Tableau 10.5: An Evolution into an Analytics Platform

Our favorite data visualization tool continues to release major improvements – and we’re excited! The PMG Analytics team had an opportunity to see what Tableau has cooking for their next release at the Tableau Conference 2017. With the upcoming release of Tableau 10.5, it is increasingly apparent that Tableau is evolving from a specialty application to a fully-dedicated platform with features for both data maximalists and casual analysts.

With Tableau Server 10.5, Tableau continues to evolve into an analytics platform. Project managers will enjoy the flexible folder management system, as well as the additional context around data with the subscription improvement.

Subscription Improvement

Subscriptions are an underutilized function – even within PMG. Subscriptions allows a user to have their report or data automatically delivered to their desk when they get in the office. With 10.5, users can set up groups for subscriptions and write custom messages to each subscription – enabling the user to put more context to the subscription.

Power Trendline

10.5 enables more advanced analytics capability for server users with power trendline. Now users can find the correlation between data by drag-and-dropping a power trendline right on Tableau Server – without having to use Tableau Desktop.

Tableau 10.5’s main focus are two great Tableau Desktop features: Hyper and Viz in Tooltip. These two major features build a solid foundation for Tableau’s future by greatly improving the interaction with data.

Hyper

With Hyper, Tableau prepares for even larger data sets by bringing improvements to extract creation and query processing. When analyzing data, it is important for the application’s performance to keep up with you and answer your questions in a timely manner. Hyper meets these needs by improving query performance for heavy data lifts. Also, Hyper allows more users to concurrently work on Tableau Server without seeing performance drop. In other words: more data, lower wait times, faster analysis, happy users.

Viz in Tool Tip

As avid dashboard developers, we recognize that one of the most challenging aspects of creating the right dashboards for our clients is providing the big picture summary while also allowing exploration into the depths of the data to answer specific questions. The classic approach to achieve this balance is to create a central visualization with dimension breakouts around it. The challenge here is mentally connecting the layers of data, especially for audiences unfamiliar with the nuance of the dashboard. And, even with fancy actions – like using one visualization as a filter – it is not always apparent to end users that this functionality has been put in place for them.

With 10.5, Tableau has allowed dashboard developers to place data layers exactly where end users would expect to see them: right over other data. Now users can hover over a data point of interest and immediately see its components in a pop-up visualization with Viz in Tool Tip. When properly implemented, this new feature could allow an intuitive view of several dimensions at the same time.

PMG Analytics makes it a point to keep pace with new technology and new features. And thanks to the new tricks of Tableau, our data pipeline is evolving to better meet the needs of our clients. As data nerds, we’re excited about how Tableau 10.5 will enable building assets that allow our clients to interact with their big data faster and in a more intuitive way.