Tableau Releases 8.0 with 90+ New Features to Help People Create, Collaborate and Captivate With Data

Tableau Software today announced the general availability of Tableau 8.0, a major release of its fast analytics and visualization software. More than 90 new features help people answer deeper questions about data and integrate it broadly across their organizations. Breakthroughs such as web and mobile authoring bring drag and drop analytics right into a browser or tablet. New data connections make it possible to interactively analyze enormous amounts of data in the cloud, and additional visualization types encourage new ways to communicate with data. New APIs allow authors to seamlessly integrate custom data, visualizations and dashboards into their applications and portals. And it’s all designed to be faster than ever before.

“Tableau 8.0’s feature set offers revolutionary new tools for helping people see and understand data, enabling powerful analytics and storytelling,” said Chris Stolte, Chief Development Officer and co-founder Tableau Software. “We’re making analytics fast and easy, beautiful and useful. We’re transforming the way people use data to solve problems.”

Tableau unveiled its 8.0 beta at the Tableau Customer Conference in San Diego this past fall. Nearly 4,000 customers participated in the beta program, putting the new creative and collaborative features to the test:

•“Following the evolution of Tableau has been really enjoyable. Each new version stays true to a core philosophy whilst making giant strides forward,” said Lee Mooney, Visual Analytics Manager at Barclays. “With version 8.0, it’s possible to produce and share an even wider array of effective visualizations. There is simply no faster, cheaper or more enjoyable way to produce high-quality business intelligence.”

•“Tableau 8 is a spectacular upgrade. There is a lot to be excited about, but the enhanced data blending will really make a huge difference for building more complex views,” said Mark Jackson, Manager of Business Intelligence and Management Reporting at Piedmont Healthcare. “Dashboard rendering speed has also improved by an average of 50%. Piedmont Healthcare will definitely be upgrading as soon as possible.”

•“With the direct connection to Google Analytics, Tableau Desktop has quickly become an invaluable tool in my analytics armoury. I’m in the digital publishing industry and so I need to visualise trends aggregating thousands of articles over weeks, months or years using datasets regularly exceeding Excel's limit of 1 million rows,” said Geoff Richards, Business Analyst at Net Communities. “Work that previously would have taken hours or would be or impossible to calculate is done in real time with Tableau 8.0. Tableau has transformed my workflow and I never hesitate to recommend it to everyone I meet.”

•“I’ve used Tableau Desktop Professional for quite some time now and one feature I’ve always wanted to see was Google Analytics connectivity,” said Andrew Keech, Data Analyst at GForces. “The extra insight I can now get from combining our Google Analytics statistics with our other data sources is invaluable.”

•“I have enjoyed using Tableau 8.0,” said Tim Reilly, Manager, Strategic Finance at Constant Contact. “The new forecasting capabilities are extremely helpful, particularly the inclusion of seasonality.”

•“At Bunchball we are always working to create an informed and engaging user experience and with Tableau 8.0 we are able to offer increased flexibility and creativity within our dashboard visualizations, making it even easier for our clients to understand the results of their gamification initiatives,” said Keith Conley, Director, Analytics and Insight at Bunchball. “That alone would be exciting; however, what has made the biggest impact on our business is Tableau’s enhanced data connectivity with Salesforce, which allows us to seamlessly integrate our data. This helps us to focus on what matters most to our customers - insight, rather than data aggregation.”

New Tableau 8.0 features include:

•Web authoring: Answer questions right in a browser with a layer of depth that was not previously possible.

•Mobile authoring: Drag and drop to analyze data on a tablet while on the go.

•Visual analytics: Improved sets, groups and forecasting capabilities extend the analytical depth of the application. Treemaps allow for new ways to spot patterns and exceptions.

•Connect to any data: A number of new connectors, including Google Analytics, Salesforce.com and Google BigQuery, allow people to access these popular data sources with a few clicks.

•Speed-of-thought analytics: Tableau’s breakthrough unification of computer graphics and databases is faster than ever before with a new visualization engine.

•Enterprise Integration: With a new Javascript API and a new Data Extract API, customers can now integrate Tableau more deeply into their existing systems.

Learn more about Tableau 8.0 at http://www.tableausoftware.com/new-features/8.0.

About Tableau
Tableau Software helps people see and understand data. Tableau helps anyone quickly analyze, visualize and share information. More than 10,000 organizations get rapid results with Tableau in the office and on-the-go. And tens of thousands of people use Tableau Public to share data in their blogs and websites. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableausoftware.com/trial.

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