What's New

Tableau Shows What’s Next for Data Analytics and AI at Dreamforce 2023

Kristin Adderson — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 02:29:31 +0000

Kristin Adderson September 8, 2023 - 2:29am

September 12, 2023

At Dreamforce 2023, the Tableau keynote was packed with innovations that will empower everyone as we charge ahead into the AI Revolution. AI is changing everything—from how we work and innovate to the products and services we create for our customers. But to fully reap the benefits of AI, companies have to be able to trust and act on their data. That’s why it’s never been more essential for companies to create a comprehensive analytics strategy and become data-driven.

But what does it mean to be data-driven? It means giving employees the tools and resources they need to grow their data skills. It means nurturing a culture that embraces data-driven thinking. It means harnessing the power of data to make agile decisions, gain a competitive edge, and drive innovation. Being a data-driven company means empowering everyone with data while continuing to support the analysts who help make all of this possible.

Our latest product innovations make it easier for everyone to see, understand, and act on their data. Regardless of your role, department, or industry, Tableau is your trusted partner for your data and AI journey. Let’s take a look at the product innovations from DF23.

Tableau Pulse

In the past, proficiency in data and analytics required specific skill sets. Now, with Tableau Pulse, we can lower the barrier and empower more people with curated insights that matter most to them. Tableau Pulse takes you beyond seeing and understanding your data—it equips you with the information you need to act on it.

Tableau Pulse is powered by Tableau AI—our suite of predictive and generative AI capabilities that uses large language models to make data conversational. Instead of slicing and dicing data, interpreting visualizations, and manually connecting the dots, Pulse allows you to input prompts or ask questions about your data in natural language.

Whether working in Slack or looking at your personalized Pulse homepage, you can see the metrics and KPIs you need to do your work. The best part is that, over time, Pulse will observe what you care about most and show you relevant insights.

Your personalized Tableau Pulse homepage displays a summary of the key metrics that you follow. Below the summary, each metric card includes a key metric, a visualization, and AI-generated insights.

Einstein Copilot for Tableau

At the opening Dreamforce keynote, Marc Benioff introduced the new Einstein Copilot that shows up across Customer 360. Whether you work in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, or Tableau, Einstein Copilot can assist you in completing your tasks.

Since the launch of Tableau, users have loved our drag-and-drop technology that fuels creativity and deep data exploration. Now, with Einstein Copilot for Tableau—a conversational AI assistant—Tableau Cloud users can visually explore their data and find insights faster. Einstein Copilot automates data curation by generating calculations and metadata descriptions. And it follows best practices to help you create dashboards to act on your findings.

Imagine you own a pet store and want to host an event for recently engaged customers. Rather than using drag and drop to create the segment, Einstein Copilot can help you get started by suggesting business prompts relevant to your data. Einstein Copilot does this by combing through metadata and running statistical analysis. Or, if you already know what you need, you can ask Einstein Copilot in plain language: “Show me customers who made purchases in the last three months, broken down by purchase type.” And if you use Salesforce, all of the segments you create in Tableau are automatically published to Data Cloud, making it easy for your team to know which customers to engage.

Using the Einstein Copilot panel, you can type questions or choose a recommended prompt, and Einstein will create or update your visualization.

Intelligent Apps and Salesforce Unified Analytics Experience

A few years ago, we launched Revenue Intelligence—an out-of-the-box application that enables sales teams to forecast accurately, manage pipelines, and close deals faster. Revenue Intelligence is powerful because sales professionals get contextual, AI-powered insights, recommendations, and predictions in Sales Cloud so they can stay in the flow of work.

Now, we’re rolling out new intelligent applications that are purpose-built for Salesforce clouds. These out-of-the-box intelligent apps span sales, service, marketing, and commerce. They infuse predictive, prescriptive, and generative AI to help you get insights faster and identify your next best steps. And because they’re native to Salesforce, you can have confidence knowing you’re building on a trusted, flexible, and scalable platform. All these apps are interoperable with Tableau, so it’s easy to dig deeper into the data when you have additional questions.

Service Intelligence helps service leaders track their team’s case workload and improve service operations.
Segment Intelligence helps marketers show their impact to stakeholders and improve their segments and activations in Data Cloud for Marketing.

We are also enhancing our Revenue Intelligence offering with additional out-of-the-box dashboards for sales leaders and providing a new premium SKU that includes Tableau Explorer licenses. Now, in addition to purpose-built insights, sales teams will also get deep data exploration capabilities from Tableau.

Over the last few years, we have made significant progress in making our products interoperable to provide seamless experiences for CRM users. With Salesforce Unified Analytics Experience, you can 1) access all your analytics from one central hub in your CRM, 2) infuse Tableau vizzes into your Salesforce clouds with the native lightning web component, and 3) jump from Salesforce into Tableau for deeper data exploration.

In the Service Intelligence dashboard, you can access insights on your team’s case workload. Einstein helps you proactively understand the trends in your data.

See the innovations in action

If you missed us at Dreamforce and want to see demos for each of our product innovations, you can watch the entire Tableau keynote on Salesforce+.

You can also explore recent product releases and submit ideas to let us know what you’d like to see next in Tableau.

If you’re interested in trying Data Cloud, we currently have a free trial for Sales Cloud and Service Cloud customers that includes two Tableau Creator licenses. Get started with Data Cloud today.

Finally, thank you to the DataFam and Trailblazers for your unwavering support and passion for Tableau. We’ll continue to look to our communities for feedback and inspiration as we explore everything AI has to offer. The era of AI-powered analytics offers opportunities for everyone, and we’re on a mission to turn those opportunities into realities.

Data for the Win: How Tableau Created a Customer Experience Showcasing Data-Driven Training

Katherine Rowe — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:29:45 +0000

Katherine Rowe

Sports Marketing Manager, Salesforce and Tableau

Tanna Solberg February 3, 2022 - 7:29pm

September 10, 2023

Data continues to be critical to the success of athletes, teams, and leagues alike. As a proud partner of Team USA, Tableau from Salesforce is working with individual U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including U.S. Olympian Ashton Eaton, to demystify their sport and performance data stories to create unique customer experiences—allowing fans to understand what it’s like to be on the track, court, or playing field.

The thing I like about decathlon is also the thing I dislike: It’s the maximum challenge, but also the maximum frustration.

