Imagining an Enhanced Formula Editor for Tableau

A little enhancement in the formula editor can make a big difference for whose who create formula all the time in Tableau. Here are my wishes for a future editor. 

Highlighting Syntax Words

Currently a formula in Tableau can look plain and a bit uninspiring.

    

I would suggest highlighting the syntax words like Case, When, Then, End etc. The result should look like this

    

Talking about Tableau being a visualization leader ... This will distinguish user-input texts from Tableau-defined syntactic words. It will make the formula easier to read and debug.

I would also add that we could highlight the quotes so that it becomes

    When 'California' Then 'CA'

When there are multiple opening brackets, we may not know how many closing brackets are needed. So if we could color code the brackets, it may give users hints on how many closing brackets are missing and which is matching which. 

    WINDOW_MAX(IF ATTR(Category)="Technology" THEN SUM(Sales) END)

Typing Suggestions

I also think of a new suggestive option: When a user types CASE, Tableau suggests an option like

CASE
WHEN THEN
WHEN THEN
END

This goes beyond completing a word: completing a statement or a function. Same goes for other structured statements like

IF 
THEN 
ELSE 
END

And instead of DATEDIFF(), Tableau could suggest a bit more. The list can go on and on:

DATEDIFF('', , ) 
IIF( , , )
IFNULL( , ) 
LOOKUP( , )

Voila. Part of this is from an old post in 2016 on Highlighting Syntax Words in Formula Editor. Hope it will become real someday. The purpose is for the tool to help productivity, faster typing, less typos and easier read and debug.

Your inputs are also welcome. Feel free to leave comments below or contact me at twitter: @aleksoft or LinkedIn