About Tableau Pulse
With Tableau Pulse, users receive personalized data insights about metrics that they follow. These insights are sent directly to users in Slack and email digests, giving them access to the data they need in the tools they already use. If users want to learn more about their data, they can visit a metric's insights exploration page on Tableau Cloud. On that page, users can engage in guided data analysis to understand what is driving changes to their data.
Tableau Pulse is available for Tableau Cloud. To get a site ready for Tableau Pulse, a site administrator must first turn on the setting and make sure that there's appropriate data to work with. Then, users can create metric definitions, which specify the core metadata for metrics. Users create metrics based on these definitions by adjusting filter and time options to scope the data in ways that are useful for different groups of followers.
The articles here help you get started with Tableau Pulse, whether you're a Tableau administrator setting up your site, a Creator defining the metadata that metrics are based on, a Viewer exploring existing metrics, or a developer embedding metrics.
| Article | Audience | About |
|---|---|---|
| Set Up Your Site for Tableau Pulse | Site Administrators | Settings, permissions, and requirements for Tableau Pulse |
| Create Metrics with Tableau Pulse | Creators, Site Administrator Explorers, and Explorers (can publish) | Definitions and metrics and how to create them |
| Explore Metrics with Tableau Pulse | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | The types of analysis you can do with existing metrics |
| Set Manual Goals and Thresholds with Tableau Pulse | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | Goals and thresholds that let you track metric performance |
| Ask Questions and Discover Insights in Tableau Pulse(Link opens in a new window) | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | Options for finding insights with Ask Q&A (single metric exploration) or with Enhanced Q&A (grouped metric exploration powered by AI in Tableau) |
| The Insights Platform and Insight Types in Tableau Pulse | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | The insight types available in Tableau Pulse and general information about how the Insights platform works |
| Get Alerts About Tableau Pulse Insights | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | New unfavorable trend alerts for the metrics that you follow |
| Work with Tableau Pulse Metrics and Dashboards | Creators, Site Administrator Explorers, and Explorers (can publish) | The Pulse dashboard object and recommended metrics based on dashboard data |
| Tableau Pulse REST API Methods(Link opens in a new window) | Developers | The API methods to create metrics, get metric details, generate insights, and more |
| Embed Tableau Pulse(Link opens in a new window) | Developers | The Tableau Embedding API web component for embedding metrics in a web page |
| Set Up the Pulse for Salesforce App | Salesforce customers | The Pulse app that Salesforce customers can purchase |
| Configure a Tableau Pulse Lightning Web Component | Salesforce customers | The Tableau Pulse Lightning web component for Salesforce Lightning pages |
| Interact with Data on Tableau Mobile(Link opens in a new window) | Creators, Explorers, and Viewers | Tableau Pulse on Tableau Mobile |
Tableau Pulse release notes
Added May 22, 2025
Set thresholds for metrics
Measure how a metric is performing relative to a threshold value by setting a data source or manual threshold. Data source thresholds are dynamic values that you set on a metric definition. Manual thresholds are a single static value that you set on an individual metric. Anyone who views a metric sees the threshold value. For more information, see Configure data source goals and thresholds and Set Manual Goals and Thresholds with Tableau Pulse.
Added May 7, 2025
Set a custom calendar
If the standard Gregorian calendar doesn't fit your organization's data, set a custom calendar. You now have the flexibility to configure calendars such as a 4-5-4 retail calendar. Tableau Pulse aggregates metric data for different time ranges and comparison periods based on the custom calendar. For more information, see Set a custom calendar.
Ask questions based on dimension members in Enhanced Q&A (Discover)
Let your users follow their curiosity freely—exploring different regions, segments, or time periods—all through natural language in Enhanced Q&A (Discover). Discover can now handle questions that filter metrics based on dimension values (region, product, segment) or compare dimension members (West versus East) to uncover meaningful patterns.
For example, you could ask "Show sales for California" or "Compare APAC vs. EMEA" to automatically expand your exploration to the full set of compatible metrics. For more information, see Ask Questions and Discover Insights in Tableau Pulse.