Ashton Eaton, U.S. Olympian decathlete

Ashton Eaton is a two-time U.S. gold medalist in the decathlon: a two-day contest that includes 10 events encompassing running, jumping, and throwing events. Eaton is the only athlete to ever surpass 9,000 points twice and is considered one of the greatest athletes of all time.

As we looked to bring Eaton’s story to life, it became clear that his unique approach to preparation for competition was the ideal story to activate as part of the Tableau space at Dreamforce 2023. So, how did we do it?

A compelling data story begins with discovery

Building context from a subject matter’s expertise.
We were fortunate to speak with Eaton directly, hearing about how he developed his training plans and approach to competitions. In this one-hour discovery session, he described how the decathlon works and lessons learned throughout his career. This call provided us with the needed context to ask deeper questions, find interesting case studies, and hear his perspective. For example, many of us were surprised to learn that decathletes only compete for six minutes over two full days, but prepare years in advance for the 10 events.

After the call, we compiled next steps on the workstream, including:

Building a dataset and visualization of Eaton’s career decathlon scores and training regimen
Developing clarifying questions and following up
Driving internal alignment on strategy

This discovery process was key to understanding the most important aspects of the decathlon (and visualizing them with Tableau), including the ratio of throw to run/jump events (3:7), how to scale this experience for a mass audience, and finding the best way forward to bring this to life.

Creating an interactive story with data

As we drafted a strategy for the activation, it became clear that Eaton’s training experience would make for a compelling data story to bring to attendees at Dreamforce. We also made the activation interactive. Customers would have the opportunity to make training choices using their gut instinct and then see their improvement in performance when using compiled data via Tableau and insights from Einstein.

Each customer’s training improvements would be visually represented through a sculpture at the center of the experience consisting of 10 transparent tubes, one for each decathlon event. Air in these tubes would blow balls upwards and downwards, with the height of the balls representing the participant’s “score”—the higher the better.

By leveraging Eaton’s training regimen, we created a sliding scale to allot time and energy across specific training sessions: running/jumping, throw technique, and rest. Based on his feedback, we developed a formula for the optimal allotments across the sessions. We also included nutrition as a key component to winning “gold” in the event, showcasing the importance of Eaton’s focus on proteins as competition approached. Finally, we visualized the concepts using a radar chart, where attendees could see the impact of their sliding scale decisions in real time.

We then revisited the competition data collected in our discovery phase to identify the ranges for winning “gold” in the activation. This helped make the activation as realistic as possible, showcasing how difficult it really is to succeed in this two-day gauntlet of events.

Using Tableau to tell immersive data stories

Our team leveraged Eaton’s experience and career to bring an immersive activation to a strategic event, allowing customers to experience firsthand how data can help everyone, including U.S. Olympians and Paralympians, make informed decisions.

The lessons learned can extend well beyond this onsite experience and can be applied to any team or organization interested in using the power of data. Each step in the process of bringing Eaton’s training regimen to Dreamforce required leveraging subject matter experts, developing context, and making analytics digestible for a wider audience. These are the same lessons customers can follow every day to tell data stories using Tableau and improve data-driven decision-making.

Learn more about Tableau and Salesforce’s partnership with Team USA, and how your organization can achieve more with a data-first mindset.

Visualizations by Salesforce Florian Ramseger; Tableau Visionary Irene Diomi, and Harry Beardon, Linda Duong from The Information Lab.

Touchdowns and Trends: College Football Through Data Visualization

Sam Epley — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 15:33:52 +0000

Sam Epley

Lead Solution Engineer, Tableau

Sarah Molina September 1, 2023 - 3:33pm

September 2, 2023

Hello college football fans! My name is Sam and I am a Lead Solution Engineer at Tableau. My journey into the world of data visualization has led me to embrace a unique passion: college football. As a former student equipment manager at Iowa State University (#CyclONEnation), college football became an integral part of my life and shaped my interests and passion around collegiate athletics. Now, after over three years of engaging with the #DataFam on Tableau Public, I'm excited to present a curated collection of college football data visualizations that capture the sport's essence like never before.

College football isn't just about games; it's about stories waiting to be told. My journey has revolved around using data to explore these untold narratives. From fierce rivalries that ignite stadiums to the intricacies of conference realignment, the visualizations presented here offer fresh perspectives on familiar and fascinating topics.

Explore heated rivalries, conference realignment, Heisman Trophy winners, stadium capacity, fan maps, game predictions—the topics are endless! See how college football can be visualized with the curated collection below showcasing some incredible vizzes from the Tableau Community. Click on each viz to visit it on Tableau Public, Tableau’s free online platform used to explore, create and publicly share data visualizations.

College Football Tableau Public visualizations by Sam Epley

2023-24 College Football AP Poll Analysis

Sam Epley

College Football Rivalry History

Sam Epley

Largest Comeback in FBS College Football History

Sam Epley

College Football Conference Realignment Simulator

Sam Epley

#CollegeGameday: Can My Family Out-Pick the Pundits

Sam Epley

College Football’s Top Fanbases

Sam Epley

Which Teams Would Have Competed in the New 12-Team College Football Playoff Format?

Sam Epley

14 College Football Visualizations by the DataFam

College Football Blue Bloods

Kyle Umlang

A Visual History of College Football

Bo McCready

Striking The Pose

Jacob Olsufka

College Football Rankings

Rashad Aziz

Road to the College Football Playoff

Kevin Flerlage

Nick Saban’s AL Losses

Jessica Moon

DeVonta Smith

Jeff Plattner

College Football Fan Map

Matt Sorenson

College Football’s Most Valuable Teams

David C. Velleca

Michigan Football: A Visual History

Bo McCready

College Football’s Largest Stadiums

David C. Velleca

Measuring Enhanced Analytics Timeline (MEAT)

Kyle Umlang

College Football Conference History

Bo McCready

War Damn History

Jessica Moon

26 Tableau Features to Know from A to Z

Kuber Sharma — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:11:56 +0000

Kuber Sharma

Director, Product Marketing, Tableau

Kristin Adderson August 22, 2023 - 12:11am

August 22, 2023

Whether you're a novice data analyst exploring the possibilities of Tableau or a leader with years of experience using VizQL to gain advanced insights—this is your list of key Tableau features you should know, from A to Z. Get a quick look at tools and techniques of this dynamic data visualization platform, and uncover tips, tricks, and strategies that will propel how you work with data to create impactful visualizations and make informed decisions.

