Tableau Enables Developers to Extend Functionality with New Extensions API in 2018.2 Release

SEATTLE, Wash. - July 31, 2018 - Tableau Software, Inc. (NYSE: DATA), the leading analytics platform, today announced the general availability of Tableau 2018.2. This release introduces a new Extensions API that enables customers to drag and drop third party functionality directly into a dashboard. Publicly available extensions can be found in the new Tableau Exchange at tableau.com/extensions. Additionally, Tableau customers can now more easily administer Tableau Server directly in the browser, thanks to the new Tableau Services Manager. Tableau 2018.2 also includes the ability to join data sources based on spatial data, and brand new mobile dashboard formatting tools to improve mobile consumption of analytical content.

“The Extensions API in Tableau 2018.2 unleashes the innovation of our community. For the first time, customers, partners, and developers can add new functionality right into the Tableau platform,” said Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Tableau. “From custom visualizations and write-back, to advanced and predictive analytics, the possibilities are endless and only limited by a developer’s creativity.”

Dashboard Extensions Gives Customers New Functionality
The new Extensions API enables customers to drag and drop third party functionality directly into Tableau. For example, with the new Tableau extension built by partner DataRobot, customers can drag and drop advanced predictive models on top of their existing dashboards. Customers can also build their own extensions to create custom functionality. This means IT can use the API to create a custom writeback extension, allowing analysts to update an inventory management system, for example, without ever leaving Tableau.

“Many of our customers already use Tableau for their business intelligence and analytics needs, but have been looking to extend the power of Tableau to include the results of machine learning models to enhance visual analysis and gain deeper insights into their business operations,” said Seann Gardiner, SVP of Business Development, DataRobot. “The recent enhancements Tableau has made, specifically around its Dashboard Extensions, will allow us to deliver tremendous value to our customers and support our vision of delivering on the AI-driven enterprise.”

Customers can browse a selection of extensions built by Tableau’s partners in the new Tableau Exchange. Developers and partners can create new functionalities leveraging the Extensions API available at tableau.com/developer, extending and customizing the power of Tableau like never before. IT administrators will have full control of which extensions are allowed to run, preserving best practices for data governance and security.

Administer Tableau Server Directly in the Browser with Tableau Services Manager
Managing Tableau Server is easier than ever with Tableau Services Manager (TSM), a comprehensive tool for Tableau administrators to install and configure Tableau Server on both Windows and Linux. The redesigned management architecture lets customers update several Tableau Server configurations without restarting the server, resulting in less downtime. In addition, the new TSM adds three ways to manage your Server deployment: with a brand new web UI, command line interface, and a public REST API.

More Features Based on Feedback from Tableau Community
Tableau also made additional updates in 2018.2 as part of continuous improvements based on feedback from the Tableau Community. With the new Spatial Join, it is now possible to join various data sources together with a single common attribute like location. For example, neighborhood boundaries can be joined with package delivery data to analyze the number of orders coming from each neighborhood.

New Automatic Mobile Layouts helps make sure people on-the-go always have access to data by automatically creating phone and tablet layouts for dashboards by applying mobile best practices. Layouts can be used as is, or further customized with the Device Designer.

Check out the full features list for Tableau 2018.2 at tableau.com/new-features and try it free for two weeks by downloading a trial.

Quote Sheet:
“Many of our customers already use Tableau for their business intelligence and analytics needs, but have been looking to extend the power of Tableau to include the results of machine learning models to enhance visual analysis and gain deeper insights into their business operations,” said Seann Gardiner, SVP of Business Development, DataRobot. “The recent enhancements Tableau has made, specifically around its Dashboard Extensions, will allow us to deliver tremendous value to our customers and support our vision of delivering on the AI-driven enterprise.”

“The commitment that Tableau has made to empower their customers with extensions in the new release allows us to leverage the power of their platform to embed the value of stories in plain English into the world of visual analytics for enterprise clients,” said Nick Beil, COO of Narrative Science. “For Narrative Science customers like Deloitte, this will greatly enhance the speed at which they can glean and communicate insights from their data in Tableau.”

“For years, household names have been using Tableau to see and understand their data, and now using the power of Automated Insights, they put that analysis into natural language that’s accessible, easy to understand, and actionable,” said Adam Smith, Chief Operating Officer at Automated Insights. “With the release of the new Extensions API, Automated Insights will be able to provide companies with written analytics directly within their Tableau dashboards, no additional coding required.”

"Frontline Systems is delivering a tool that enables business analysts to easily create Tableau dashboard extensions from prescriptive analytics models, defined either in Excel or its RASON® modeling language," said Daniel Fylstra, President of Frontline Systems. "This brings the power of mathematical optimization and simulation/risk analysis directly into Tableau."

“With extensions available in the new release, Oak Consulting can now provide our customers with written analytics directly in their dashboard enabling them to extract insights from their data in Tableau faster than before. Oak Consulting consistently looks at delivering a complete solution to serve our customers analytics needs and Tableau’s extensions take us one step closer in this direction, ” said Victor Ng, Executive Director of Oak Consulting.

"With the 2018.2 Release, Tableau is continuing to deliver valuable new functionality for its customers, partners, and developers, most notably with the Extensions API. Being able to super charge dashboards with custom extensions that keep our customers in the flow of analysis is fantastic" said Craig Bloodworth, CTO of The Information Lab. "As the creator of tableaumapping.bi, we’re also really excited to see innovation in spatial functionality that helps drive advanced spatial into the hands of the regular person. Our smaller customers will also be pleased that they can now easily administer Tableau Server directly in the browser with Tableau Services Manager, a big plus-point for non-technical Tableau folks, as they don’t need dedicated, advanced IT resources to get started."

“We are very excited about the Tableau Extensions capability as this provides a level of functionality that allows us to truly operationalize data and insights within our customers’ business,” said Cameron Price, Partner, Deloitte Consulting, Australia.

“Tableau’s upcoming release of extensions has really got the RXP Tableau and Salesforce teams excited to say the least. Whilst we have been able to connect directly to Salesforce as a source for some time, there was significant data modeling effort to join all of the common tables together. The extensions will enable us to integrate the two solutions at an entirely new level. The user experience we are looking for is a seamless user experience for our sales team who can analyze their data in Tableau while having all the benefits of Salesforce in the single interface,” said Stephen Wayne, National Practice Director, RXP Insight.

"With the implementation of extensions, Delivery Consulting can respond quickly and with flexibility to customers’ requests. Till today, Tableau has been a tool to extract insights from data, and when using AI and machine learning for analysis, users would have needed to import data calculated by AI as the original data source. Users can now interact with data including forecasts from AI applications directly in Tableau, receiving benefits from AI rapidly and accelerating their business growth," said Yudai Terasaki, Delivery Consulting.

About Tableau Software
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