Ask questions and get responses in your preferred language with Enhanced Q&A (Discover)
Enhanced Q&A (Discover) now supports multilingual questions and responses, aligned with Tableau Cloud supported languages. Suggested questions, follow-up questions, and insight briefs adapt to the site’s language setting. Discover detects your input language as you ask questions and it returns LLM responses in that language—even if it differs from the site or data language. Metric names and filters always remain in their original, authored language for clarity and consistency. For more information, see Multilingual support for questions and responses in Discover.
Added April 24, 2025
Certify metric definitions
Tell others that a metric definition is trusted and recommended by certifying it. A certified badge appears on metrics that are based on certified definitions. That badge helps users feel confident relying on those metrics to make business decisions.
You certify a metric definition on the new governance step that is part of editing or creating definitions. The existing permission settings for metric definitions have also moved to the governance step. For more information, see Configure governance.
Added April 10, 2025
Customize the metrics in your insights summary
When you follow a metric, notable changes about that metric can appear in the insights summary at the top of your Tableau Pulse home page and in your Slack and email digests. You can now further customize these summaries by muting metrics. When you mute a metric, insights about that specific metric are removed from your summary without unfollowing the metric. For more information, see Customize your home page and digests.
Added March 27, 2025
Set a custom comparison date for metrics
For metrics filtered to Today or Yesterday, a custom comparison overrides the comparison to the prior day or the same day from a year ago. This comparison option allows you to compare data for events that don’t fall on the same date each year. For more information, see Set a custom daily comparison.
Choose the number of decimal places for metric values
If your data needs to be formatted with a consistent number of decimal places, you can choose the precise number, from 0 to 5. By default, Tableau Pulse automatically determines the number of decimal places to show, with larger values showing fewer decimal places. For more information, see Define metric options.
Added March 13, 2025
Discover more insights with enhanced Q&A (Tableau+)
Enhanced Q&A (Discover) makes it easier to explore insights across groups of business-critical metrics, and then dig deeper on the Discover page. When metrics in Tableau Pulse are grouped by data source, definition, or time range, Discover uses statistical algorithms to examine grouped metrics and surface insights that are relevant, interesting, and worth investigating.
The enhanced Q&A experience provides intuitive key insights, relevant visualizations, source references, and suggested follow-up questions to help you dig deeper. Because it is powered by AI in Tableau, you can ask questions in your own words to get relevant, natural language answers about your data.
Enhanced Q&A (Discover) is available as a Tableau+ premium feature in Tableau Pulse on both web and mobile. Enhanced Q&A (Discover) must be turned on in Tableau Cloud site settings, and requires a connection to a Salesforce org that has Einstein generative AI set up for the selected Salesforce org. For more information, Ask Questions and Discover Insights in Tableau Pulse(Link opens in a new window) and Turn on enhanced Q&A (Discover) in Tableau(Link opens in a new window).
Better semantic matches in any language for Ask Q&A
Turning on this setting enhances semantic matching for any language when you use Ask Q&A. When this setting is on, questions and insights text are sent to OpenAI as part of semantic matching. All calls to OpenAI go through the Einstein Trust Layer(Link opens in a new window). For more information, see Turn on better semantic matches for Ask Q&A in Tableau(Link opens in a new window)
Get alerts for new unfavorable trends
If Tableau Pulse detects a new unfavorable trend in the data for a metric that you follow, you receive an alert about that trend in your email and Slack digests. If you use Tableau Mobile, you also receive a notification on your mobile device. For more information, see Get Alerts About Tableau Pulse Insights.
Control who can create metric definitions from a data source
Data sources have a new Create Metric Definitions permission capability. With this capability, you can now separately control who can create metric definitions from a data source and who can view metrics that use that data source. For more information, see Permissions for creating metric definitions.
Adjust when Tableau Pulse starts generating digests
Tableau site administrators can set the time at which Tableau Pulse starts generating email and Slack digests. That way, if your data refreshes at a specific time, the digests reflect the freshest data. For more information, see Set the digest start time.
Set the aggregation type for data source goals
You can now choose how Tableau Pulse aggregates the data for a data source goal. Measures can be aggregated as a sum, average, median, maximum, or minimum, and dimensions can be aggregated as a count or distinct count to produce a measure. Previously, all data source goals were aggregated as a sum. Additionally, you can now set data source goals for metric definitions that use any aggregation. Previously, you could create data source goals only for metric definitions where the measure was aggregated as a sum or count. For more information, see Configure data source goals and thresholds.
