Top New Tableau Pulse Feature Releases to Know

Here are the top new Tableau Pulse features and capabilities to know.

Tableau Pulse is a reimagined data experience, built on the Tableau platform, that empowers every employee with intelligent, personalized, and contextual insights delivered in the flow of work. Tableau Pulse helps everyone in your organization integrate data into their daily jobs to make better, faster decisions. Without having to learn a new tool or build comprehensive visualizations, Tableau Pulse helps you go beyond the how and what and shows you the why behind your data.

Here are the latest Tableau Pulse features and capabilities to know. Note that premium  capabilities are only available in Tableau+.

For Business Users:

For Analysts:

Looking to implement the newest features? Check out the Tableau Pulse release notes.
 

Tableau Pulse capabilities for Business Users

Global currency symbols

Make your Tableau Pulse metrics clearer and more personalized by showing the right currency symbol. Tableau Pulse now supports over 130 different symbols. Once you specify the currency symbol in your metric definition, the value will be used across all the metrics that use that central definition. Please note that the currency symbol location is fixed for now and precedes the value.

Looping video of Tableau Pulse screen showing the selection of British pound currency in a dropdown menu on the left. Blue line chart going up and straight across to the right with 12.1 thousand pounds in total sales

Enhanced Insights: Seasonality

Tableau Pulse now more accurately reflects the expected range of metrics and recognizes unusual changes for data with seasonality trends.

Pulse screen showing 553 ice cream scoops sold with corresponding blue line chart and AI insights on upward trend

Enhanced Ask: Related metrics

(Premium capability)
Answer questions extending beyond what Pulse insights previously detected—in particular, asking about another metric from the same metric definition.

Users can now ask questions down to the filter level to navigate to more accurate metric views  with ‘Ask’. Other enhancements include: better case handling for varying levels of answer confidence, global metric search as an additional fallback, and more informative visual treatments.

These enhancements not only enable dimensional drilldowns on entity-level insights, but also use cases that involve changing the time granularity of a metric, applying multiple filters at once in a question, and navigating to parallel metric scopes.

White screen with question field asking "What questions do you have about the metric?" and text reading "zoom into high tech". Additional questions generated by AI are shown in blue
 

Manually created goals

(Premium capability)
Set a manual goal for a given metric. For those with goal creation permissions: select ‘set goal’ in the ellipsis drop down in the web Insight Exploration page and add any relevant edit restrictions.

White Tableau Pulse screen showing 1500K metric goal of total service calls handled and how much of the goal has been met

Dynamic sorting and grouping

(Premium capability)
Sort and arrange your metrics leveraging metadata such as metric name, data source, and time range. This feature allows you to organize and evaluate related metrics together, on web and mobile. Detect important patterns and trends in your data with a flexible and user-friendly method for organizing and grouping metrics.

Sort the ‘following’ tab on web or mobile by:

  • Data Source Name
  • Metric Name
  • Recency (Recently Followed)

And set that default view consistent across:

  • Email Digests
  • Tableau Mobile app
  • Following tab in the web

Blue background with six tiles showing sales and call center statistics with blue sparklinesMobile screen view of Tableau Pulse with sort menu showing data source selected. Blue button at the bottom that reads apply
 

Popular metrics

Pulse helps you discover metrics more easily by exposing metric follower count in the insight exploration page and metric search. Metric follower count will be shown automatically, without any admin or user configuration.

Updated metric value showing 285,600 followers

Set Tableau Pulse as mobile start page

For frequent users of the Tableau mobile app, set Pulse as your default start page for easier, faster access to Pulse.

To configure, update the Tableau mobile app. The app will automatically prompt start page selection upon first access and redirect you to your mobile app settings. In cases where one is connected to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud with Pulse disabled, selecting Pulse will fallback to default (default set by admin or user on web).

Mobile phone showing pop-up reading "Customize Your Start Page" to set start page as Tableau Pulse

Change mobile time period

Pulse on Tableau Mobile now better matches web functionality around the most common Pulse interactions. Select the ‘filter’ dropdown to change the time period for a metric when browsing your metrics on mobile—without needing to switch to the web to explore.

Tableau Pulse mobile screen showing week to date filter changing to "quarter to date" time period

“Check your Pulse” mobile reminders

Never miss important insights with daily mobile reminders. Enable notifications for the Tableau mobile app to remind you to "Check your Pulse" daily—so you always stay up-to-date with your business metrics.