Accelerator

Instant access to the best analytic solutions
Tableau Accelerators are ready-to-use dashboards that you can combine with your data and customize to fit your needs to help you get to data-driven insights faster. They allow you to accelerate time to value with ready-to-use and fully customizable dashboards for your unique use case, regardless of industry, department, or function. You can leverage our best practices to address 100+ use cases today. And that's not all; you can also expand and extend accelerators with your own data sets and partner solutions.

Bins

Easily group data points to simplify analysis
Bins in Tableau group continuous data into discrete intervals, making it easier for you to visualize and analyze data through histograms and other distribution displays. They help transform complex datasets into easily interpretable patterns so you can intuitively create continuous measure groupings without writing lengthy IF statements. You can create histograms from binned dimensions to quickly see the distribution of data.

Catalog

Enhanced data trust, visibility, and discoverability
Tableau Catalog automatically catalogs all your data assets and sources into one central list and provides metadata in context for fast data discovery. It also helps you understand data lineage and integrates features like lineage, impact analysis, data dictionary, data quality warnings, and search into your Tableau applications, helping solve these problems differently from a stand-alone catalog. Included with Data Management.

Data Stories

Natural language insights from your data
Data Stories is a really great tool that can help you save valuable time and resources by summarizing key insights in a clear and concise manner. With its advanced features, you can easily add automated plain-language explanations to your dashboards in just a few seconds. It was designed specifically for business users, so Data Stories provides an easy-to-understand experience that is tailored to your needs. It also proactively surfaces relevant insights that may have been overlooked, making sure that you always stay on top of your game. Whether you're an analyst or a business owner, Data Stories is the perfect solution for anyone looking to streamline their workflow and gain valuable insights into their data.

Explain Data

Discover the “why” in your data
Data exploration can be a complicated and time-consuming process, but Explain Data makes it easy to uncover and describe relationships in your data. By giving you the ability to inspect and locate key data points, you can quickly and seamlessly dive deeper into the marks in a visualization. With just a single click, Explain Data can provide AI-driven answers and easy-to-understand explanations for the value of any data point. Also, this tool offers interactive visualizations, which means you can explore your data in a more intuitive and engaging way.

Forecasting & Predictive Modeling

Improve decisions with predicted future trends
Tableau allows analysts to create predictive models native to the platform. With native predictive modeling, you can create a model that understands how your data is distributed around a trend line in your viz. In addition, analysts can leverage these functions within table calculations to gain deeper insights into their data. Using exponential smoothing, you can generate forecasts for any data set with date dimensions. You can also use our automatic model, specify an additive or multiplicative model, and use predictive modeling in table calculations.

Geospatial Analytics

Out-of-box custom geocoding & location insights
Geospatial visualization showcases data in relation to its physical location. If you want to look at your data geographically, you can plot it on a map in Tableau. You can easily get granular geospatial insights from all your enterprise data. Using geo hierarchies, you can go deeper into your data and find new insights. Additionally, using spatial joins lets you show the relationships between data with varying spatial definitions. Finally, Tableau allows you to create custom territories using Tableau groups and overlay data with demographic information, giving you a comprehensive view of your data.

Hyper

Supercharge your analytics with in-memory data engine
Hyper is Tableau's blazingly fast SQL engine that lets you do fast real-time analytics, interactive exploration, and ETL transformations through Tableau Prep. This amazing in-memory data engine solution lets users analyze large or complex data sets faster by efficiently assessing analytical queries directly in the transactional database. Hyper really speeds up data processing, reduces load times, and improves dashboard performance for all users. Also, this technology provides faster data refreshes and extracts, delivering near-real-time insights while minimizing the data's memory footprint and storage requirements.

Image Role

Empower your analytics with embedded images
Incorporating image assets into Tableau is a whole lot easier with the help of Image Role. This powerful semantic field provides a highly scalable and automated solution for importing, aligning, reusing, and updating graphics. With Image Role, you can effortlessly map images to links in your data and encode them into exportable rows and columns. By using images instead of obscure product names or item codes, you can vastly improve the user experience. Plus, these images are externally managed, so storage costs are minimum, and the workbook size stays manageable. With Image Role, you'll be able to streamline your image asset management processes like never before.

Join Step

Join data with ease
A Join Step in Tableau involves combining data from two or more tables based on a common field, creating a single unified dataset for analysis and visualization. This process allows you to merge related information from different sources, facilitating comprehensive insights and reporting. You can see the impacts of joins as you create data sources or write back to your database. You can also define how tables are related so that end users can start using the system without having to understand the details of data granularity.

Keep Only

Quickly filter visualizations with the click of a button
Keep Only is a filtering action that retains data rows matching the selected values while excluding all other data rows from the view. This helps focus the analysis on specific subsets of data, revealing insights and patterns relevant to the chosen criteria. You can drill down into specific areas of visualizations without navigating long or complex filter lists. It allows you to select relevant points and share customized insights with stakeholders intuitively.

LOD Expressions

Create flexible, granular calculations with ease
Level of Detail (LOD) expressions run complex queries involving many dimensions at the data source level instead of bringing all the data to the Tableau interface. LOD expressions are a way to efficiently compute aggregations that are not at the level of detail of the visualization. A simple example is adding a dimension to an already calculated aggregate value. They help you quickly get answers involving multiple levels of granularity in a single visualization. You can actually define the level of detail at which a calculation should be performed independently of the Viz. You can also create more sophisticated dashboards that show different detail levels for other visualization parts, if you'd like.

Metadata API

Query and discover metadata about Tableau content and external assets
Metadata API finds, tracks, stores, and then shows information about Tableau content. The content can be categorized by type (e.g., table or workbook). The content can be unique to Tableau (e.g., embedded data sources and calculated fields), and its external assets are not unique to Tableau (e.g., database tables and columns). You can discover data and metadata used across your organization and perform impact analysis to determine how downstream and upstream changes affect workflows. The Metadata API also allows you to use our strategic partners, such as Alation and Collibra, to integrate deeply with their purpose-built data catalog offerings. Included with the Data Management SKU.

