Extend Your Visual Analytics with Tableau Viz Extensions

Tableau has enabled the new Viz Extensions experience—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. It was also driven by the many visualization ideas that our community contributed towards our forums, and the ongoing conversations with our users, community leaders and ambassadors. 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! 

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 in 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 use Viz Extensions?

Viz Extensions is now generally available in Tableau 2024.2. At launch, there are 30 new viz types now offered as Viz Extensions that can be found in Tableau Exchange.  These new viz extensions are built natively by Tableau and by our Partner Community.  

Viz Extensions can now be loaded into the Worksheet from the Marks Card Drop down. This is available in both Tableau Desktop and in Web Authoring. This includes the new Tableau built Sankey visualization, a viz type that was inspired by community feedback for this viz type. 

Sankey visualizations are useful for communicating relationships and flows between different categories. Sankey is part of the Tableau Viz Extension.

For more step by step guides around this feature, please refer to the product help guide.

What’s next for Tableau Viz Extensions?

With Tableau Viz Extensions, we are always encouraging people to join our DataDev Developer community to help contribute new extension feedback and ideas. Developers can learn more about developing new Viz Extensions by learning more about the Tableau Extension API.

Learning resources on Viz Extensions:

• Salesforce+: TC24 Session on Viz Extensions
• InfoTopic: Viz Extension Guide
• LaDataViz Viz Extension FAQ
• Tableau Tim: New Native Chart types in Tableau