYSIS

The first analysis that you’ll see is the top level view of the workbook.

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On the initial screen with the top-level analysis on the workbook, there are two boxes. The
first are the tabbed elements in your workbook – dashboards and worksheets. The second
are the individual events that are load.

DASHBOARDS AND SHEETS: The first box represents the loading time for the work-
book’s dashboards and worksheets. You can sort on any column, ascending or descending,
by clicking on the column header. Any dashboards or worksheets that have not yet been
loaded will appear grayed out and in italics with a load time of 0ms. If you wish to see the
load time for this worksheet or dashboard, go back to Tableau and click on the cor-
responding tab.

Each item is noted as a dashboard or worksheet with the same identifying icon as found in
Tableau desktop.

Example: You can see the ‘Maps and Geocoding’ dashboard is an extremely slow loading
view at nearly 10 seconds. This is an immediate red flag for optimization.

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EVENTS: The second box contains the individual events that occurred during the load of the
dashboards and worksheets. Again, you can sort ascending or descending by clicking on
any of the column headers.

Example: The slowest event is the data query for the ‘Map with Demographics II’ worksheet
that appears in the ‘Maps and Geocoding’ dashboard with a load time of nearly 5 seconds.

DASHBOARD ANALYSIS

You can drill down into your analysis by clicking on the Details button in the Dashboards and
Sheets box on the workbook-level view. You’ll get a more detailed analysis of your selected
dashboard.

There are three buttons at the top of the screen just beneath your workbook name that con-
trol what you’ll view. Let’s start with the Events option, which is the default view.

l Timeline: This timeline includes a visual representation all of the events in the order
that they are loaded. You can mouse over the timeline for an informative tooltip on

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each event.
l Worksheets: The underlying Worksheets are listed here. The Time Breakdown is
color-coded, denoting whether the loading element belongs in the data, partition,
visual, or quick filter category. You can click on any section of the color-coded bar for
more information on that particular element.
l Events: Similar to the events box on the top-level analysis, this will display events spe-
cific to the selected dashboard or worksheet.

WORKSHEET ANALYSIS

You can drill down again by clicking on the Details button after a worksheet line item in
either the workbook or dashboard view. It brings up a pop-up window with a detail of all the
load events for that specific worksheet.

You have four toggle buttons at the top of the table. These include the events for each to the
three Tableau interpreters – Data, Partition, and Visual as well as events associated with
Quick Filters

l Data – The load times of all data queries

l Partition – I believe this primarily deals with table calculations?
l Visual – Events related to rendering the visual aspects of the worksheet or dashboard
l Quick Filter – The load times of all quick filters

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QUERY ANALYSIS

There are several ways to get into the Query Analysis screen. Anytime you see the View
Query button, it will take you here. The button at the top of the dashboard or worksheet view
labeled Queries will take you here. Finally, clicking on the View Detail button on the work-
sheet-level analysis will bring you here, as well.

This gives you the lowest level of granularity in the Performance Analyzer, the underlying
coding for each query. By clicking on the Copy to clipboard button, the code in the box will be
copy and can be pasted with a CTRL+P into another document, such as Notepad.

When using Tableau Desktop 9 or greater, there are three new icons associated with quer-
ies.

Denotes that a query was retrieved from a cache.

Denotes that a Query was ran as a “Query Fusion”.

Denotes that a Query was ran in parallel.

You can always navigate backwards from any screen by clicking the Back button.

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Step 3: Log Files

A few times throughout the Performance Analyzer, you might have noticed a reference to a
Log. A log is the documentation of your analysis that you can save for future reference.

SAVE YOUR LOG: To save a log, click on the Log button on either the dashboard or work-
sheet level analysis. It will show you your current analysis’ log:

To save the log for future reference or to generate an apples-to-apples comparison against
an optimized copy of your workbook, click on the small disk button.

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You’ll be prompted with a Save As windows box on where you want to save your log file and
what name to give it. A pop-up window will appear to confirm a successful save. You can
click on the file name in the pop-up window to open the log file.

OPEN SAVED LOGS: On the first screen of the Performance Analyzer, there is the option
to Select Log Files. Click on the Browse Files … to bring up an Open window. Find your log
files and click Open. If you select a single log file, it will automatically open into the top-level
analysis view, otherwise you’ll arrive here:

Choose the log that you want to view first and then click on the Next button.

The log will have all of the historical load events that were saved previously for comparison to
any changes and optimizations that you have made in your new file.

