Create elements from Tableau

When the source data for your data-driven elements is available in Tableau, you can create charts and tables directly from there. When data in Tableau changes, you can update the linked elements with a single click to reflect that change.

Requirements for linking to Tableau

Naturally, you need access to a Tableau server to link a chart or table to Tableau data. think-cell supports both on-premise and cloud hosted versions of Tableau. To link to filtered versions of a view, you need to be able to create and save custom views on the server on which the view is hosted.

think-cell uses an interface to Tableau that is available in a browser window to extract the data represented in a Tableau view and makes the data available to a think-cell element in place of its datasheet. This part of think-cell's functionality is implemented as a browser extension, so you also need a supported browser and the think-cell extension must be installed. Currently, the extension is available for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. It is installed automatically along with think-cell into Chrome and Edge, and can be installed manually into Firefox (see Install the browser extension).

think-cell can only import Tableau data from views displayed in a browser, not directly from Tableau Desktop.

Create elements from Tableau data

1. Open a Tableau dashboard in your supported browser.
2. Select the think-cell extension icon:
3. The different views on your dashboard are detected and shaded in green when the mouse pointer is over them. Select a view.
4. A new tab is opened with the view's data. Select the element that you want to create.
5. Assign columns to the parts of the think-cell datasheet pertinent to the chosen element type, i.e., for a stacked column chart, categories, series and values.
6. Select Create to create a think-cell element in PowerPoint.

think-cell remembers the connection to the Tableau data. Selecting the datasheet button of the element in PowerPoint will open the tab with the Tableau view in your default browser. In the browser tab, select Update to transmit updated data to PowerPoint. You can also start the data update from think-cell's Data Links dialog or the element's mini toolbar (see Manage linked data with the Data Links dialog).