RSMUS.comWith the fast paced and rapidly changing environment of technology and data analytics, Tableau was no exception to the trend with new product announcements and enhancements mentioned at Tableau Conference 2022 in Las Vegas.
The focus of the conference was “Data Everywhere for Everyone” and how organizations can work to bridge the data gap. The following are some key takeaways:
Tableau President and CEO, Mark Nelson described the data gap to be a result of four things:
- Data chaos, resulting from the ever-growing amounts of data.
- The lack of data skills for users and owners to get meaningful insights from their data.
- The ability to foster a data culture in organizations so users can use the data to its full potential
- Getting the right tools in everyone’s hands.
And this digital skills crisis deepens – Salesforce’s 2022 Global Digital Skills Index found that 73% of workers do not feel prepared to operate in a digital first world, and only 28% are actively involved in digital skills learning and training.
Tableau has made a #PledgeForData where they are making data a language that everyone speaks. They have created a wide range of easily accessible educational opportunities for learners to choose from. You can learn more about their pledge and resources available here.
The following are a few of the key updates and changes that Tableau is making to bridge the data gap in organizations:
Rebranding of Tableau Online to Tableau Cloud
This shift will focus on cloud technology to eliminate data and information silos in organizations. Tableau Cloud is the evolution of Tableaus fully hosted, cloud-based solution that allows for smarter decisions with fast, flexible, easy analytics. Kitty Chou, the VP of Product Management, said in her keynote, Tableau Cloud will enable more people and teams to uncover insights and become faster and more confident decision makers – leading to better data driven outcomes.
A few of the updated key features within Tableau Cloud include time savings, agility, reduced costs, and recognizing growth opportunities.
- Tableau Advanced Management brings together manageability, security, and scalability functionality for customers. This means that IT will have more agility and time-savings to manage Tableau at scale.
- Customer-managed encryptions keys offer more flexibility and control with additional later of security to meet compliance requirements.
- Activity Log is a great way for administrators to view their own analytics environment and provides detailed data to help administrators to keep track of how people are using T This also enables permission auditing, a critical aspect in implementing controls over your enterprise deployment.
- Admin Insights helps administrators maximize performance and manage content at scale with data about workbooks, job performance, and more.
- Data Stories is a new way to make analytics easy and accessible for everyone. This feature allows users to get automated explanations for dashboards within seconds. Stories break down your data into relevant dimensions, and insights are presented in easy-to-understand plain language. Web authoring will also enable users to craft visual stories using drag and drop capabilities built in visual best practices.
- Embedded Analytics allows users to seamlessly embed analytics into their products and applications to empower your users and customers with data-driven insights.
Moreover, there will be over 100 plus accelerators available on the cloud to accelerate your time to value with prebuilt dashboards. Users will be able to search and launch accelerators, plug in their own data, and get a dashboard up and running within minutes.
Additionally, in a long-awaited feature, users will be able to now publicly share dashboards to the outside world.
Exciting New Features for Tableau Developers and Consumers coming to Tableau
Shared Dimensions
Shared Dimensions will allow for more sophisticated data models in Tableau that may have required creating multiple data models and writing complex SQL in the past. This will allow users to relate multiple fact tables across multiple shared dimensions in Tableau to handle more complex data models.
Photo credit: tableau.com
The Data Orientation Pane
The Data Orientation Pane will be a helpful feature in providing information and resources within a dashboard including descriptions, list of data sources and fields, and a summary of how the data is filtered, and even links to external sources.
Photo credit: tableau.com
Model Builder
This feature empowers the user to create predictive models – both linear and tree based with clicks. Predictive models are now native in Tableau and are fully integrated with the entire Tableau platform. They use the data connections, your security, governance model, and your user permissions. Users can bring these models in their dashboards to get predictions in the flow of analysis. Users can also add models to Prep Builder to enrich their data models with predictive insights.
Photo credit: tableau.com
Tableau Prep Improvements
Now users can get answers from their data faster with enhancements to Tableau Prep with some of the following improvements:
- Add a row ID column in Tableau Prep in just a few clicks to retain the order of your records.
- Clean null values in Tableau Prep and fill them with the previous value.
Photo credit: tableau.com
- Multi-row calculations will allow you to use moving calculations like running totals or a moving average of sales. This is a faster alternative to creating table calculations which can slow down your workbooks.
Photo credit: tableau.com
Ask Data Improvements
- The Ask Data Phrase Builder offers and guided workflow with visual prompts to help people navigate the data.
- Ask Data phrase recommendations, which will come later this year, will use machine learning to interpret intent and make additional, intelligent suggestions.
Photo credit: tableau.com
Emphasis on adding new AI/ML capabilities within Tableau
Model Builder has been designed to make data science more accessible, giving Tableau’s business users the ability to define, train, assess, and deploy no-code predictive models that are fully integrated across the entire Tableau platform.
Also, with the new Table Extension feature announced at TC22, developers will be able to apply R and Python code directly to data models in Tableau without the need or external services, which should make cleaning, transforming, and scoring data much more efficient.
Model Builder and Table Extension will pair nicely in empowering users to create a variety of predictive models all within the Tableau environment, especially for proof-of-concept and prototype designs.
How is RSM helping clients bridge the Data Gap
RSM’s Data Analytics team is well-experienced in enterprise and transformative analytics to grow and scale with our clients. We leverage the Tableau Blueprint methodology to offer trusted and governed solutions, creating data proficiency, community, and agility for our clients.
As Tableau implements these announced updates, our team will work with you on assessing and deploying these changes for your organization. If you have any questions or interest relating to your Tableau capabilities or are interested in getting started with Tableau, please reach out to Lillian Buziak: lillian.buziak@rsmus.com.