Power Tools: Desktop - Style Management

Tool
l Introduction
l Understanding How to Use the Style Guide
l Step 1: Select Your Workbook
l Step 2: Select Your Worksheets
l Step 3: Apply Text Changes
l Step 4: Apply Format Changes
l Step 5: Review Your Changes & Finish

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Introduction
The Style Management tool allows you to apply changes in formatting and style to multiple
workbooks with a single action. Synthesizing the look and feel of your dashboards is par-
ticularly important for public-facing or branded visualizations as well as maximizing the
effectiveness of your views’ ability to succinctly tell the story of the data.

Whether making wholesale changes or pinpointing specific design elements one at a time,
the Style Management tool will save you tons of time as you format, polish, and perfect your
dashboards.

The Style Management Tool Includes

l The Style Guide

l Text Formatting Tool
l Visual Formatting Tool

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s right dive in!

Understanding How to Use the Style Guide

It is very important to understand how the Style Guide works before implementing any
changes. Any selected changes will be applied wholesale to all selected workbooks and
worksheets.

For instance:

Changing the text size to 16pt with the Style Guide will change all of the text inside each
selected workbook to 16pt. This includes labels, tool tips, quick filter text, axis labels, and
more (though not title text).

In other words, of the three different ways to change the style and formatting of your work-
books and worksheets, the Style Guide is the least precise. It uses a broad brush. For this
reason, use the Style Guide with a bit of care to avoid any unforeseen changes to your work-
books’ formatting. Any changes that are made will be saved as a copy of your original work-
book anyway.

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The Style Guide is perfectly suited for making broad changes on the chosen criteria, such as
changing the color of your text or the style of your borders.

Step 1: Select Your Workbook

Start by selecting the Style Management tool inside of the Desktop starting screen.

You will now select the workbook or workbooks that you wish to format. Desktop gives you
three options to select your desired workbook(s):

Option 1:

Select from the Recent Locations in the left-hand sidebar. These are the folder names that
you have recently accessed with Desktop. Selecting any of these locations will bring up all of
the workbooks in that folder in the selection box. If the folder is a Tableau Server project, will
you need to re-enter your password again to access those workbooks.

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Option 2:

Select from your local workbooks using the Browse Folder… option in the left-hand sidebar.
It will bring up a collapsible tree folder menu. Select the folder that contains the desired work-
books.

Option 3:

Select from workbooks located on Tableau Server by using the Connect to Tableau
Server… option, also located in the left-hand sidebar. You will need to have a Tableau
Server license for this option rather than just a Tableau Desktop license.

Once you have made your selection, all of the workbooks in that folder will appear in the
selection box. By toggling the Display option, this box can be arranged as a Thumbnails
view, which will give you a slideshow preview of worksheets when you hover with your
mouse (see above), or in a List view, which will give you additional file details such as
Tableau version and when it was last modified (see below).

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You can select all of the workbooks in the displayed folder by clicking on the Select All button.
Once clicked, you can deselect individual workbooks by clicking on them. Or you can choose
each workbook individually.

Once you have your desired workbook(s) selected, click Next at the bottom right-hand
corner to proceed to the next screen.

The next screen includes a menu to select your worksheet and to make style changes, but
first make sure that you select Style Guide from the left sidebar menu. The Style Guide
option is the default selection when you arrive at this screen.

Step 2: Select Your Worksheets

Having chosen your desired workbooks in Step 1, you will now select the worksheets that
you are going to format.

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Each of the workbooks you selected in Step 1 is listed with their underlying worksheets. By
selecting a workbook, you will automatically select all of the worksheets inside. You can
select or deselect all of the workbooks and worksheets by clicking on the Select All / Unse-
lect All button at the top of the selection box.

There is a search box at the top that will help you search for desired worksheets. The filter
will adjust the results with each keystroke, so if you’re not exactly sure of the name of your
workbook or worksheet then start with just a few keystrokes.

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Once you have selected your desired workbooks and worksheets, you can now begin to
apply style changes.

Step 3: Apply Text Changes

On the right-hand of the same screen as the worksheet selection menu, the Style Guide is
divided into two sections – Text and Format.

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If at any time you want to abandon any changes you’ve made, click on the Cancel button in
the bottom right-hand corner. None of the changes you’ve selected will be applied to your
worksheets.

Let’s start with the Text box.

There are five menus in the Text box.

