An often overlooked feature of Tableau is the ability to integrate custom R and Python scripts into your visualizations. This opens up a world of advanced analytics and statistical modeling techniques that can be applied to your data. Tableau also supports extensions, which allow you to add custom visualizations and interactivity to your dashboards. Lastly, you can leverage Tableau's APIs to programmatically interact with Tableau Server or embed Tableau visualizations into other applications.

While Tableau is known for its visualizations, it also has powerful data preparation capabilities. You can use Tableau's data interpreter feature to automatically clean and structure messy data. Tableau Prep, another tool offered by Tableau, provides a visual interface to combine, pivot, and aggregate data from multiple sources. Lastly, Tableau's set actions feature allows you to create dynamic sets, which can be used to filter and highlight data in a more interactive manner.

One lesser-known feature of Tableau is the ability to create animations in your visualizations. This can help to tell a story or highlight trends over time. Another feature is the use of parameter actions, which allow users to interact with the visualization by adjusting parameters and exploring different scenarios. Additionally, Tableau has a built-in geographic mapping feature that can be used to plot data points on a map and create heat maps, choropleth maps, or other geographical visualizations.

In addition to its data visualization features, Tableau also offers advanced statistical analysis capabilities. You can perform statistical calculations and build forecasting models directly within Tableau. Another powerful feature is Tableau's clustering functionality, which allows you to automatically group similar data points together. Lastly, Tableau's data blending feature enables you to combine data from multiple sources and create more comprehensive visualizations.