Chapter 11. Improving Performance

Recently, while teaching a Tableau Desktop class, a gentleman approached me regarding a dashboard he had built that was performing inadequately. He stated that his dashboard probably flaunted several best practices for performance. Alas, he was correct! The dashboard had close to a dozen filters, most of which were set to show Only relevant values. Also, the dashboard was chock-full of worksheets, some of which included thousands of marks. Although we did not look at the underlying data sources, based on our conversation, some of those data sources probably included complex joins. I was amazed that the dashboard performed as well as it did! This underscores a truth that many Tableau authors have experienced: Tableau can perform abysmally if best practices are not followed.

This chapter will address various aspects of performance with the intent of empowering you with techniques for creating workbooks that load quickly and respond snappily to end user interaction...