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The closing installment of 2014's Best of the Tableau Web series includes tools to help you dashboard better, a piece on what Tableau is NOT, and everything in between. Read on for your monthly dose of Tableau tips, tricks, and chatter from around the web.

In the world of healthcare, there are a lot of moving parts. The industry is multi-faceted, and employs people from a wide range of specialties. Michael Thurston is an analyst for the human resources (HR) department at Intermountain Healthcare. While not a traditional healthcare story, his tale is equally important. After all, his work is all about empowering a workforce—a workforce, in this case, that provides care to thousands of patients.

5 chart types you may have never used that add flair to any dashboard.

Over the past month, we've had the time of our lives interviewing Santa about how he uses Tableau. Last week, he shared his naughty-or-nice dashboard. And the week before, he told us how he monitors toy quality around the world. Now, as he enters crunch time for big day, Santa is prepared to share his third and final dashboard. And this one could be the most important of all. After all, what's the single most important part of his global operation? Being able to travel the world in a single night.

"We have more time to do what IT does best," says Rob Villareal, Business Intelligence Competency Lead at World Wide Technology (WWT). WWT is a global provider of systems integration technology and services and supply chain solutions—and they've implemented Tableau across multiple departments. We spoke with Rob, as well as with Operations Manager Lance Leonard, about the impact they've seen across the organization. As Rob puts it, "Every department is interacting with Tableau. We've been rolling it out to one vertical at a time, but at this point everybody is involved in some form or another.” And he's seen "a huge appetite for data." Perhaps most surprising, however, is the effect this has had on IT. In the interview, Rob shares how IT gained greater insight into the way people are accessing data across the organization. Rather than fostering an environment of “shadow systems,” their Server implementation has empowered greater alignment and visibility. And IT and business both love that.

This year has seen an explosion of blogs about Tableau. It's hugely enjoyable to read your posts each month. Whether its beginner tips, jedi hacks or constructive commentary, we're always cheered by the time people spend sharing their ideas. Each month we curate the best content in our Best Of... series.

In case you missed it, last week Santa revealed that he uses Tableau to manage his global operations. And for every week in December, he'll share a new dashboard that looks at one area of his business. In response to Santa's statements, we received a number of questions—including how Santa uses Tableau to determine who gets a lump of coal. This week, we're excited to share one of Santa's most important dashboards: His naughty-and-nice list.

Customers often tell us that Tableau is fun—like a game—with a significant business value reward. That’s been the experience for executives at two gaming companies who we recently had the chance to interview. "Deep down inside, everybody is an analyst," says Kirill Andriychuk, Business Intelligence Manager at Aeria Games. "With Tableau, they can go on this discovery path and find out new opportunities and better ways to deliver their products they're delivering, and better ways to monetize the customer, and also give the customer a better experience within our games."

Our mission is to help people see and understand their data. This mission drives our work—but our customers’ and employees’ passion fuel it. This month, we’re excited to let you know about Tableau Foundation, a new way for people to combine data with passion, all in the service of making the world a better place.