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l Font: Change the font type in your selected worksheets, such as: font types
l Size: Change the point size of your text, such as: text point sizes
l Decoration: These buttons will add bold, underline, and italics to all of the text in your
worksheets.
l Color: Change the color of the font – see the Color Tool for assistance.

ALIGNMENT MENU: You can use this menu to choose the horizontal alignment of your
text.

Choose between left aligned, center aligned, or right aligned. If you want to undo your selec-
tion and return to the default settings in each worksheet, click on Automatic button.

TITLE FONT MENU: This menu is operates exactly the same as the Font menu, but it
applies only to the title text of your selected worksheets.

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l Font: Change the font type in your selected worksheets, such as: font types
l Size: Change the point size of your text, such as: text point sizes
l Decoration: These buttons will add bold, underline, and italics to all of the text in your
worksheets.
l Color: Change the color of the font – see the Color Tool for assistance.

TITLE ALIGNMENT MENU: You can use this menu to choose the horizontal alignment of
your text.

Choose between left aligned, center aligned, or right aligned. If you want to undo your selec-
tion and return to the default settings in each worksheet, click on Automatic button.

TITLE SHADING MENU: The Title Shading menu will change the background color of
your worksheets’ title area. See the Color Tool for more assistance.

Changes to the background color of your title will look similar to this (red):

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Those are the five menus for the Text box in the Style Guide. For either menu, if you make a
change to the style using the Style Guide then the menu name will be in bold to indicate the
changes.

In the example below, you can see that we have applied changes to the Alignment (center-
aligned), Title Alignment (left-aligned), and the Title Shading (blue) as these menus are now
in bold.

Defaults: Keep in mind that if you make any selections in the menus, Desktop will bold that
menu title, even if you return the selections back to their default.

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Step 4: Apply Format Changes

On the right-hand of the same screen as the worksheet selection menu, the Style Guide is
divided into two sections – Text and Format.

If at any time you want to abandon any changes you’ve made, click on the Cancel button in
the bottom right-hand corner. None of the changes you’ve selected will be applied to your
worksheets.

We’ll now focus on the Format box.

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The Format box has four menus.

SHADING MENU: The Shading menu will change the background color of your work-
sheets. See the Color Tool for more assistance.

Here’s an example of a worksheet that has had the shading set to red:

Obviously, red is not a great color choice, but it was used to help clearly note which areas of
the worksheet will be changed by using the shading option in the Style Guide – the

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background of The title, the background of the Measure Names, and the background of the
view itself.

BORDERS MENU: The borders menu allows you to change all of the borders in your selec-
ted worksheets. See the Line Tool for more assistance.

As an example of how the border menu works, here is the same worksheet as before
(minus the red background) with a blue, hash-marked border using the thickest line option.

Here is how it appears in the worksheet:

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You can see that it applies it to the view and to the title, but this time not to the Measure
Names box. If there was a caption, the border would be applied to it, as well.

GRIDS MENU: The Grid menu produces the same line formatting options as the borders.
See the Line Tool for more assistance.

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As an example, we’ve set the grid lines in the same worksheet above to green, dotted, most
thick.

Here’s how it would appear in the worksheet:

Obviously, another less than great formatting choice, but it does illustrate quite clearly what
is affected. Note that the marks lie on top of the grid lines.

TREND & REFERENCE LINES MENU: Trend and reference lines are optional features
that can be placed on a view for extra information. The Style Guide option here formats all of
the trend and reference lines with a single menu.

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See the Line Tool for more assistance.

As an example, we’ve formatted the trend lines to solid lines at the greatest thickness (5px).

Here’s how that would look on an actual worksheet:

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Step 5: Review Your Changes & Finish

Once you have made your changes to the selected worksheets, click on the Review button
to continue to the next screen.

You will then see a summary of all of the workbooks you will modify and their location. You
have not yet applied any changes to your worksheets.

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You can quickly check to make sure that only the workbooks intended are going to be mod-
ified. When you are ready to apply your style changes, click on the Apply button.

Clicking on the Apply button will bring up a prompt on where you would like to save your mod-
ified workbooks. You can choose to save as a Local File or on Tableau Server. You can type
in the location in the File Path or navigate to it with the browse button.

For Tableau Server, you’ll need the login credentials unless you have saved the Server con-
nection previously. In that case, you’ll only need to re-enter your password.