Create an advanced data source goal
The advanced editor lets you create data source goals using the familiar Tableau viz authoring environment. You can use the advanced editor to create goals based on calculated fields. For more information, see Configure data source goals and thresholds.
Tableau Pulse data source goals
When creating or editing a metric definition, you can set a goal that uses a field from your data source to specify the goal values. This goal appears on the metrics based on the definition and is summed based on a metric’s time range. For more information, see Configure data source goals and thresholds and Requirements for data source goals and thresholds.
Tableau Pulse available in 14 languages
Tableau Pulse now reflects the language and locale set by the user on Tableau Cloud and the language set for the device on Tableau Mobile. Tableau supports English (US), English (UK), French (France), French (Canada), German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Thai. For more information, see Technical Specifications for Tableau Cloud.
Tableau Pulse links to related content
When creating or editing a metric definition, you can add links to related content. These links appear on each metric’s Insights Exploration page. Consider including links to related dashboards, Slack channels, or workflows to help others follow up on the data. For more information, see Configure the core definition.
Tableau Pulse new border style for dashboard object
When embedding a metric in a dashboard, you can select the Tableau Pulse style option so that the dashboard object resembles the rounded-corner metric cards in Tableau Pulse. Without this style option, the metrics on a dashboard resemble other borderless dashboard objects. For more information, see Add metrics to dashboards and create metrics from dashboards.
Turn off the Unexpected Values insight in Tableau Pulse
In metric definition settings (Insights tab), you can turn off the Unexpected Values insight to hide the text description and expected range (blue shaded band in chart). For more information, see Insight types in Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse personalized insight ranking setting
Administrators can turn Tableau Pulse personalized insight ranking off or on in site settings, independent of the setting to deploy Tableau Pulse. For more information, see Turn off Personalized Insight Ranking.
Tableau Pulse currency setting
When you set your definition to use the currency number format, you can now set which nation's currency to use, and Tableau Pulse will display that currency symbol and number format.
Added in August 2024
Tableau Pulse dashboard object
You can now add a Pulse Metric object to your dashboards. When you add this object, you can choose from metrics that connect to the same published data sources that are used by the workbook. For more information, see Add metrics to dashboards and create metrics from dashboards.
Tableau Pulse grouping and sorting
Customize your Tableau Pulse home page and digests by grouping and sorting metrics. You can now sort metrics based on how recently you followed the metric, or group metrics that share a metric definition or a data source. For more information, see Customize your home page and digests.
Tableau Pulse goals
Create a goal in Tableau Pulse to track a metric’s progress toward the goal. After a goal is created, you’ll see your progress toward that goal in your Tableau Pulse digests and on your Tableau Pulse home page. For more information, see Set Manual Goals and Thresholds with Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse improved Ask experience for exploring insights
Ask more questions about a metric to get suggestions for insights based on the same metric definition. You can now enter questions that adjust the time granularity and apply dimensional filters for the current metric view. For example, "Sales in California last week," "Zoom into technology," or "What about yesterday?" For more information, see How Tableau Pulse Approaches NLP with Q&A to Empower Everyone.
Tableau Pulse for Salesforce app
The Pulse for Salesforce app connects your Salesforce org with Tableau, creates metrics based on your Salesforce data, and surfaces these metrics in Salesforce. For more information, see Set Up the Pulse for Salesforce App.
Tableau Pulse minimum time granularity
You can now set a minimum time granularity for a metric definition, which limits the time ranges that users can select when filtering to create metrics. This prevents users from selecting time ranges that would result in an empty chart because data doesn’t exist for that granularity. For more information, see Define the metric value.
Tableau Pulse week start based on data source
If the data source that a metric connects to has a different week start than the default (Sunday), the metric reflects that start day. That day appears as the first day of the week for metric charts and insights that deal with weekly values.
Tableau Pulse restrict metric definition editing
You can restrict who can edit or delete a metric definition so that only specific users and groups have access. For more information, see Restrict editing for definitions and manual goals and thresholds.
Tableau Pulse record-level outliers insight type
A new insight type, record-level outliers, is now available to help you easily spot outliers in your data that are impacting metric values. This insight type shows notably high or low values for a metric, in the context of row-level values of the metric across a period of time. For more information, see Insight types in Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse outlier insight setting
Turn on or off the record-level outliers insight type to control whether Tableau Pulse looks for extremely high or low values in your data. For more information, see Configure insights.