Nested Projects

Segment content and users to meet your access requirements
Nested Projects lets analytics professionals fully control how content is organized within their area. They can create child projects, assign ownership to the appropriate individuals, and then manage their projects and everything under them. You can grant granular access to content across departments, teams, or people and streamline governance by enabling project leaders to oversee relevant permissions and content. Nested projects also let you set permissions at the top project level and cascade them down into all subprojects.

ODBC Connector

Bring all your data to Tableau with ease
An ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) connector for Tableau is like a bridge between Tableau and different databases, enabling connectivity and interaction through a standarzised protocol. ODBC is an industry standard that allows various software to access data. An ODBC connector lets you access any data source that supports the SQL standard and implements the ODBC API. By installing the right ODBC driver for the specific database, users can create data source connections within Tableau, making it easier to retrieve, query, and visualize data. This allows you to retrieve data into a Tableau extract and use the full Tableau capabilities to work with the data.

Prep Conductor

Automate your data workflows effortlessly
Tableau Prep Conductor lets you use Tableau's scheduling and tracking functionality to run your flows automatically and update the flow output. It also lets users view and monitor the details of their flows. In case of failed flows, it generates alerts. Tableau Prep Conductor can also help users view the data flow results and edit existing flows. Prep Conductor is fully integrated with the Tableau platform, so analysts and data stewards can use a server environment's horsepower, permissions, and security. Included with the Data Management SKU

Quality Warnings

Automated alerts on all your data assets
Quality Warnings is a feature of the Tableau Catalog that gives you automated alerts on data assets so that you can fix issues before they happen. You can set data quality warnings on data sources, databases, tables, flows, virtual connections, virtual connection tables, and columns. You can also use this to monitor events such as extract data source refresh failure and flow run failure.

Resource Monitoring Tool

Monitor the Tableau environment at scale
Resource Monitoring Tool, which is usually called RMT, is a great tool to help you keep an eye on the health and performance of your Tableau Server installation. This tool collects data from your server, then tracks the health and performance of your Tableau Server installation. This tool works by collecting data from your server, and then it gives you a detailed overview of its current health status. With RMT, you can quickly diagnose the cause of slow load times, extract failures, and other critical issues that may impact the performance of your server. With this tool, you can monitor your server's performance and ensure it's running smoothly at all times. Included with the Advanced Management SKU.

Slack Integration

Unlock Productivity with Analytics
With native integration between the #1 analytics platform and the #1 productivity platform, you won't have to wait for a report or dashboard again. Through this integration, notifications and alerts from Tableau can be directed to Slack channels, enabling real-time updates about data changes and insights. Team members can easily share Tableau dashboards, visualizations, and insights in Slack, fostering immediate discussions and informed decision-making. You can actually deliver relevant, intelligent, and actionable insights in the flow of work and accelerate time to insight for everyone in your business.

Table Extensions

Infuse advanced analytics and predictions into your data
Raw data is valuable in its own right, but transforming it unlocks new possibilities and insights. To really unlock the full potential of your data, you need to be able to modify it with familiar tools before you analyze it in Tableau. Using Table Extensions, you can unlock new data and transform, augment, score, or otherwise modify your data using Analytics Extensions like Python, R, and Einstein Discovery. By adding rich data to Tableau's data layer, you can find deeper insights at the speed of business.

Unified Tooltip

Get more context for your in-shelf pills
The unified tooltips feature is a really helpful tool that lets users get up to six previous tooltips at once. This feature prioritizes information based on relevance, so users can quickly access the most important details. With this feature, users can easily identify the field name, table calc details, and field comments, all in one convenient location. Additionally, this feature provides context on error messages directly from a pill tooltip. Users can also quickly identify which worksheet’s filters are applied across. This unified tooltip is available for pills on all shelves, making it a versatile and valuable tool for users.

VizQL

The de facto query language for analytics
VizQL (Visualization Query Language) is a proprietary language used within Tableau's architecture to help translate user actions in the visual interface into queries and operations that retrieve, aggregate and transform data. By bridging the gap between visual design and data retrieval, VizQL lets users easily create interactive visualizations. It handles complicated operations and behind-the-scenes calculations to make helpful charts, graphs, and maps.

Workbook Optimizer

Implement performance best practices with ease
Workbook Optimizer is a tool that can tell you if a workbook follows certain performance best practices. It looks at critical design characteristics and compares them to best practices. The results page shows a prioritized list of concrete guidance, teaching authors how their workbook design affects performance. So, users can get the combined wisdom of Tableau product experts and our robust community without ever having to leave the platform.

Exchange

Extend your Tableau Platform
Tableau Exchange is an extensive online marketplace that provides a wide range of accelerators, connectors, and dashboard extensions to enhance your Tableau environment. By simply clicking a button, you can easily explore, search, sort, and filter through a vast array of offerings that cater to your specific needs. This incredible platform allows you to leverage the pre-built solutions from various data families, enabling you to extract maximum value from your analytics investment.

Year Over Year Growth

Quickly answer a common question with a couple clicks
Year-over-year (YoY) growth in Tableau involves comparing a specific metric or measure between two consecutive years. In Tableau, you use clicks, not complex calculations, to answer a common question: How does this compare to last year? And you get the answer in an instant.

Zoom and Pan Controls

Customize how people interact with data
Zoom and pan controls in Tableau are interactive functionalities that let you adjust the magnification level (zoom) and navigate around (pan) within visualizations. Zoom controls allow you to focus on specific details or get a broader view, while pan controls help you explore different areas of the visualization. These features make interactive data analysis more fun, letting you delve into specific data points, patterns, and insights within Tableau visualizations.

How to Build a Data Community Within Your Organization

Larissa Amoroso — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 22:22:20 +0000

Larissa Amoroso

Senior Director, Tableau Community, Tableau

Ateken Abla July 31, 2023 - 10:22pm

August 5, 2023

Analytics is essential for the future of work as more organizations embrace data to make decisions, delight customers, track progress, and innovate their products and offerings. But to glean valuable insights, people must become fluent in data. Data communities—networks of engaged data users—create an environment where people can come together to immerse themselves in the language of data, encouraging data literacy and fueling excitement around data and analytics.The most effective data communities provide access to data and support its use with training sessions and technical assistance. They also build enthusiasm through programs like internal competitions, user group meetings, and lunch-and-learns. Community brings people together to share learnings, ideas, and successes. These exchanges build confidence and camaraderie, lifting morale and guiding members around a shared mission to improve the business and the world with data.

