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Tableau's New Radial Chart Type | Tableau 2024.2 and Newer

Build stunning donut charts, gauges, and multi-ring visualizations in Tableau without pie chart workarounds using the new radial extension.

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Finally! Tableau has introduced a proper radial chart extension that eliminates the need for those clunky pie chart workarounds we've all been using to create donut charts. This new extension lets you build professional donut charts, gauges, and multi-ring visualizations with just a few clicks.

The best part? It's backwards compatible with Tableau 24.2 and newer, so most users can start using it right away.

What You'll Learn

  • How to install the radial extension from Tableau's marketplace
  • Creating basic donut charts with rings and angles
  • Adding multiple rings for hierarchical data visualization
  • Customizing formatting options and creating gauge-style charts
  • Setting up dashboard interactivity and filtering

Installing the Radial Extension

Before you can use radial charts, you'll need to install the extension from Tableau's marketplace.

  1. Look for the Extensions section in Tableau's marketplace
  2. Find the Radial extension (built by Tableau)
  3. Click Open to install the extension

[SCREENSHOT: Show the Tableau Extensions marketplace with the Radial extension highlighted]

💡 Tip: Look for the "Trusted Extension" label - this means it's hosted securely by Tableau, so you can trust it completely.

Once installed, you'll see Radial appear at the bottom of your Marks pane as a new chart type option.

Building Your First Donut Chart

Creating a basic donut chart is incredibly straightforward:

  1. Select the Radial chart type from the Marks pane
  2. Drag your dimension (like Region) to the Ring shelf
  3. Drag your measure (like Sales) to the Angle shelf

[SCREENSHOT: Show the basic donut chart with Region on Ring and Sales on Angle]

That's it! You now have a functional, interactive donut chart that responds to clicks and filters.

Adding Multiple Rings for Hierarchical Data

One of the most powerful features is the ability to create multi-ring visualizations for hierarchical data.

  1. With your basic donut chart created, drag an additional dimension to the Ring shelf
  2. For example, add Country to create an inner ring with Region as the outer ring

[SCREENSHOT: Show multi-ring chart with Country as inner ring and Region as outer ring]

💡 Tip: Only the outer ring is clickable for interactivity - this prevents confusion about which level you're selecting.

Dashboard Integration and Interactivity

Radial charts work seamlessly with Tableau's dashboard functionality:

  1. Add your radial chart to a dashboard
  2. Enable the Filter option for dashboard actions
  3. Clicking segments in the outer ring will filter other visualizations on the dashboard

[SCREENSHOT: Show the radial chart integrated into a dashboard with other charts responding to selections]

Advanced Formatting Options

The formatting panel offers extensive customization options:

Creating Gauge Charts

  1. Click on the Formatting panel
  2. Adjust the Total Angle to create semicircle gauges (try 180 degrees)
  3. Set the Starting Angle to 270 degrees to position it correctly

[SCREENSHOT: Show a semicircle gauge chart created using the angle settings]

Customizing Appearance

  • Padding: Adjust the gap between rings
  • Labels: Control font size, style, and visibility
  • Center Text: Add total values or custom text in the center
  • Colors: Apply custom color palettes, including Tableau 25.3's new palette feature

💡 Tip: For center text, use a specific font size rather than automatic sizing for better control over appearance.

Common Considerations

Color Consistency: The color palette is locked to your first dimension. If you're using consistent colors across your workbook for specific dimensions (like regions), make sure to apply the same palette to maintain consistency.

Font Limitations: The extension doesn't automatically use Tableau's default fonts, so you may need to manually set font preferences in the formatting panel.

Quick Recap

The radial extension transforms how we create circular visualizations in Tableau. No more pie chart workarounds - just clean, professional donut charts, gauges, and multi-ring visualizations.

Key steps: Install the extension, drag dimensions to Ring and measures to Angle, customize formatting as needed, and integrate with your dashboards for interactive filtering.

Ready to explore more Tableau features? Check out the new color palette functionality in Tableau 25.3 to make your radial charts even more visually appealing.