Tableau Pulse date offsets
You can now add a date offset to your metric definition to change the final point in the time series from “Today” to a set number of days in the past. For more information, see Define the metric value.
Tableau Pulse adjustable metric filter improvements
The metric filter options that you can select now show only relevant values when definition filters have been applied to a metric definition. This means that if a metric definition has a definition filter set to limit the data to a certain region, for example, only cities in that region will appear as options for adjustable metric filters.
Tableau Pulse personalized insight ranking
Enhance your insights experience by letting Tableau Pulse know which insights you find most valuable. Your thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback on insights influence which insights you see first.
Tableau Pulse charts in Slack
When you check your Tableau Pulse digest in Slack, you'll now see a sparkline chart that shows that period's data.
Tableau Pulse improved metric recommendations for dashboards
When you explore recommended metrics for dashboards, Tableau now shows more relevant and informative recommendations. Additionally, calculated fields from the data source now appear in recommendations.
Tableau Pulse pre-aggregated fields in metric definitions
When creating a definition, you can now select a field that is pre-aggregated in the data source and use it as the measure.
Tableau Pulse applied filters shown for metrics
When you visit the Insights Exploration page for a metric, the specific filters that are applied to that metric are now listed above the chart.
Tableau Pulse improved navigation options
The Tableau Pulse sparkle (upper-left corner of the Insights Exploration page) now includes drop-down options for navigating to the Tableau Cloud home page and followed metrics.
Tableau Pulse ad-hoc questions for insights
In the guided insights experience, click the Ask button and enter your own questions related to the insights surfaced for a metric. Receive semantically matched suggestions for more insights. For more information, see How Tableau Pulse Approaches NLP with Q&A to Empower Everyone.
Tableau Pulse follow metrics
Adjust filter values and follow different metrics based on the same definition. When you follow a metric, the time period and filter selections are preserved in your Tableau Pulse home page and digests. For more information, see Follow metrics.
Tableau Pulse guided insights
Tableau Pulse provides a path for exploring your data by surfacing questions for each insight that it detects for a metric. As you click through the suggested questions about your data, answers are revealed in easy-to-read charts with insights about the underlying data. For more information, see Explore metrics in detail, adjust the time range, or apply filters.
Tableau Pulse insights platform
The insights platform automatically detects drivers, trends, contributors, and outliers for metrics. It proactively flags and describes insights that matter using natural language and visual explanations. For more information, see The Insights Platform and Insight Types in Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse insight summaries
Tableau Pulse looks across the metrics that you follow and leverages AI in Tableau to summarize the most important insights. Insight summaries make use of a large language model (LLM) to provide a personalized overview in plain language. AI in Tableau is built on the Einstein Trust Layer, meaning it enables trusted, ethical, and open AI-powered experiences without compromising data security and privacy. For more information, see Insight summaries highlight metrics of interest.
Tableau Pulse metrics layer
The metrics layer provides a single source of truth for your data. Create metric definitions to specify the core metadata that metrics are based on, then adjust filters and time options to create metrics for different groups of followers. For more information, see Create Metrics with Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse recommended metrics for dashboards
Get a head start on creating metrics by selecting the recommended metrics displayed for Tableau dashboards. For more information, see Add metrics to dashboards and create metrics from dashboards.
Tableau Pulse deployment setting
Choose to deploy Tableau Pulse for a single group of users or for all users on your Tableau site. For more information, see Deploy Tableau Pulse for your site.
Tableau Pulse insight summaries setting
Insight summaries can be turned on or off independently of the site setting used to deploy Tableau Pulse. For more information, see AI in Tableau for Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse fiscal calendar support
Tableau Pulse now reflects fiscal calendars that have been set on a data source or on specific fields in a data source. For more information, see How fiscal calendars work with metrics .
Tableau Pulse admin insights
Tableau Puse metadata has been added to the Site Content, Users, and Subscriptions data sources for Admin Insights. Admins can use these data sources to learn about the definitions and metrics on a site. For more information, see Use Admin Insights to Create Custom Views.
Tableau Pulse primary time comparison
You can now set a primary time comparison as part of a metric definition, and all metrics based on the definition will use that comparison in digests and insights. For more information, see Define the metric value.