New Elements for Tableau Features for Increased Customizability and Ease of Use

Zsolt Palmai
HCLTech-Starschema Blog
3 min readDec 17, 2021
Photo by Anton Shuvalov on Unsplash

A recent update to Elements for Tableau — Starschema’s write-back and dashboard collaboration extension — adds new features and refines existing functionality to enable even deeper customizability of collaborative dashboard-based workflows.

Let’s look at the highlights.

Static fields

The new Static field type option on annotation forms enable dashboard users with appropriate permissions to enrich your annotation data with custom information.

Static fields can store the value of a Tableau filter, parameter, field or a constant value — in addition to the all the other information stored in the corresponding table in the Annotation database. These fields are set up along with the extension (mapping) configuration and not visible on the annotation form itself. This way, only those to whom this additional data is relevant can see it.

Fully manageable tables

The new update enables Tableau/Elements admins to manage the tables of annotation forms. If the form fields are changed in any way — added, removed or renamed — the software can now update the database tables directly instead of only showing the table create scripts.

Concurrency control

The newly-added concurrency control for annotations helps users avoid stepping on each other toes when more than one person is editing the same field. Elements now alerts concurrent editors that the particular annotation has just been updated by somebody else, and the alert even provides the option to overwrite the other user’s edits.

In addition to the above features, the new update adds a number of functional improvements to enhance performance and usability:

· Adds native support for Snowflake as an annotation database provider.
· Adds an admin page to monitor API requests for easier problem discovery.
· Updates the design of the Workspace permission window to make it easier to use.
· Improves the “Failed to delete” message when deleting a Server of a data source on the admin UI with a rule depending on it.
· Adds support for minus values in integer and decimal fields validation.
· Adds a logout button to the extension.

These features and updates are now available out-of-the-box with any new Elements license, while existing deployments will receive them on demand or automatically with the next update.
For more information, contact us at info@starschema.com.

Find out how Elements can help you get more value out of Tableau:

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Zsolt Palmai
HCLTech-Starschema Blog

Zsolt is Content Manager at data services firm Starschema, where he creates materials to help you learn about the company and enterprise-grade data solutions.