Monday night I had the honor of running a training session for the LA Tableau User Group.  You can download the presentation and Tableau workbook here.

One of the features of Tableau that I showed them was a PowerPoint presentation embedded in a Tableau dashboard.  I use this technique quite often as it allows me to stay in one tool, thereby negating the need to flip back and forth to PowerPoint.

In this blog post, I will review the steps to use this functionality.   

This example assumes you are using Google Docs to host your presentation.  This technique also works with presentations hosted on SharePoint.  Any other web-based presentation solution should work as well.

Step 1 – Create a new dashboard in Tableau

Step 2 – Navigate to your presentation on the web and open it


Step 3 – In Google Docs, click on Start Presentation


Step 4 – Click on the URL to highlight it, right-click and choose Copy


Step 5 – Go back to Tableau and drag the Web Page object onto the blank dashboard


Step 6 – Once you drop the Web Page object onto the dashboard, the Edit URL window appears.  Paste the URL for your presentation (from Step 4) and click OK.


That’s it!  Your presentation is now embedded within a Tableau dashboard.


If you don’t like the black space to either size of the presentation, the optimal size for the window (assuming you’re using a presentation from Google Docs) is 792 x 600.


Give it a shot.  I bet you’ll use this over and over again.

Tonight I will be training the LA Tableau User Group and you’re welcome to join.  I’ll be teaching them how to build this interactive viz.

We’ll cover the following techniques:

• Effective use of colors
• Custom shape files
• Using parameters for dynamic visualizations
• Effective design for effective communication including bar charts and heat maps
• Creating simple calculated fields
• Putting it all together in an interactive dashboard

I expect the session to last from between 60-90 minutes.

Download the shape files here and the data here.  You will need these to follow along.

Unzip the shape files to My Tableau Repository\Shapes\NBA and save the data to My Tableau Repository\Datasources.

Live Meeting Details

Attendee URL:   https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/cce/join?id=SR75WS&role=attend Audio:   AT&T mobile (free): #26538     Toll free: (877) 906-9811     Local toll: (404) 381-8527     Conference code: 2561415367