  • You can now build radial charts inside a tableau out of the box.
  • Well, not quite out of the box.
  • If you go to the marks pane, you'll see that at the very bottom I have the radial chart type here
  • But in order to see this in this space, what you have to do is add an extension.
  • Now extensions are capabilities that don't ship with Tableau natively when you install the software, but are available in the Tableau.
  • Extensions sort of marketplace.
  • And so what you can see here are three built by Tableau: Sankey, Tableau Table, and Radial.
  • Radial is a new one in 25.
  • 3, but here's the thing
  • It supports older versions of Tableau as well.
  • So you can go back to 24.
  • 2.
  • So that means if you've had Tableau, depending on when you're watching this, for the last year and a half, you pretty much are going to have this feature supported, which is really, really nice.
  • This is one of the best decisions I think Salesforce or Tableau made, making sure that in 24.
  • 2 when they ship this capability, all future versions would be supported, which is which is really really nice
  • Another thing you'll notice is this is a trusted extension.
  • What this means is that it's hosted in a specific way, which means you can trust it.
  • Now, in literal terms, there's actually three different things that this means here.
  • So
  • Um it's uh hosted by Tableau or built by Tableau plus Salesforce or a trusted partner.
  • So it's one of three things.
  • So you still have to know this, but you do see the information here.
  • It's hosted
  • here by Tableau in a in a nice secure space.
  • So at least for this one you know exactly what's going on.
  • Now if I go ahead and hit open it will grab the extension and it will open up the radio chart type.
  • And so this works just like you'd expect.
  • And this is nice because you don't have to use any hacks with pie charts.
  • It was possible to build a like a donut chart, which is what this does out of the box before.
  • So let me just show you how this works super quickly.
  • We'll drag
  • region onto ring and we'll drag cells onto angle and we're pretty much done.
  • There's our donut chart and you can see it's interactable, it's clickable.
  • Now if I want to add another ring around it, which is sort of the purpose behind this
  • Let's say I want to add the country region around this, then I can absolutely do that.
  • So the regions here are uh more high level than the countries.
  • So here what I've done is I've added the countries and notice when you do this.
  • the outer level is clickable but not the inner level and I guess this is because Tableau doesn't want to be confused about what you're selecting.
  • Essentially if I select this
  • Would expect everything to be selected here.
  • So to me it's not a difficult sort of design thing to make, but um I think they've kept it simple in this shit point and they've made it so that at least you can select the outer one.
  • This is the same for interaction, so
  • If I go put this on my product dashboard, let's go ahead and bring it in, place it here on the right hand side, click this filter option here, just make this a little bit better spaced out.
  • I can actually click these outer rings and you can see that the whole of Tableau changes.
  • So this is really nice.
  • This is a really nice thing to see.
  • If you go back to the chart, you you've also got labels here
  • You can play around with all of these set settings.
  • So tooltips is there.
  • You can play around with the centering capability.
  • an interesting one I believe what we can do is put the total sales figure right in the middle there and then we can um can we play around with this formatting yeah we can so if you click on formatting you get a formatting pane
  • And these are all the formatting.
  • So you can do the total angle.
  • So this is interesting because it suggests that you can even do a gauge in this.
  • So look at that.
  • Look at that all the people who spend so much time doing pointless gauges.
  • I'm gonna be so happy.
  • Uh starting angle, let's say you start at ninety degrees.
  • Um there we go.
  • Um let's do minus ninety.
  • Here we go, let's try that.
  • Um oh I I don't know how to do this.
  • Maybe it's 180 is what I'm looking for.
  • So start at 180.
  • Oh come on.
  • Is it 270?
  • This should be much easier.
  • Come on, come on, come on.
  • There we go.
  • So I can do like a semicircle, which is kinda nice.
  • I can change the padding, um, which is essentially the the gap between the different um containers, but you gotta be careful because
  • It doesn't really format that nicely if you don't show the labels.
  • You can change the value, you can change the font, you can even make them bold.
  • You can make them super small so they're a little bit more legible where you need them to be.
  • And then the center you can set the size for this.
  • So you can change it, you can sort of
  • Make it larger.
  • There's a lot of customization capabilities available here.
  • I think this is too big, so let's get this deck down to like uh a reasonable size.
  • And by the way, why isn't this not just using the same font?
  • Um
  • Why is it not using Tableau Book?
  • Why is Tableau Book not even here?
  • I have no idea.
  • So there must be okay.
  • So the automatic font sizing will space it out to fill the space.
  • So
  • Um this will override the font, so that's pretty much how it works.
  • Um so yeah, I think that's sort of the best thing to do.
  • I would just set this to like a specific font size, then you can control it.
  • Edit the colours, you can obviously go into the extension radial and you can then go ahead and choose your brand new color palette that you might have used in this new version of tablet as well.
  • So
  • Um Tableau 25.
  • 3 has a new color palette feature.
  • I just did a video on that, so you can go ahead and do that.
  • Let's do uh dual bright, assign that palette, and then there we go.
  • Oh that's really, really bright.
  • So
  • There we go.
  • So yeah, um that is the new radial chart type insider tableau.
  • It does weird things, uh it allows you to do pretty much anything you wanted to do.
  • It would be nice to have a specific dimension control the color, but um it's going to be this first one, the category that you picked.
  • So what if I change the um actually it was the region, actually, sorry, that I picked.
  • So what if I
  • change the order these.
  • Um the same color palette stays involved.
  • Let's bring region back on.
  • It goes to the bottom
  • But unfortunately the colour is locked in.
  • So if you wanted to change that, you have to go back and change the palette.
  • So I guess that makes sense.
  • If you're using um specific color for region already in the workbook,
  • um then you might need to make sure you're applying this consistently, essentially.
  • So yeah, there we go.
  • And yeah, uh it's it sits uh on your dashboard wherever you need it to be.
  • in a very sort of interesting way.
  • So that's pretty much it.
  • That's the feature in a nutshell.
  • Thanks for watching.
  • I'm Tim.
  • I'm a Tableau Visionary.
  • I teach people Tableau.
  • If you enjoyed this video, hit subscribe, hit like, and I'll catch you in the next one.

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