Extend Your Visual Analytics with Tableau Viz Extensions

As a part of the Tableau Beta Preview, Tableau has enabled the new Viz Extensions experience for testing—a new capability that will make it possible to load bespoke viz types into your worksheets. This feature was inspired by the New Chart Type Pilot on Tableau Public in spring 2023, where we saw excitement from our DataFam in how new visualizations were introduced. We wanted to empower the community to play an active role in the designing and developing their own viz types they use in Tableau.  

Viz Extensions extend the capabilities of what Tableau can visualize, adding more tools for people to explore insights and present information in entirely new designs and layouts. We’re excited to see what the community will develop! While this feature is still in development and will launch later in 2024, we’re excited to get your feedback as we refine this experience.

You can sign up for the Tableau Beta at https://www.tableau.com/getbeta. The Viz Extensions feature is currently available as a web authoring experience that is enabled in the Tableau Cloud Beta environment.

What are Viz Extensions?

Viz Extensions allow us to load more visualization types onto the Tableau worksheet Marks card, extending Tableau’s rich visualization foundation at will. For Tableau authors,  this will make it easier to be more expressive with visual designs that will be shared through the Tableau Exchange and with the Tableau Community. More expressive web visualizations can be integrated to how and where you work with data, and Viz Extensions interact with—and feel just like—the rest of Tableau.

For developers, Viz Extensions create an opportunity to bring custom visualizations into Tableau’s analytics capabilities. They can be built with any JavaScript visualization library and integrate into the Tableau experience using our Extensions API. This makes it easier to deliver custom visualization capabilities that can be scaled to every analyst in your deployment and to the broader Tableau Community.

How can Tableau customers test Viz Extensions now?

Viz Extensions are available as part of the Tableau Pre-Release Program, and can be found as a feature to test in the Tableau Cloud Beta site. Anyone in the Tableau Community can self-register for the Tableau Beta by signing up at https://www.tableau.com/getbeta. We encourage everyone to share their feedback via the survey found in the Pre-Release pages.

To help support testing and feedback, the Sankey visualization that was piloted  in summer 2023 has been rebuilt as a viz extension. The Sankey can be found when launching the Tableau Exchange via the "Add Extension" option in the Marks type dropdown. Customers who have signed up for the beta are encouraged to test it as a new viz type in Tableau; remember that it’s a work-in-progress, so there will be more refinement to the Sankey extension this year.

What’s next for Tableau Viz Extensions?

Viz Extensions are under development, our Tableau team is working to offer the feature in general availability later in 2024. And, we’re working with the Tableau Partner ecosystem to develop more extensions, and hope to share even more new viz types soon.

We also encourage anyone interested in developing viz extensions to contact Wilson Po at wpo@salesforce.com. We’re running a separate program by invitation that focuses on the developer experience for those interested in exploring those tools.  

Sign up to test the Tableau Viz Extensions in the Tableau Beta Preview, as part of the web authoring experience when you register for a Tableau Cloud Beta Site.