Communities are good for people—and that’s good for business

Communities provide the framework for internal and external peer-to-peer collaboration that builds up organizations, their people, and their data-driven culture.

External communities allow you to look beyond the walls of your organization to see what others are doing, reveal blind spots, learn from their wins and losses, and understand how you stack up. Conversely, internal communities help teams look within to break down silos and share information between functions to answer key business questions and solve organizational challenges.

Zak Geis, Tableau Visionary and leader of the JPMorgan Chase Tableau Center of Excellence, on how he helps to enable nearly 200k Tableau users: “Community is critical to everything we do at JPMC. We use the external community and the projects there as a blueprint for how to do things internally—from design challenges and competitions to Tableau User Groups and even micro conferences.

The DataFam is part of what makes Tableau so unique. The people in the community strive to create a safe, welcoming space for new members while always contributing new ideas, programs, and thought leadership. We look to this as a benchmark for building and fostering community internally. It’s very important to us that our internal community represents the same qualities as the Tableau Community.”

Learn from the most successful and passionate data community

Did you know you have a global DataFam full of peers who want to see you thrive? The Tableau Community is unrivaled, with millions of members who share a passion for data and a genuine commitment to helping others succeed. From assisting individuals in learning Tableau and building their data skills to helping organizations build data cultures and drive analytics at scale, the Tableau Community is here to help.

Build your own data community

We built Tableau Community programs to help you collaborate with peers across regions, industries, and roles. It's a place to get inspiration, learn, connect, and grow. But it is equally essential for you to provide spaces for people to come together within your organization to reinforce shared values and behaviors, sparking the energy and support necessary to tip the scales and build a data-driven decision-making culture. Data communities help foster and maintain cultural change in three key ways.

1. Data-driven mindset

Imagine if your people used data because they wanted to—not because they had to. Data communities give people dedicated space and time to share their stories. As a result, perceptions change, and people start to associate data with improvement, success, and growth.

Tableau Ambassador and APAC data and digital senior analyst Thi Ho helps bring data to all parts of her organization. “We have always valued data in making better business decisions, but it can be hard to make data accessible to non-data users. Last year I got to arrange my organization’s first APAC Tableau day, which helped bring data and non-data enthusiasts together to share and learn best practices. As a result, we've successfully seen attendees motivated and inspired to work innovatively with data. In the long term, we hope to see this same shift of attitude toward data present in all lines of business. Most recently, we’ve seen more discussion and interest in various teams wanting to incorporate analytics in their day-to-day such as CRM, Marketing, and Sales.”

2. Data literacy and confidence

Everyone faces obstacles when learning something new. But data communities turn those challenges into opportunities, giving newbies a place to practice using data, all while supported by experts who offer empathic guidance and lead by example. Once they become more skilled, they carry on the legacy of their teachers and seek opportunities to "pay it forward" and share their learnings with others.

Charlotte Nickels, Community Drivers Tableau User Group Leader and Senior Manager at the Chief Data & Analytics Office, says at Lloyds Banking Group, “unless users feel truly comfortable using data, they’ll shy away from it. Senior leaders and analysts want to feel empowered at work, and proper data literacy training is the best way to do this. Once users can understand, interpret, and confidentiality act on data, they’ll unlock a whole new level of productivity, domain expertise, and strategic decision making.”

Looking to bring data literacy to your business or internal community? Check out Tableau’s Bring Data Literacy to Your Workforce guide. It’s filled with the advice, activities, plans and resources you need to enable your teams with data literacy, at scale. Looking for more? Take a look at Tableau’s Data Skills 10 Million page, which is full of training and resources to get you up to speed fast.

3. New solutions and opportunities to innovate

Most problems worth solving with data aren’t limited to a single team or line of business. Data communities break down organizational silos, sparking new ideas and fostering relationships that lead to cross-functional collaboration.

Ready to get started?

Data communities will look different in each organization. But what they have in common is people coming together from across teams and business units to share their experiences with data—learnings, solutions, and successes.

Building an enterprise-wide data community comes down to success in three key pillars: communication, engagement, and support. To support customers on this journey, we created Tableau Blueprint. Tableau Blueprint curates the best practices and expertise of thousands of customers, providing prescriptive, proven, and repeatable guidance to follow as you deploy and mature your entire analytics practice. Blueprint helps organizations like yours establish the right balance of trust and responsibility to build agility, proficiency, and community. What’s great about Tableau Blueprint is that it allows you to zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in on a specific area to fine-tune and improve.

Amy Ryder, Data Enablement Manager at Jaguar Land Rover, shares, “as our community has grown, our Tableau Champions network is branching out into sub-networks within each of the different business areas so that they can tailor support and events to their colleagues—and Blueprint is being used to support the setup of those networks. Our community today looks very different from how it first started. But the goal remains the same—supporting our colleagues to deliver the most value from data they can through training and collaboration.

Your community does not need to start with large, organization-wide efforts. You can begin where conversations are already happening, and as engagement grows, you can formalize efforts with dedicated owners, leaders, and processes. We’ve packaged some of our most popular Community programs. You can use these resources as a starting point and customize them for your organization’s needs.

Drive deeper engagement: Internal User Groups

Internal user groups can take different shapes depending on your organization’s size and geographical distribution. Still, one thing is certain—they are open to all Tableau users to promote collaboration and sharing between teams.

Recognize and support the data rockstars: Data Champions
Invest in your organization's most passionate champions and get an extended network of Tableau enthusiasts with the skills necessary to help users and accelerate adoption.

Coordinate standards and processes: Admin Group
Tableau Server and Site administrators can review server and content usage and exchange administration ideas.Lower the barrier to learning data skills: Lunch and Learns Host regular lunchtime meetings focused on building a new skill.

Gamify and have fun: Viz Games
Challenge your users to a data visualization competition. The excitement and camaraderie that follows will convince even skeptics that working with data is fun.

Showcase the importance of data with Tableau: Tableau Day
Raise data and analytics visibility with a full- or half-day event to share work, insights, and Tableau successes.

Celebrate all things analytics in your organization: Analytics Day
This event is similar to Tableau Day but with a broadened scope to include other technologies and subjects.