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Once you have found the location for you newly formatted workbooks, click Save. You will
return to the Review Changes screen and a pop-up to confirm that the files have been
saved.

You can click on the file location to open the workbook. That concludes the Style Guide
walk-through.

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Power Tools: Desktop - Using the Line Formatting Control

Within Power Tools: Desktop, there are a couple of different instances where you can format
a line, whether for as borders, grid lines, trend lines, etc. While where the line tool will appear
in the Style Management tool is varied, the functionality of the tool will remain the same.

You have three options to format the line.

The None button keeps the current the formatting of the lines already in the selected work-
sheets. Choosing any of the following selections will apply formatting changes to your work-
book. The first selection is choosing the line style.

There are three options:

Solid

Dashed

Dotted

Next, there are five different levels of line thickness:

1pt … 2pt … 3pt … 4pt … 5pt

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Finally, you can change the line color using the color selection control. For more inform-
ation, see Power Tools: Desktop - Using the Color Selection Control.

Power Tools: Desktop - Using the Color Selection Control

l Introduction
l Standard Colors
l Advanced Colors

Introduction

The color selection control is a frequent element in Power Tools: Desktop. Using the Style
Management tool, you can change the color of nearly every element in your Tableau visu-
alization, including the text, title text, backgrounds, borders, trend lines, and more.

While where the color selection will be applied is different, such as borders, backgrounds,
text, the functionality of the tool is the same.

Standard Colors

There are ten options in the Standard Color palette, which is the default view when you click
on the color menu.

No Change Keeps the existing color.

White #FFFFFF R:
255
G:
255
B:
255

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Grey #808080 R:
128
G:
128
B:
128

Black #000000 R:
0
G:
0 B:
0

Red #FE0000 R:
254
G:
0 B:
0

Green #017F02 R:
1
G:
127
B:
2

Blue #0000FE R:
0
G:
0 B:
254

Yellow #FFFE00 R:
255
G:
254
B:

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Orange #FFA500 R:
255
G:
165
B:
0

Purple #7F0081 R:
128
G:
2 B:
127

Advanced Colors

If you want a broader selection of colors or if you need a specific color not found in the Stand-
ard Colors palette, then click on Advanced button for more options.

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At the top of the Advanced Color palette is the color field. From left to right you can select the
color saturation (from grayscale to full color) and from top to bottom you select the Lightness
(from light to dark). Running along the right hand side is a slide selector for the color spec-
trum. Using these two tools you can find any color.

Beneath are three sliders to enter in an RGB color (0-255). RGB is a color coding model in
which adding varying degrees of the three primary colors (Red-Green-Blue) can produce
any color.

The A slider is the Alpha Channel, which is the opacity/transparency of the color. Opacity is
the solidity of the color or lack of transparency. The higher the value the more transparent
your text will be all the way up to completely invisible (255).

To return to the Standard color palette click on the Standard button.

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Power Tools: Desktop - Using the

Command Line Interface
Power Tools: Desktop includes a command line interface, PowerToolsDesktop.cmd,
located in the installation folder. The default installation folder is usually:
%PROGRAMFILES%\Tableau\Power Tools for Tableau Desktop.

Here are the commands that can be used with the PowerToolsDesktop command line:

l help
l license
l tableau
l update
l version

help
Shows general help about the command line interface and the available commands.

Examples
Show all commands available:

PowerToolsDesktop help

Show help and usage information for a specific command:

PowerToolsDesktop help <command>

license
Manages the application license for the current user.

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Examples
Show the current license information:

PowerToolsDesktop license

Remove/deactivate the current license:

PowerToolsDesktop license remove

Set/activate a serial key or offline license key:

PowerToolsDesktop license <key>

Set/activate using a license file:

PowerToolsDesktop license <file path> [--passphrase=<password>]

tableau
Registers Power Tools: Desktop as the default Windows file handler for Tableau doc-
uments.

Examples
Register as the default handler for Tableau files:

PowerToolsDesktop tableau --register

Unregister as the default handler for Tableau files:

PowerToolsDesktop tableau --unregister

Repair any prior registration as the default handler for Tableau files. Does nothing if not
already registered as the default handler.

PowerToolsDesktop --repair

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update
Manages the options for application updates.

Examples
Show the current update settings:

PowerToolsDesktop update

Enable or disable the automatic update notifications:

PowerToolsDesktop update --disabled=<true|false>

Set the URL to detect/download updates from:

PowerToolsDesktop update --url=<url>

Enable or disable showing beta updates. Set to false to only show stable release updates.

