One of the most powerful, underrated features in Tableau Prep is the Difference From or "Multi-Row Formula" function. It allows you to calculate the difference in values between rows of data. This is useful when you need to calculate the time elapsed between dates or the general difference in values (e.g. dollars, counts, temperatures) from one row to the next.

This kind of calculation is only available in Tableau Desktop with a Table Calculation which is limiting because Table Calculations can only execute against data that's present in a worksheet. Pre-calculating differences in the underlying data can be a game-changer!

If you're looking to harness the power of SQL's LOOKUP/PARTITION in Tableau Prep, look no further! Check out this video for a full breakdown.

KPI's are a powerful way to draw our end-users' attention to specific key metrics. By adding in visual information in the form of bar charts, we're able to create a comparison of the current year with the previous year.

While there are numerous ways to show this kind of comparison, here are three easy and effective time-series KPI's that can add an element of visual flair to any dashboard! These bar charts are simple to create and use one or two nifty calculated fields to add the visual flair we’re looking for.

Want to learn how to build a sales funnel in Tableau? You've come to the right place! Most funnels are hard to interpret because they deal with size disproportion issues. The classic upside-down triangle visual likely isn't the best way for you to represent funnel data for your users.

We've built funnels for dozens of clients over the last decade and have distilled our learnings into this video! Check it out for tips on writing calculations, building a funnel visual, formatting effectively and compiling it all into a meaningful dashboard.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are essential for any dashboard, helping you track performance at a glance and make data-driven decisions faster. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to build KPIs in Tableau, from setting up calculated fields to customizing visuals that make your data stand out.

Whether you’re designing a dashboard for executives or optimizing reports for daily tracking, well-designed KPIs can bring clarity and impact. Here’s how to do that in an engaging and eye-catching way!

One of the biggest areas of technical advancement in Tableau Desktop over the last several years is the ability to model complex data sources. Relationships first debuted in 2020 but were only usable for simple data models because you could only use a single fact table as a base table.

In 2024, Tableau updated the Relationship builder to allow for multiple-fact tables and shared dimension tables. This ability is invaluable in complex analyses that leverage numerous tables.

Tableau’s Certifications aim at testing your theoretical and practical knowledge of Tableau through Multiple Choice Questions. The test is designed to give your CV the stamp it needs to show that you know how to use Tableau, and that you’re confident applying theory to reality.

However, many people feel overwhelmed when studying for these exams. Knowing where to focus your attention when trying to study “the whole of Tableau” is a daunting task!

If you want to use Tableau for free and don't need to ensure your data is perfectly private, you can use Tableau Public! This free-to-use option is perfect for Tableau newbies, testers, or people working for organizations where expensive Tableau licenses just aren't possible.

In this video, we'll see how to build a dashboard from scratch: from connecting to data, to building worksheets, to adding actions, and finally, to publishing it.

Comparing one time period to another is a common use case in Tableau. In our experience, one of the best ways to do that is to overlay one on top of the other. The question is, how do you do that dynamically for both a current and comparison period?

Check out this video for one of our favorite homegrown solutions where you create a custom date field and a custom value label which allows you to overlay two time periods for comparison!

Tableau text tables are very powerful, but they're also pretty rigid, right? If you're a text table power user and you haven't checked out the Table Viz Extension, drop what you're doing!

A few things you can do with this versatile extension:

• Create columns of varying widths

• Add filters to a single column only

• Dynamically color/format one column at a time

• Set different mark types for each column Ready to add this to your toolkit?

Check out this video now!