[Update: The product manager Wilson Po alerted me that the Viz Extension is still a work in progress. It will not be part of the incoming version 2024.1. Instead, it will be released later in 2024. Just be patient]

Tableau 2024.1 is coming. I got a chance to test drive it. As I wrote a bunch of posts on Sankey chart tutorials in the past, I am most excited by the new Sankey chart type. Here I would like to share what I learnt. This is a quick preview. Your comments are welcome.

I created both dark mode and light mode of a 4-level Sankey chart. The design is a breeze as I did it before.

1.The new chart type needs to be imported as an add-on, aka Viz Extension. This opens the door to many new bespoke chart types by 3rd parties. WoW!

This is actually following the same philosophy behind Tableau's product design for many years. Any dashboard can be a chart type because we can get a copy of the workbook and plug in our own data by replacing data sources. Voila, in theory, we can create our own version of the same dashboard in no time.

Now new chart types can be created and shared at a much lower level or lower granularity of a dashboard. I can foresee that it will spawn a new wave of creativities and provide a wide array of design options.

2.The new chart type is only available on the web editor. So we won't see it in Tableau Desktop.

For the moment, the web editor still lag behind the desktop in terms of functionalities. For example, the formatting on the web editor has much less options.

3.I can't format the headers of column bars in the Sankey chart

4.There is no way to add tooltips to the column bars. 

5.There is no choice of custom color palettes. The web editor will assign its own color palette to the Sankey chart. We need the ability to color the bars and curves according to our own taste.

6.I downloaded the workbook from Tableau Cloud server. But I could not display the chart in Tableau desktop 2024.1. It seems I need the Sankey Viz extension in the desktop. I wonder if we will ever have one.

7.I also tried to download the images of the dashboard. But it doesn't work. The downloaded images are blank. The images in the above are screenshots.

8.A great feature is that each path can be highlighted easily.

9.The hierarchy of Category and Sub-Category is kept even after I deleted it. I tried to sort Category and Sub-Category independently by deleting the hierarchy. Still sorting the Sub-Category is always nested in Category.

All the above will be fixed or improved sooner or later. It will definitely popularize the utility of a beloved chart type. Great job, Tableau team!