Tableau re-engineers dashboards, adds new analytics tools for business analysts

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Tableau has announced the availability of Tableau 2022.3, a new version of the data visualization and analysis program designed to make it easier for business users to gain insights into their data via the use of capabilities including a Data Guide to help uncover business intelligence more quickly, and a new advanced analytics and predictions tool called Table Extension.

Tableau has also added more dynamic dashboards to its offering, alongside capabilities that provide detailed event data and audit permissions, and help customers optimize performance and cost.

Tableau is one of the major players in the category of self-service BI (business intelligence) tools aimed primarily at nonprofessional developers such as business analysts. As such, it is constantly honing the software's ability to offer advanced analytics while trying to streamline complexity.

"Tableau is focused on bringing analytics everywhere, for everyone, especially since we continue to see companies struggle with unlocking their own data," said Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Tableau, in a statement released by the company. "Our investments infuse Tableau in other widely used applications and bring self-service into the flow of work, making insights easier, relevant and more actionable."

For customers using dashboards, there’s a growing expectation for the provision of custom content and tailored experiences, even though it’s often unsustainable and inefficient to create distinct dashboards for each audience.

Additionally, for new users, navigating a dashboard and uncovering insights from it, can be difficult withouttraining.

In response to this challenge, Tableau’s new capability, Data Guide, offers descriptions and resources to help users become familiar with dashboards, while providing visibility into data.

Data Guide allows customers to derive insights using Tableau’s AI features. Data Change Radar automatically surfaces unusual changes, while its new Explain the Viz capability helps identify outliers in data and understand the causes behind them.

Tableau has also introduced a new dynamic zone visibility feature that empowers users show and hiding dashboard zones, create sophisticated experiences without need for workarounds, and build an interactive dashboard that updates based on users’ inputs and actions.

Tableau’s AI features have also been enhanced. Newly announced Table Extensions combine advanced analytics and predictions, making it easier to apply scripting to and derive predictions from Tableau data models. By using Table Extensions, customers can transform, augment, score, or modify information gathered by data models using Analytics Extensions like Python, R, and Einstein Discovery.

For customers looking to scale backgrounder services—processes that run server jobs in background—working out how to balance performance and cost is often front of mind. With Tableau’s new Advanced Management for Tableau Server, customers can schedule scaling for backgrounders, while having the ability to remove and add backgrounders as and when they need.

Furthermore, as batch job loads increase, users can add backgrounders to improve speed and once jobs have been processed, backgrounders can be removed to save on costs, without any downtime.

First released in Advanced Management for Tableau Cloud in Tableau 2022.2, Activity Log is now available to users within Advanced Management for Tableau Server. Activity Log surfaces structured and documented event data and serves up granular insights that can be used to implement a robust book of controls, while Tableau’s visualization capabilities allow users create aggregate views and analyze activity at scale.