Oh Tableau 10.2 - You had me at Autosave

Normally I don’t write about upgrades for Tableau unless they are full version upgrades, you know - the big ones. Well….10.2 is a different beast. Below are my favorite features!

AUTOSAVE - This Changes EVERYTHING

Holy Crap! Seriously, I think I’ve thought about this feature being added every day I used Tableau for the past 4 years. Finally, it’s here! I downloaded the beta, saved a file….and immediately began beating it to death with table calcs, massive grids, etc - you know, the stuff that usually destroys your workbook :). It took a little bit to break it, but I did and I got a new window that came up with my auto-recovered workbook, just like excel or word!!! :)

LEGENDS PER MEASURE

Ok, so I call this one “Conditional Formatting”, but whatever it is, its great. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to implement the whole “ok we need to make fake bar charts and layer the actual values over the bars to get conditional formatting by column” solution. This is going to make life soooo much easier!

Yep it works!

JOIN CALCULATIONS

So this one I probably won’t use AS much as the first two, BUT it’s going to save me alot of valuable time where I won’t have to go in and fix the underlying data before I do my joins in Tableau. Essentially, this tool allows you to “create” fields using the same calculation methodology you use in any workbook but they can be used up front for the join. I tested it out with a very basic test, but it works!

And here’s my “formula” :)

There are so many other great updates in this new version, but these three jumped out at me as the most useful to my immediate needs / current annoyances! :) Keep it going Tableau (still waiting for sheets in tooltips!!!!)