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Hundreds of Tableau enthusiasts tuned in for the first European-led Tableau 9.0 Virtual User Group event earlier this month. We showed off the shiny new features of Tableau 9.0, which help data explorers stay in the flow of their work. Psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihaly calls this flow the secret to happiness, as Tableau’s own Andy Cotgreave explained during his keynote.

In 2013, when I took on a new role as a BI analyst for a nonprofit network of charter schools in Indianapolis, I had no prior experience in business intelligence. Fast-forward to August of 2014: I received a rock in the mail. I’d become a Tableau Zen Master. At first, I thought they had made a mistake and I tried to send the rock back!

Multiple applications hosted on multiple systems usually results in one thing: many separate user accounts each with its own password. For the IT guy responsible for security, this presents a big problem. For one, how do you administer new users and remove old ones, maintain a common security policy, and handle all of those forgotten-email requests?

Speed up the time it takes to add custom formatting to your Tableau vizzes by creating a style template workbook.

Having powerful tools can sometimes be a problem. It can encourage us to overcomplicate what should be a simple task. When finding business value in your data, you should be ready to hold back and remember the KISS acronym: Keep it simple, stupid.

Alberto Cairo first began visualizing data in 1997, when there were few books on the subject. “And obviously we didn’t have social media to connect to each other, or even weblogs,” says Alberto, who teaches data visualization at the University of Miami. Alberto is delighted things have changed since. These days, data explorers have a trove of resources to turn to, including each other. In the spirit of community, he recommends these “little gems”—lesser-known worthy reads for data explorers.

Last week we launched the ability to change the logo on your Tableau Online site. This had been a common feature request. Our customers are proud of their brand and want to showcase it when collaborating on data with colleagues and customers.