Tableau Conference 2024: Key takeaways and innovations
Discover the latest advancements in Tableau, including Tableau Pulse, Einstein Copilot, and integration with Salesforce Data Cloud.
By Dave Dixon, Travis O’Neill, and Nicolai Johnson-Borelli
We heard a lot of exciting announcements and had some great conversations at Tableau Conference 2024. As always, there were some excellent sessions, opportunities to connect with friends and colleagues, and no shortage of excitement among the “DataFam” about upcoming features.
Tableau as a platform
One of the more exciting themes that emerged from the Tableau Conference was the evolution of Tableau from being primarily a data visualization tool to becoming a robust data platform. This transformation is underscored by advancements in features such as headless business intelligence (BI), which allows you to separate the metrics layer and query engine from actual visualizations to provide seamless integration into various applications and workflows.
Moreover, the improvements in general embedding capabilities and extensions showcased Tableau’s commitment to empowering users to embed rich visualizations and analytics directly into their existing business tools. One example was the announcement regarding a new feature to make it simple to embed Tableau Pulse in platforms like Microsoft Teams (you could already easily embed it in Slack).
The ease-of-access and seamless-integration theme was further reinforced with the announcement of a new capability that will provide “one-click” data exploration with Tableau Cloud in Databricks. While the solution isn’t generally available (GA) yet, it’s sure to excite Databricks platform users.
These developments reflect Tableau’s commitment to continue to innovate and expand their reach inside the enterprise, which was an idea we heard about in discussions with Tableau and their partners. It’s clear Tableau desires to expand the reach of partner offerings and Tableau applications on the app exchange. Having a broader array of pre-built solutions for a variety of analytics use cases will help Tableau further expand their footprint and diversify their presence within large enterprises, helping define Tableau not just as an application but as a platform.
Tableau Pulse
Although Pulse was announced at last year’s Tableau Conference, it only became generally available this February, so we were able to see tangible demos and use cases at the conference this year. Pulse differentiates itself as a reimagined data experience that empowers every employee with intelligent, personalized, and contextual insights delivered in the flow of work.
Pulse looks different from most of the features showcased at the previous Tableau conferences; instead of a dashboard with multiple visualizations and filters, Pulse shows key trends and insights for individual metrics. It is powered by generative AI that shares a summary of the metrics in narrative. The simplified, easy-to-follow view focuses on what is truly most important for the success of a business and drives faster data-driven insights.
Einstein Copilot
Another feature that leverages generative AI is Einstein Copilot for Tableau. This feature accelerates data analysis and leads to faster insights by providing users with suggested questions to ask their data, allowing for more conversational data exploration.
But Copilot doesn’t stop there — it helps dashboard authors be more productive by suggesting and creating visualizations. It will also help with data transformation activities, including automatically generating code for transformations based on your calculation description.
Additionally, while still in development, the keynote showcased potential future features including generative data hygiene and field population. These new generative features are sure to increase analyst and developer productivity.
Tableau + Data Cloud
There were also several impressive sessions on the power of Data Cloud + Tableau. We saw demos of Data Cloud + Tableau in the Data Village and had multiple conversations with customers about this combination. Data Cloud harmonizes data sourced across multiple systems to create a single source-of-truth for the customer.
Pairing Data Cloud with Tableau gives you a 360-degree view of the customer, ensuring you never miss another customer insight. For example, you could visualize segmentation created in Data Cloud to provide insights on the top customers to target for a campaign. This messaging closely aligns with a QuickStart that Slalom recently released to help you unlock customer insights with Data Cloud and Tableau.
Tableau Cloud Manager
Tableau also introduced additional features to simplify Tableau Cloud management and centralize content and user administration. Users will now have the ability to manage up to three production sites per license. Users will have the ability to hold different roles across these sites while occupying the most permissive-license-type seat. For example, if a user has a combination of viewer and explorer designations, they will be assigned an explorer license for that specific Tableau Cloud deployment. This enhancement streamlines license management and user access control across Tableau deployments.
Hyperforce comes to Tableau
Salesforce has rolled out Hyperforce — a next-generation, secure, highly available infrastructure — and is planning to migrate current Tableau Cloud pods between July and November 2024 to Hyperforce, with new pod locations to follow shortly after. This transition will be driven by a shift to 100% infrastructure as code (IaC), offering advantages such as greater control over data residency; enhanced compliance, security, and privacy standards; and improved agility and scalability on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This move to Hyperforce will also enable the introduction of new features and additional compliances (think PCI and FedRAMP) that were previously unattainable.
Final thoughts
On top of all the exciting developments from Tableau Conference 2024, one thing is clear: Tableau continues to innovate, propelling the data and insights space to new heights.
Slalom is a next-generation professional services company creating value at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity. Learn more about our partnership with Tableau.
