- Tableau Software has released new capabilities to help people unlock more interactivity in their dashboards through a new platform called Tableau 2020.1
Tableau Software — the leading analytics platform owned by Salesforce — has released new capabilities to help people unlock more interactivity in their dashboards and get deeper insights from their data through a new platform called Tableau 2020.1. Tableau 2020.1 is considered the latest update driven by customers’ input in the online Tableau Community Forums and it adds new features requested by Tableau customers and increased flexibility for administrators.
The features include Dynamic Parameters, which eliminate the need to update workbooks when changes are made to the underlying data and viz animations give viewers a new tool for understanding transitions between data points as well as engaging with the data. And Tableau 2020.1 also provides additional capabilities for Tableau administrators through Login-Based License Management and improvements to the Data Management Add-on and Server Management Add-on.
Tableau 2020.1 is putting analysis into motion with the introduction of Viz Animations. This feature allows creators to seamlessly connect the dots behind their analysis through motion. As animations serve as a visual cue, it makes it easier for people to follow along as they watch significant shifts unfold with the movement clearly illustrating how data react to various changes like filtering or sorting. And people are now able to easily spot and understand changes, visually following along to spot when a specific mark becomes an outlier or when there’s a sudden value spike or dip.
The Parameters in Tableau are used by dashboard authors to add interactivity or flexibility to a report without the need for multiple visualizations. For example, parameters can transform a chart from calculating sales and profit to sales and discounts using a simple drop-down or slider. Previously, parameters were static and required users to manually update their values. With the introduction of Dynamic Parameters, authors can set their workbooks to automatically adjust their parameters based on the latest data, which ensures that the rest of the organization is viewing up-to-date and accurate data. This way, analysts can spend less time building and maintaining their visualizations and more time interpreting their findings to deliver measurable business value.
The Login-Based License Management feature gives Creators the ability to instantly activate their Tableau Desktop or Prep product by logging in with their Tableau Server credentials. And administrators are able to assign, monitor, and reclaim Desktop or Prep access directly from Tableau Server rather than distributing license keys. Tableau Catalog new connectors now include Google BigQuery, Google Sheets, and Cloudfile — which extends the available data sources that administrators can verify for their organization.
The Level of Detail calculations in Tableau Prep Builder help simplify the preparation and analysis of data at a deeper level of granularity thus eliminating tedious multi-step flows and replacing them with visual calculations.
And Buffer Calculations allow customers to easily visualize a buffer around a point location, answering complex spatial locations with drag-and-drop simplicity.
Key Quote:
“Since day one, we’ve put customers at the center of our product development. Our extensive and passionate Tableau Community helps steer our product innovation and keeps us focused on solving our customers’ most pressing challenges. This release brings some of our Community’s most-requested updates together, empowering our customers to make analytics more interactive and engaging and allowing them to focus on tasks that drive real value and transformation across their organizations.”
– Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Tableau
“We have dozens of dashboards at our organization that are constantly being updated with new data, requiring new parameter values in order to make sure our viewers are seeing the most accurate, up-to-date data. Dynamic parameters will allow those parameters to be updated automatically, saving me hours every single month. This feature is the most requested feature in the history of Tableau and it is a complete game-changer — I cannot wait to see how others use it!”
– Kevin Flerlage, Senior Analyst and Tableau Developer at Unifund, CCR