Remove roadblocks: Data Doctor
Connect your organization’s data experts with their colleagues for live, peer-to-peer support. Along the way, you'll identify departmental or organizational knowledge gaps.

Those who invest in data communities reap the benefits. People have the data training they need to act quickly and know where to go when they have questions about data sources or visualizations, speeding up communications cycles. If you find a part of the Tableau Community that resonates with you, take it back to your organization’s internal data teams. Use our guides and best practices to adapt our most popular Community programs for your own use. Start building your data community today.

5 Reasons Why Data Pros—Like You—Should Attend Dreamforce

Elizabeth Maxson — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 06:05:49 +0000

Elizabeth Maxson

Head of Marketing, Tableau

Bronwen Boyd July 11, 2023 - 6:05am

July 11, 2023

As we’ve seen firsthand with the Tableau Community, data aficionados are always looking for ways to take their data game to the next level. That’s where Dreamforce comes into the equation—it’s the must-attend event for all things Data + AI + CRM. It’s where business users, data analysts, and tech-savvy individuals from around the world gather together to exchange knowledge and get inspired.

Whether you’re a passionate Tableau user, a seasoned data analyst, or just starting your data journey, there’s something at Dreamforce for you.

1. Connect with data experts and the DataFam.

First things first, let’s talk about Tableau at Dreamforce. There’s a strong lineup of Tableau leaders who share their wisdom, best practices, and nuggets of knowledge to help you navigate your data journey. You can’t afford to miss these presentations from the people who eat, sleep, and breathe data.

This year, there's a dedicated space for all things data at Dreamforce. Join us at the Tableau Garden on Moscone West Level 3 to grow your insights and tend to your data. Tableau’s inspirational space is for any user to connect with the Tableau community and discover how Tableau can bring the magic of data and analytics to life with AI and personalized insights. The space will showcase the latest innovations, live demos, hands-on-training, mesmerizing visualizations at the Viz Gallery Wall, and, of course, the beloved I <3 data photo booth. Don’t miss this chance to connect with data experts and see firsthand how anyone can benefit from the power of Tableau.

2. Chart your course with Tableau deep dives for everyone.

At Dreamforce, there are several sessions focused on Tableau. Whether you’re new to the world of data, a business user, or a seasoned data professional, we’ve got you covered. For newbies and business users, there will be an introductory session to Tableau’s inspiring world of visual analytics. For data professionals, sessions are designed to help you bridge the gap between data and decision-making, ensuring you always get the most out of your data.

3. Explore what’s next with Tableau AI and data innovations.

Dreamforce wouldn’t be Dreamforce without some breakthrough announcements. With the introduction of Tableau AI, Tableau is harnessing the power of generative AI to simplify and democratize data analysis and insight consumption at scale. Think of it as your AI-powered assistant that can understand, process, and help distill meaningful insights instantly - where you need them. Get a firsthand look at how Tableau AI is reshaping how we interact with data.

4. Connect the data dots with Tableau and Salesforce.

Explore how Tableau can enhance your Salesforce experience, amplifying your business's ability to see, understand, and use data effectively. Imagine having your data analysis, customer relationship management, and other data-centric tasks in one place. With Tableau integrated across the Salesforce ecosystem, the possibility of unified data insights and a robust Customer 360 view can become a delightful reality.

5. Experience and shape the future of dAIta.

After the recent launch of AI Cloud during AI Day, we can safely say the era of Artificial Intelligence is truly here. And at Dreamforce, it will be front and center. Be part of the dialogue shaping the future of data and witness first-hand how you can leverage AI to unlock the potential of your business data.

Data + AI + CRM + You

Not convinced yet? We’re data people: Let’s talk numbers.*

At the last Dreamforce, 93% of attendees indicated they learned something that helped solve a business challenge. That’s not all:

93% said they learned something that helped them create greater efficiencies or saved time.
90% learned solutions or tools that could help better engage and/or connect with customers.
89% discovered a new tool or product that helped them or their business.

Dreamforce is not just another tech conference—it’s a golden opportunity to network with the best minds in the business and become part of a community that’s shaping the future of data, AI, and CRM.

*Based on a 2023 Salesforce survey of 2,537 in-person Dreamforce 2022 attendees.

How Tableau AI and Tableau Pulse are reimagining the data experience

Kristin Adderson — Fri, 05 May 2023 19:28:22 +0000

Kristin Adderson May 5, 2023 - 7:28pm

May 9, 2023

The analytics age we find ourselves in is unique, powered by technologies like generative AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and automation that are going to change so much of what we take for granted today. Underpinning these technologies is data—and how we engage with it is changing, too. The accelerating pace of these new technologies means that companies worldwide now face a critical inflection point, a do-or-die moment. Businesses must embrace data-driven decision making if they want to stay competitive and build stronger customer relationships, because the performance gap between organizations who successfully use data and those that don’t is poised to grow exponentially. Those who can’t capitalize on their data will be left behind—perhaps faster than anticipated.

We’ve been on a 20-year journey to help people see and understand data—whether they are an analyst or not—because companies that use data to make decisions are more successful than those that don't. But we know that this can be challenging. While Tableau has helped millions of people work with data, there are still many more who find analytics hard to understand, access, and act on. In fact, according to Gartner studies, only 29% of employees today are using data to drive their decisions.

As part of our continued commitment to your success and to help you connect with your customers in new ways, we’re thrilled to announce Tableau AI—the next generation of Tableau that will make analyzing data as simple as posing a question. Powering it all will be Einstein, the artificial intelligence currently making Salesforce’s portfolio of products smarter.

Tableau AI will also include Tableau Pulse, a reimagined data experience for analytics consumers that will help make data accessible to everyone in your organization, regardless of their familiarity with data.

Tableau AI lowers the barrier to data with generative AI

Tableau AI represents a game-changing innovation, leveraging the advanced capabilities of generative AI to simplify and democratize the process of data analysis. This next generation of Tableau is built on the trusted and ethical principles of Einstein, ensuring its reliability and safety for everyone that uses it. The significant advantage of Tableau AI is its ability to enhance every part of the Tableau platform to drive performance, efficiency, and scale.

For data analysts, Tableau AI automates data analysis, preparation, and governance, providing users with helpful guidance and contextual instructions within the product. Tableau AI will simplify and streamline existing analyst workflows, lowering the technical barrier to entry and reducing repetitive tasks. With the power of generative AI, we enable natural language calculations, suggest appropriate charts and visualizations, and auto generate descriptions of data sources.