PowerToolsDesktop update --beta=<true|false>

version
Shows the current application version information.

PowerToolsDesktop version

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Power Tools: Desktop - Changing

Logging Level
1. Make sure the Power Tools: Desktop application is closed.
2. Navigate to the Power Tools: Desktop installation folder. By default this is C:\Pro-
gram Files (x86)\Tableau\Power Tools for Tableau Desktop but
may vary depending on your installation.
3. Open the IWTableauWorkbookTools.exe.config file in a text editor such as
Notepad.
4. Locate the line inside the <appSettings> section that is similar to <add key-
y="serilog:minimum-level" value="Information" />.
5. Modify the value of the value="Information" attribute to the desired logging
level. See below for the supported levels.

WARNING: Be careful when editing the IWTableauWorkbookTools.exe.config

file. Mistakes in this file may prevent the application for functioning as expected.

If modifying the log level to a more verbose setting for troubleshooting purposes, restart
Power Tools: Desktop and reproduce the issue and then collect the updated log files with the
more verbose diagnostic information. For details, see Power Tools: Desktop - Log Location.

Log Levels
l Information is the recommended default logging level.
l Verbose is the most detailed logging level. This level is recommended when
troubleshooting specific issues and should be reset to the default Information level
when the troubleshooting is complete.

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Power Tools: Desktop - Log Loca-

tion
Sometimes we may ask you to send us your log files to help investigate a problem. These
log files are super easy to find.

Collecting the Logs

1. Open Power Tools: Desktop

2. Click on the Settings icon and then the Settings option.

3. Click on the Advanced tab.

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4. Click the Open Log Folder button.

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5. You should see a folder open with text files. These are the log files and there is typ-
ically one file per day.

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Sending the Logs

Once you have collected the logs that you need to send, please zip them up and see the
Tableau Knowledge Base for details on how to send the files to Tableau.

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Legacy Compatibility Notes (Power

Tools: Desktop)
This topic includes compatibility information about legacy Power Tools: Desktop releases
through 1.35.

During the period covered by these releases, terminology and product branding changed.
References to software/feature naming may no longer be accurate.

Power Tools for Tableau, as a product suite, supports up to eight total versions of Tableau.
The window for support shifts as new versions of Tableau are released, including beta
releases.

Current Support Range as of Nov 13, 2018: Tableau 10.1-Tableau 2018.3

Support updates usually come in two waves: beta support and RTM support.

l Beta support
l Adds support for the new version

l Testing is performed on the most recent beta version supplied by Tableau, so

will not account for additions/changes Tableau makes between the tested beta
version and their official/RTM release.
l Support for oldest version is dropped to make room for the beta version.
l Targeted to release before the RTM version for those needing day-one sup-
port.
l RTM support
l Tested against the official/RTM version.

l Support for beta version is replaced with support for RTM version.

Power Tools: Desktop

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Version release date tableau com-

patibility

1.31 Oct 10, 2018 Tableau

10.1-2018.3
beta

1.30 Jul 09, 2018 Tableau

10.0-2018.2
beta

1.29 Apr 23, 2018 Tableau

9.3-2018.1
beta

1.28 Jan 29, 2018 Tableau

9.2-10.5

1.27 Dec 22, Tableau

2017 9.1-10.5
beta

1.26 Nov 10, Tableau

2017 9.1-10.4

1.25 Aug 30, Tableau

2017 9.1-10.4
beta

1.24 Jul 10, 2017 Tableau

9.0-10.3

1.23 May 19, Tableau

2017 9.0-10.3
beta

1.22 Mar 17, Tableau

2017 8.3-10.2

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Version release date tableau com-

patibility

1.21 Feb 20, Tableau

2017 8.3-10.2
beta

1.20 Dec 9, 2016 Tableau

8.2-10.1

1.19 Oct 27, 2016 Tableau

8.2-10.1
beta

1.18 Aug 18, Tableau

2016 8.1-10.0

1.17 Jul 1,2016 Tableau

8.1-10.0
beta

1.16 Apr 13, 2016 Tableau

8.0-9.3

1.15 Mar 8, 2016 Tableau

8.0-9.3 beta

1.13 Dec 9, 2015 Tableau

7.0-9.2

1.11 Sep 24, Tableau

2015 7.0-9.1

1.10 Sep 8, 2015 Tableau

7.0-9.1 beta

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