Tableau

Visualizing ‘Dynamic’ Data using a Sine Wave

Johan de Groot · 25 October 2025 ·

Recently I ran into a small but surprisingly tricky problem: how do you visualize something that’s in progress? A standard bar chart works usually perfectly for completed values, but what about the final bar isn’t finished yet because e.g. the year isn’t finished yet,

Fading it out, changing the shape or adding a label like “in progress” didn’t feel right. I wanted something that instantly communicates “this is still ongoing”.

Inspired by how Spotify shows an ongoing song I started experimenting with using a sine wave to bring that bar alive. Instead of a static column, the last bar gently oscillates – hinting that it’s active, not finished.

In this post, I’ll walk through how to create this effect in Tableau step by step.
If you don’t need an ‘in progress’ viz, you can always use it for something else….

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Add ‘All’ and more options to a Dynamic Parameter

Johan de Groot · 18 September 2025 ·

A couple of years ago, Tableau introduced one of its most highly requested features ever: Dynamic Parameters. This feature made it possible to populate a parameter with values directly from a data source, rather than being limited to static, manually entered values.

This works great, but as soon as this was available a new request came up: adding manual values to the list – especially the ‘All’ value.

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Tableau Container Art – 4 examples of formatting dashboards without images

Johan de Groot · 28 August 2025 ·

Tableau containers don’t exactly have the best reputation. Most people either ignore them or wrestle with them. But once you actually get along with containers (and their friends: borders, background colors, and padding), they turn into your dashboard’s interior designers.

*No images were used during the making of these dashboard elements*!

In this post, I’ll show you four small but powerful ways to use the Tableau containers to make your dashboards look sharper, cleaner, and maybe even a little more fun.

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Letting Users Choose Their Visual

Johan de Groot · 3 July 2025 ·

A powerful way of creating flexible, user-friendly dashboards is by letting your users decide how they want to view the data. Instead of forcing them to view at a certain chart type, you can give them the option to chose between different visualizations- bar charts, line charts, etc, or variations on a chart, based on their need, or preference.

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The Tableau VizQL Data Service: What It Is, What It Can Do, and When to Use It

Johan de Groot · 23 June 2025 ·

When people think of Tableau, they usually picture dashboards, visualizations, and drag-and-drop analytics. In this traditional setup, users explore data by interacting with dashboards: charts, filters, tooltips, etc. But what if you don’t need the visuals at all—just the data behind them, with all the same calculations, filters, and logic already applied?

That’s where the VizQL Data Service (VDS) comes in.
Rather than returning charts and visuals, it taps into Tableau’s VizQL engine to give you just the data behind any published view.. Instead of clicking through a dashboard, you can get the same data directly—like a spreadsheet or text file—by sending a simple request from another app or script.

In this post, we’ll explore what the VizQL Data Service is, what you can do with it, and how it fits into the broader Tableau ecosystem. A hands-on example is coming soon in a follow-up article!

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