For analytics consumers, the focus is to deliver distilled, meaningful insights from all their data for every decision. Tableau AI helps deliver insights in plain language, and even proactively surface the questions the user might ask next. This makes it a handy tool for businesses breaking down data silos and ensuring easy access to valuable insights. Tableau AI's conversational analytics interface predicts users' questions and provides essential insights that empower them to make informed decisions quickly and efficiently. Thanks to the tool's inclusive design, even users who are not expert data analysts can access insights distilled from all their data.

Tableau Pulse brings analytics to life for everyone

Tableau AI allows us to bring to life Tableau Pulse, a reimagined data experience for analytics consumers that will empower every employee with smart, personalized, and contextual insights delivered directly in their flow of work. Tableau Pulse transforms how people engage with their data in ways that are more meaningful, helping everyone—not just 29%—in an organization become data driven. This will especially help users who don’t have time to learn new tools, need data at their fingertips to make decisions quickly, and who want to go beyond the “how” and “what” of data to understand the “why.”

Here’s how Tableau Pulse will make all of your interactions with data personalized, contextual, and smart.

Personalized: Focus on what matters with metrics relevant to you

Today, the amount of data businesses contend with can be overwhelming, and reports are often presented in a one-size-fits-all way to serve entire teams at once. This helps bandwidth-strapped analysts—who don’t have time to create ad-hoc reports for everyone—but users are left sifting through the data to find what's relevant to them, which can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience.

Tableau Pulse changes this by providing data digests in your flow of work and an intuitive, personalized metrics homepage that you can tailor to your needs. Gone are the days of filtering five different ways in a dashboard to find the numbers you care about—now you can have a simple, curated, ‘newsfeed’-like experience of key KPIs that you select. Over time, this experience will return more personalized results as Pulse learns what insights you care most about.

Contextual: Infuse relevant data into your flow of work

Today, people use a variety of applications to do their work, making it difficult to keep track of where you saw an important KPI. It’s easy to miss a critical insight if you weren’t logged into the right tool at the right time. Switching between different tools and applications to access data can also be time-consuming and disruptive to your workflow. Worst of all: fragmented data tools make it harder to share insights, knowledge, and best practices across teams—hampering your company’s ability to remain agile in the face of uncertainty.

Tableau Pulse changes this by delivering relevant data to users inside the tools they're already using. This means data can be decoupled from dashboards, ensuring that you can get the metrics you need without interrupting your workflow, have insights captured in the tools you spend the most time in, and won’t miss an important insight because you weren’t logged into the right tool at the time. Best of all, you can now easily scale insights across your business: making seeing, sharing, and collaborating on data simply a matter of using the tools everyone in your organization already is.

Smart: Identify and communicate insights with AI

Today, making sense of data can be a time-consuming and manual process. Users might spend several minutes analyzing data to identify trends and insights, and it can be hard to know what questions to ask of your data. All of this can slow down decision making and hinder productivity.

Tableau Pulse enables a smarter use of data by helping organizations automate analysis and communicate insights in easy-to-understand ways—that is, in natural language. First, Tableau Pulse does the heavy lifting for you, helping you go beyond the “what” to get to the “why.” Pulse automatically detects and generates insights, anticipates questions you might ask, and even suggests questions you might not have thought of. From there, Tableau AI summarizes those insights conversationally. This will help you make better decisions faster, without having to spend time manually analyzing data.

Twenty years ago, Tableau completely transformed analytics by reimagining how millions of people could easily see and understand data. With Tableau AI and Tableau Pulse, we’re going to transform the industry yet again with a brand new experience focused on the analytics consumer, one that will empower everyone to become truly data-driven in this new era of analytics.

Want to learn more? Read on to see how Tableau AI uses generative AI to change the future of data or watch a demo to see these capabilities come to life.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

Fast and Flexible Access to Data with Tableau's Google BigQuery (JDBC) Connector

Madeleine Corneli, Adiascar Cisneros — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 17:27:34 +0000

Madeleine Corneli

Senior Manager, Product Management, Tableau

Adiascar Cisneros

Manager, Product Management, Tableau

Bronwen Boyd April 3, 2023 - 5:27pm

April 3, 2023

Google Cloud’s BigQuery is a serverless, highly-scalable cloud-based data warehouse solution that allows users to store, query, and analyze large datasets quickly. With the Tableau connector for Google BigQuery (JDBC), users can easily create Tableau visualizations and dashboards from their BigQuery data without the need to export it to a local file or another database.

The Google BigQuery (JDBC) connector provides enterprise-scale capabilities for our most demanding corporate customers, like support for large result data sets with performant extracts, and flexible data connections with the use of cross-project joins. It works on Tableau Cloud, Tableau Server, and Tableau Desktop.

Google BigQuery (JDBC) is built with the Simba JDBC driver, from Insight Software. Insight Software is a Tableau Partner. The Simba JDBC driver allows Tableau to continue adding modern functionality in less time.

Let’s take a look at the Google BigQuery (JDBC) connector.

New functionalities in Google BigQuery (JDBC)

Storage API

The BigQuery Storage Read API (formerly known as the High Throughput API) is a Google BigQuery API designed specifically for pulling large amounts of data out of Google Cloud’s BigQuery. Tableau support for this API allows you to create larger Tableau Data Extracts faster!

Large result dataset

When you're executing a larger data query against BigQuery, you may need to enable the large result dataset and specify a temporary staging table. The table will automatically be created as part of the execution process. The connector allows you to turn this feature on and specify the name of the temporary staging table.

Cross-project joins

Google BigQuery (JDBC) allows you to join tables from different BigQuery projects. Once you’ve connected to one table you can use the Tableau data pane user interface to navigate to another project and add tables to your data model.

Initial SQL

Google BigQuery (JDBC) supports Initial SQL. Read more about Initial SQL on our Help page.

Migrate to Google BigQuery (JDBC)

We built the Google BigQuery (JDBC) connector from scratch, with a new architecture, and using a different driver (JDBC). It’s a separate connector that exists alongside our previous Google BigQuery API connector. Both connectors will remain available as we support customers migrating to Google BigQuery (JDBC).

