It’s time to mention a few innovations shared in the Tableau Conference 2024 (TC24) keynote, as witnessed by Beezwax’s Data Analytics & Tableau Development team.
TC24: “A New Day For Data” (Keynote / Products)
• AI, in the form of Tableau GPT was featured heavily in the TC23 keynote today with features like Tableau Pulse, an improved and augmented layer of metrics that are easily digestible and more intelligent than the current Tableau Metrics. Yet, even if GPT is an engine driving innovation…
• …Tableau is emphasizing access, trust and security alongside the new features. For example, we heard in one TC23 session that Tableau GPT was not, and will not be, trained on any data provided by Tableau users (and, of course, we’ll read the fine print to confirm the privacy).
• Along these same lines, the Tableau user experience is built to make sure that people drive the use of AI-augmented features. For example, Tableau GPT may provide options for new visualizations but ultimately, it’s the user that decides to use, or amend, the vizzes.
Innovations in Tableau (Keynote / Products)
1. Viz Extensions (including “Beeswarms”!)
Viz Extensions are custom-built visualization types that extend Tableau’s capabilities to represent analytics data. Now we’re seeing better options for plug & play custom visualizations straight from the Marks card. These include Sankey, Sunburst, Chords and anything developers want to create via add-ons in Tableau Marketplace.
As Tableau users, how could we not be excited about the possibility of a Beeswarm viz extension?
2. And the Extensions API
As developers, we’re excited about Tableau’s Extensions API.
At their heart, Tableau Extensions are “web apps that can have two-way communication with Tableau”. With Viz Extensions, the tools now exist to integrate “any JavaScript visualization library” more easily into the Tableau platform experience. We have some ideas.
Tableau Pulse
Tableau Pulse Metrics in Dashboards: By adding Tableau Pulse to your dashboard, you get customized metric cards and insights embedded onto your site. For example, you're able to choose between different card and BAN layouts, finding new ways to leverage Pulse in the flow of work.
Composable Data Sources
In a nutshell, “composable data sources” means we can combine (“join”) published data sources to create a single source of truth, while enabling refreshes of data cascading downstream.
The Even when you ‘compose’ data sources by joining them,
Composable Data Sources: Offering the flexibility to explore, Composable Data Sources help you create a single source of truth. You can enrich centralized, certified data with additional context as a derived, dependent data source without the risk of impacting certified data. This means that changes made upstream to centralized data automatically cascade to analysts' data sources downstream, keeping them updated and in sync—which also saves you precious time and money in data egress.
Spatial Parameters
- Spatial Parameters: Enabling you to fine-tune the proximity between locations, Spatial Parameters offer geocoding at the address level and distance or buffer analysis. Imagine what businesses can do with this feature. For example, franchises can map overlap and outreach for Direct Mail, or drive supply chain optimization using data.
Apple silicon support in Tableau Desktop
It was a minor step for TC24 innovation presentations, but one giant leap for Mac users. Tableau Cloud has some
Allow Tableau Public (free) users to save locally on their Desktop.
Probably
Tableau
Headless Business Intelligence (BI) – VizQL Data Service: Apple Watch App: Designed for the admins and devs at heart, Headless BI helps data scientists leverage Tableau like never before. Developers, rejoice! Build custom apps like an Apple Watch experience to monitor travel and expense on the go, for example.
Data Management – Data Cockpit, ABAC
Data Cockpit: Essentially air traffic control for your data, Data Cockpit gives you unparalleled insight into Data Management. It answers Tableau administrators' most frequently asked questions about who’s contributed to the site, the data being used, whether or not that data is certified, and more.
Attribute Based Membership (ABAC): Showcasing group membership improvements, Attribute-Based Membership dynamically manages authorization using groups. It can save site admins time by leveraging metadata from your identity provider. With ABAC, it all just works.
Overall, there’s been quite an innovative feeling start to TC23. There truly are some compelling features and improvements being shown off. Integration with Salesforce products and services continues to be a major theme, as well.
Getting Started -with Tableau Desktop Public Edition
Local file save with Tableau Desktop Public Edition
To further our mission of helping everyone see, understand, and act on data, we're expanding on Tableau Desktop Public Edition to allow users to work with and save data securely and locally on their desktop, or share it online with the Tableau Public community. Now, even more learners, data enthusiasts, and non-profit users can explore the data that matters to them most.
Tableau Conference 2023 – Day 2
We dove into some hands-on sessions on Augmented Analytics, and Set Actions, and heard about modernizing the data enterprise. We wrapped up with the famous Flerlage Twins for some nifty-neat stuff in Tableau. Crowds and lines grew at TC23 today; here's hoping that's a sign of continued growth of Tableau, and the returning demand for learning and connectedness in the #DataFam community.
Augmented Analytics
In our Augmented Analytics session we heard from the Tableau team on where their roadmap is head with features like Ask Data, Explain Data, Data Stories and the newly announced Pulse.
Augmented analytics provide additional insight and context alongside analytics products. The latest available feature in this field, Data Stories, is powerful and also flexible to provide useful plain language summaries of visualizations. It is 'smart' enough to adapt to user interaction even if it's generated by rule-based algorithms. But Pulse, powered by Tableau GPT, will bring these three types of augmented analytics together and provide additional context and target tracking to end users. We heard that Salesforce is “doubling down” (we’re in Vegas, remember) on this new feature as the modern way to provide universal metrics that can easily be used by business users. Expect a Fall 2023 preview of the feature – we'll keep you posted.
Set Actions
Set Actions are YAFF (Yet Another Favorite Feature) for us in Tableau, even if they've been around for a while. We find them particularly useful for hierarchical drill-down, and simple user-driven categorization for various use-cases. Nothing brand new in this arena, but it's good to exercise these foundational muscles that can provide powerful results.
How To Do Cool Stuff In Tableau
We rounded out Day 2 with some quick tips from the fun Flerlage Twins. If you've ever wondered how to color dimensioned bar charts alongside Row Grand Totals that also display colored stacked bars, all in one worksheet (whew!), check out a stream of the presentation available via the Tableau Conference site.
Tableau Conference…2024
If you're already wondering about next year, Tableau Conference 2024 (TC24) will be in San Diego — so get ready for the beach!
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