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/2024-08/Pulse_mobile-reminder_1920x1080.png

Personalized insights ranking

Get insights ranked according to what you find most useful through thumbs up and thumbs down feedback. Feedback informs insight ranking for the user that provided the feedback and other users following the same metric. It is considered in the context of metric, filtered population, and insight type. 

Tableau Pulse home page with AI-generated text insights and thumbs up and thumbs down icons for ranking insights

Pulse Q&A

Pulse Q&A unlocks more ways to explore your insights through guided questions and the ability to ask questions. Tableau Pulse can automate the most frequently asked business questions on the metric definition context, such as drivers, contributors, trends, and changes. Pulse performs these analyses then delivers them in the form of plain language insights shared in guided conversations via point-and-click (guided questions) or through typing in questions (“ask”). 

“Ask”: You will now see an additional "Ask" button next to the existing guided questions which enables you to ask questions related to metrics you are investigating. Using the "ask" feature will prompt suggested questions that match the insights you are investigating.
 

Natural language questions and responses in Tableau Pulse in Tableau Mobile

 

Guided questions: Analysts and admins can also hardcode guided questions to address the most frequently asked questions about a given metric. In one click, users can self-serve the answer alongside other common questions, speeding up time to insight and reducing repetitive work.

White screen with bar charts showing units sold and suggested questions for for insights into this sales data

Sparklines in Slack Digest

Receive natural language insights accompanied by visual explanations, making it easier to assess the changes in your metrics in your flow of work. Quickly identify the trend in your metrics and if it’s within the expected range so you can make appropriate and timely decisions—without leaving Slack.

Slack application with purple menu bar showing Tableau Pulse insights with simple, blue sparklines for sales data reaching 6.9 million

  Mobile Slack app showing Tableau Pulse insights with a blue sparkline for 6.9 million in sales

 

Tableau Pulse capabilities for Analysts blog header

Pulse metrics in dashboards

Tableau dashboard creators can now embed Pulse metrics using a built-in dashboard object available in both Desktop and Server dashboard authoring. By embedding Pulse metrics in operational, strategic, and performance dashboards, users can click on a metric to navigate to its detail page, delving deeper into metric trends and readable insights.

Drag and drop the new Pulse Metric dashboard object on your dashboard, and the object will automatically detect all published data sources and their Metric Definitions. 

Data visualization with a ray map of California on the right. Two boxes on the left show the numbers 24 and 2.4 for laptop ship volume and discount, respectively

Restrict metric definition editing

Improve governance by restricting editing or deletion of metric definitions to site admins and authorized analysts. With these updated permissions, metrics are safeguarded from changes by unauthorized users.

Desktop screen of Tableau Pulse with pop-up of manage definition editors menu. Restrict editing toggle is on

 

Streamlined metric discovery

Streamline metric selection—only main metrics and variations with followers are displayed when searching and browsing metrics.

Two Tableau Pulse screens labeled Before and After. The After screen has fewer tiles of metrics and values than the Before screen.

Time handling enhancements

Date offset: Improve time handling with specified date offsets. Set a date in the metric definition to specify how the system determines ‘today’. This allows users to line up metrics to when the data source refreshes—eliminating inaccurate gaps for non-standard calendars or when data doesn't update daily.

 

Mobile screen with adjusted date range for list in Tableau Pulse

Zoomed in menu of Tableau time handling setting for time dimension 

Minimum granularity and week start day: Specify a minimum time granularity in metric definitions and set a custom week start day—so you only see relevant time periods that match your data source.
 

Tableau Pulse settings with a dropdown menu for the days of the week

 

Tableau Pulse time settings dropdown menu where you can indicate minimum time granularity

Metric bootstrapping enhancements

Discover metrics hidden in dashboard vizzes with smarter heuristics and more context using Tableau Data Guide. Enhancements include improved heuristics to identify primary measures and dimensions in key Tableau viz types (bar, area, and line charts), recognition and inclusion of calculated fields within Published Data Source (PDS), and improved visualization of icons for measures and dimensions.

White screen with black text reading "Configure recommended metrics" for Tableau Pulse

 

Want to try out the latest features? Check out the Tableau Pulse release notes.