To benefit from the functionality in Google BigQuery (JDBC), workbooks using the Google BigQuery API connector need to be migrated. To migrate workbooks, replace the data source with Google BigQuery (JDBC) in Tableau Desktop and republish it.

Previous functionality supported

In order to make the transition from the Google BigQuery API connector as smooth as possible, we included the following existing features in the Google BigQuery (JDBC) connector:

A better way to access BigQuery data

The Google BigQuery (JDBC) connector provides a simple, versatile, and efficient way to connect to BigQuery data, enabling you to create powerful visualizations and dashboards quickly.

For more information on how to use the connector, see our Google BigQuery (JDBC) Help Page.

Find Trusted Data at the Right Time with Tableau Catalog

Srikant Subramaniam — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:28:09 +0000

Srikant Subramaniam

Director, Product Management, Tableau

Bronwen Boyd March 21, 2023 - 8:28pm

March 21, 2023

The increase in data volume and formats over the years has led to complex environments where it can be difficult to track and access the right data. Data discovery and trust have been core principles of Tableau Catalog since its very inception. Learn about the latest features to help users find trusted data at the right time, so they can consume the data with confidence.

Data Quality Warnings (DQW) in Web Authoring experience

A core value and key differentiator of the Tableau Catalog is to help users trust the data that they’re viewing or working with. To achieve this, users need to see curated metadata in the context of what they are doing in Tableau. DQWs will now display for connected data sources in the web authoring experience. This feature will ensure users trust the data that they are working with to answer one-off questions or build new dashboards.

Column DQWs display in lineage and data details

You can now view column-level DQWs where you make decisions about data. For Data Analysts using visualizations to make decisions, we have introduced column DQWs to the data details pane. We have also simplified how DQWs are displayed when viewing lineage in Tableau Catalog. Data Analysts and Stewards using lineage for impact analysis (or to discover data) are now presented with a summary of what warnings are applied to the asset including upstream column warnings to help them make informed decisions.

Mixed-content search in Connect-To

The Connect-To dialog in Desktop and Web Authoring now mixes content into one list and offers additional filtering options to make finding data easier. The Connect to Data dialog first displays a list of mixed content that’s popular. Search results can be filtered by type of data, certification status, or other filters that depend on the type of data selected. For example, some types of data may allow you to filter based on tags, connection type, data quality warnings, or other criteria.

Catalog Feature Previews

While the above features are available only to users of Catalog, all Tableau Cloud customers are now exposed to an overview of Catalog capabilities through an in-product preview that provides a glimpse into the product’s data discovery, data governance, and collaboration features. The preview is a great way for Tableau Cloud customers to see the potential benefits of Catalog and explore how it can help them better manage and govern their data.

It is worth noting that while the in-product preview offers a useful introduction, it does not provide any of the capabilities available in the full version of Tableau Catalog. Users who are interested in the more advanced data management and governance features should consider upgrading to Tableau Data Management to take advantage of the full range of capabilities.

Recognizing Tableau Contributors with the Community Highlight

Pooja Khanna — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 23:57:12 +0000

Pooja Khanna

Marketing Associate Analyst

Ateken Abla March 9, 2023 - 11:57pm

March 10, 2023

Tableau is honored to have thousands of community members who give back to make the DataFam the most welcoming, engaging, and supportive group on earth. The Tableau Community Highlight is our effort to lift these contributors up, shine a light on the great work they’re doing, and connect you with them!

We’re sure you know someone in the Tableau Community who deserves more attention for all the hard work they’re doing: Whether they’re nurturing a growing User Group, speaking about how to use Tableau in a specific area, mentoring the next generation of Tableau talent, answering questions on a Slack workspace or the Forums, or publishing a blog, podcast, video, or live-stream–there are countless ways that people give back to the DataFam that has given so much to them.

To recognize these contributors—we’re excited to have a section within the weekly DataFam Roundup called the Tableau Community Highlight. The Community Highlight will share about who the community member is, what they are doing to help others, and how to follow along or connect with them. Recipients will also receive some fun SWAG in the mail!

The DataFam Roundup already keeps you up-to-date on all the new data tutorials, blogs, visualizations, and events the Tableau community is creating. The Community Highlight will add to this by drawing attention to the people bringing all the DataFam goodness to life for you.

How will the Tableau Community Highlight impact my Tableau journey?

Along with all the tips, tricks, visualizations and data sets the DataFam Roundup already shares weekly, the new Tableau Community highlight will connect you with new data people.

Get inspired by others. It doesn’t take much to start contributing to the Tableau Community. One helpful Tweet, visualization, or quick video can help so many others on their Tableau journey. We hope that seeing others highlighted for their work will inspire you to contribute in your own unique way.

Learn new possibilities. Tableau is used in countless different ways: Across different use cases, workflows, departments, and industries. By gaining exposure to someone using Tableau differently than you, you can learn new ways to use or implement the product yourself!

You’ll broaden your Tableau network. Within each Community Highlight, we’ll share ways to get connected with them and where to find their content—whether that’s through Twitter, LinkedIn, Tableau Public, or their personal website. This way, if you’re interested in the work they are doing, you’ll have the opportunity to create deeper professional connections.

How does Tableau select people for the Community Highlight?

Tableau’s internal team will evaluate candidates based on how their contributions are helping other people in the community–internal contributions made within one’s own company do not qualify. To help your candidate be selected, please share what your candidate has done to give back to you or others and describe the impact of their contribution!

Candidates will not be notified that they have been nominated, but will be notified when they’ve been selected for the Community Highlight. We will contact recipients and ask them to share about themselves before we publish in the DataFam Roundup! Everyone will have the ability to opt-out if they wish.

Who should I nominate for the Community Highlight and how can I nominate them?

We are always looking out for new contributors to the Tableau Community, but no one knows better about who is helping them than … you do! That’s why we are counting on you to nominate people by submitting their names and sharing how they are contributing to the community.

Given that Tableau is already featuring the incredible work our Visionaries and Ambassadors do to support our community, members of these groups are not eligible for the Community Highlight.

The community highlight is the perfect way to elevate someone who has just started giving back to the community—to shine a light on a contributor who makes your community experience better, or to bring attention to someone that’s bringing the Tableau Community to new audiences. Help us celebrate the DataFam members making contributions that help everyone learn and grow in their data journey.