Just two more days until the end of March - this year is REALLY flying by! Take a look at what's been happening around the Tableau Community -

Announcements

Last Thursday, we had a packed Think Data Thursday with Jonathan Drummey who presented on whether doing a blend iin Tableau is really a left join or not. If you missed it, it was recorded and I would highly recommend watching the playback which you can find in the TDT Video Library - Old.

We also announced the next TDT which will be April 23 with  Anya A'hearn, Kelly Martin, and KK Molugu talking about the Importance of Visual Aesthetics. To find out more, check out TDT: Importance of Visual Aesthetics - How to Entertain, Engage, and Empower your audience - April 23, 2015

If you get a chance, we'd love to have your feedback about Tableau in a survey by BARC. To learn more, see Share your Tableau experience with BARC posted by Tableau's Jingcong Zhao.

Recognition

This past week, we had three people achieve the "I Know Stuff!" badge (also known as, 10 of my answers were marked as correct). Bill Cunningham has been a member of the Community since 2012, popping in and out. We're always happy when Bill stops by because he's always helping people along the way!

Brian Cronin has also been a long time member and Tableau users (since January 2013). Last week, he seemed especially active. Thanks for all your help Brian!

Finally, Tableau's Bora Beran, also received the 10 correct answer badge. If you're not familiar with Bora, he's the resident R-integration professional and Tableau Developer, and is always a good one to follow. And you may recognize him from his recent celebrity interview on Tableau's first Virtual TUG

Most Talked about Thread

**This is characterized by the number of responses in a thread.

P Subash asked about Formatting Mark labels to get them from a currency format to a percentage. With the help of Felix Curran and Sankarmagesh Rajan, they provided screenshots of the various places that formatting numbers can occur (which are quite a few!).

Top Viewed Thread

The top viewed threads this week are our repeat offenders Here are the top 3:

Prashant Sharma's New Features in Tableau 9+?

Richard Leeke's Grow your own Filled Maps

kettan/Shawn Wallwork's Johan's Ideas Collections

Top Voted Idea

Last week's most voted on idea was Improved server license model for medium size companies created by kettan with 12 votes. Kettan created this idea back in April of 2013, but it has recently gotten a lot of activity with Shane McMurray commenting on it, getting the conversation below the idea really going.

And in case you missed it, a new blog post about the results from a recent survey was posted in regards to the most popular idea, Dynamic Parameters - http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2015/3/results-are-dynamic-parameters-37517 The conversation is being continued by Amy Forstrom in Dynamic Parameters Update.

In addition, check out a couple of pointers on How to write an idea Tableau Program Managers will look at.

In Other News

• This one was a call out to Ryan Knight by kettan because Ryan asked a question in What is the correct schema.ini specification for this data? and then answered his own question - helping to close the loop! This is great so that others can benefit from his solution and those answerers don't spend a lot of time solving a question that has already been solved. Thanks Ryan! Also, I like the use of the "video" that Kettan uses in his post.
• Love seeing the use of workbooks which have been added to the Workbook & Calculation Library. Steve Moore and Mark Bradbourne commented on Mark Jackson's Executive Report Portal Dashboard showing their appreciation
• Ranadheer Kovvuri asked Auto Refreshing Live connected dashboard in Browser(through server). He has a requirement where he needs to have his data refreshed VERY frequently. Bill Lyons, Shawn Wallwork, and Catherine Denmeade made some suggestions and shared some of what they have learned using Javascript and other techniques. Ultimately, Tableau's Hugh Nguyen shared the code which solved the problem. Shawn learned so much from this thread that he even wrote up his own blog post - https://tableautinkering.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/tinkering-with-data-refresh-auto-refresh/
• What a great couple of responses by some of our Zen Masters in this thread (Calculating sum of requests within a zip code radius) posted by Florian Zehl. Both Noah Salvaterra and Jonathan Drummey worked together, with very detailed posts, to find a solution (no scratch that - multiple solutions). From blending, to scaffolding the data source, to calculations - this is definitely one worth checking out.
• Wanted to share this one - based on the enthusiasm in the appreciation (from not only the poster - William Smith, but also Kristy McGee who must've had a similar question) - Need help working between AGG and non-AGG values. Jonathan Drummey strikes again sharing how it can be done in version 8.2 (though mentions how version 9.0 - which is imminently about to release - can help make it easier) by using a self data blend. Joe Oppelt simultaneously provided an alternate solution.

Have a great week and until next time, happy analyzing!

As always, feel free to send any submissions or feedback regarding this digest my direction at tfitzgerald@tableau.com.