r/tableau

Hey I got tagged to a project at my organisation for a RETAIL client. They need someone to make sense of their data, find patterns, forecast and explain their data to them so they can try new pricing and discounts depending on the geographical location and price profiles.

I've worked in the past as part of the team where most things were already set up and I just got requirements from a BA and created the workbooks.

This client doesn't have that and I'm the only one here who's gonna be creating tableau reports.

Anyone suggest how to start and do this from scratch?

What key points should I consider?

How should I approach the cloud vs server approach?

How do I join and figure out the data they have cause right now all they have is data in some snowflake server and I have to be the person who uses sql to fetch that.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

*Due to company policy, I cannot post a screenshot of my tableau*

I want to create one data view in tableau which ranks the account based on the type and cost

Logic: (Like how this pivot in excel works)
- Type Acquistion and Upgrade normally shows positive values. If selected, sum everything then sort desc
- Type Contract end and Downgrade normally shows negative values. If selected, sum everything then sort asc
- If all or any positive-negative type combiniation (for example: the selected types are upgrade, contract end and downgrade), sum everything first then sort desc

https://preview.redd.it/vh2e7mic932h1.png?width=1990&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6142da17e8c7dd465d903d348a16a6021fd9a90

Lets say I have sum(male)=100 and sum(female)=90 measure. Now when I put it in dual axis, it shows female in one colour at 90 and the rest 10 of male as another colour. What I want is 90 female and on top of that 100 male so the total value comes upto 190 on the scale. Is this possible?

I made 9 story pages, but I didn't add a story point to navigate so when it got published, it's only the first page. I have words in the captions and I'm not seeing any navigational tool - am I going to have to do this process all over or is there a way to link the pages after the fact?

https://preview.redd.it/vaud9q3rrx1h1.png?width=412&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9d11810ee50aae58491d4a458f727bfa8a6f331

I have a measure values table broken out by dates. Each calc field represents a KPI that also has a target for that date. Is there a workaround to color the 3 separate calc fields each by another separate calc fields (ie the respective target)? Ex: If field 1 exceeds its target in 2022, that cell should be colored green--not the entire column or the entire row.

Is tableau declining? I am seeing some veteran tableau users move away from the platform, but also firms moving away and fewer and fewer data analyst roles in the market

Hey all, I need some help with something. I am uploading a report that has 7 dashboards, and 3 different datasources. Each ds is connected to databricks. Previous versions did take at most 15min to upload, and this one had a canceled one of 100 minutes almost, and the current (atm) try has been uploading for 52min and progress bar is less than half, about 40% or so.

What can I do to 'fix' this? get better times?

I am not a tableau developer but I work with some. We collaborated on dashboard to show some data from a web application my team is making. I supplied a SQL view for them to use and they wired it up. It works but I noticed it was a little slow. I realized in my testing I queried using id (integer) and they used a date field. Logically this works, it's a 1-1 relationship, but when I asked if they can make the filter using the id but display the date to users, apparently not.

From what I read, it can be done with parameters or there is a way to format the label if static but these values change so neither of these seemed right. I am surprised because this is common in web dev and SSRS and every other system I've used.

I'd want to pick a field to filter on and then pick a second field as the label. My responsibility to make sure that makes sense as Tableau would get the distinct set of those to use.

Is Tableau really that limited or is there a way to do this?

We were moving from Tableau 2023.3 to 2025.3 while rebuilding the environment in another AWS region because the original region situation started becoming unstable.

Honestly the thing that caught us off guard wasnt even Tableau itself. It was all the small stuff around it.

The old server was running Amazon Linux 2 which newer Tableau versions dont support anymore, so inplace upgrade was dead from day one. We had to build a parallel environment and slowly validate everything before cutover.

The weirdest part was restore initially kept failing and for sometime we genuinely thought the backup was damaged. Turned out to be related to the identity service changes in newer Tableau versions.

Final cutover itself only took few mins after DNS switch. Preparation took way longer then expected.

Curious if anyone else here has done big version jumps recently from older Tableau environments. Did you hit anything unexpected during restore or identity migration?

Wrote some notes during the migration if anyone finds it useful:
https://tasrieit.com/blog/tableau-server-upgrade-2023-to-2025-aws-region-migration

I am trying to use the Beeswarm extension from LaDataViz.

I am trying to size the bubbles by a DateDiff calculation, but when I drag that onto the size pill, the sheet goes blank.

Any suggestions? TIA

I did see all the Datafam fan fair and totally missed the raffle

So, I am a little unclear on the tableau MCP feature...

From what I have seen, you basically use the tableau connecter in claude desktop to connect to tableau data sources and to ask questions about your data.

What is all this talk about "hosting" mcp server on tableau cloud? What exactly is that and what does it mean? Does that help with security and with keeping data inside my four walls?

To me, it sounds like connecting tableau data sources directly into claude is a huge privacy concern, no?

I can't find much literature on the tableau cloud hosting part. Can someone help clarify all this for me?