We were told (5+ month ago) what to expect from Tableau 8.2 (originally @TCC13 they said Release can be before the end of the winter of 2014; however in the latest Earnings Call here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1994131-tableau-softwares-ceo-discusses-q4-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript CEO acknowledged the delay: 8.2 in Q2 of 2014, and v.9 in “first half of 2015”, many months later then original plan), including:
- Tableau for MAC (very timely at time when QLIK about to abandon the Qlikview Desktop in favor of HTML5 Client),
- Story Points (new type of worksheet/dashboard with mini-slides as story-points, so bye-bye to Powerpoint),
- seamless access to data via data connection interface to visually build a data schema, including inner/left/right/outer joins,
- ability to beautify the columns names.
I am sure Tableau already has a Roadmap for Tableau 9 and beyond, but I accumulated a list of wishes for it (may be it is not too late to include some of it to Roadmap?). This Wishlist is rather about backend than about front-end Eye Candies (the nature of the Large Enterprise dictates that). Here it is:
- Visual ETL functionality and Data Quality Validation/Cleaning;
- (thanks to Larry Keller): Enterprise Repository for pre-Validated Sharable Regularly Refreshed Data Extracts, Data Connections and Data Sources;
- Ability to collect Data automatically (say Machine-generated or/and transactional Data) and Visually (say from Humans, filling Data-Entry Forms), both tied to already predefined and/or modifiable Data Extracts;
- Visual Data Modeling;
- Free Tableau Reader for Mac (since we are going to have Tableau Desktop for Mac in Tableau 8.2 anyway), iOS, Android and Linux;
- Real-Time Visualization, support (Spotfire and Datawatch have it!) for Complex Event Processing (CEP), Visual Alerts and Alarms;
- Scripting for Visual Predictive Modeling and Visual Data Mining with ability to do it in Visual IDE and minimal Coding;
- Better integration with R (current integration is limited to 4 functions passing parameters to R Server), with Visual IDE and minimal or NO Coding.
- Enterprise-wide source control and change management.
- Please allow to share Data Visualizations (read-only) from Tableau Online for free (learn from Spotfire Cloud, it called Public Folder!), otherwise it will be too much of usage of free Tableau Reader. Currently, in order to access to published on Tableau Online workbooks Tableau by default requiring the extra subscription, which is wrong from my point of view, because you can just publish it on Public Folder of such site (similar to what Spotfire Cloud does). By default Tableau Online does not allow the usage of Public Folder, which contradicts the spirit of Tableau Reader and creates unnecessary negative feeling toward Tableau.
- Enterprise-wide reuse of workbooks and visual designs etc.
Since Tableau is going into enterprise full speed (money talks?) then it needs to justify its pricing for Tableau Server, especially if Tableau wish to stay there for long. Feel free to add to this list (use comments or email for it). The first addition I got in a few hours after posting the Wishlist above from Mr. Damien Lesage, see 3 additions from Damien below and his entire comment below of this blogpost:
- Tableau Server for Linux (I actually advocated it for a while since Microsoft changed (made CALs more expensive, now it looks to me as unwarranted taxation) its Client Access Licensing for Window Server 2012). For comparison Spotfire Server for Linux and Solaris existed for years: http://support.spotfire.com/sr_spotfireserver60.asp , and it is one of reasons why large enterprises may choose Spotfire over Tableau or Qlikview;
- Extra visualization capability: hierarchical, network and graph representations of data (do we need an approval of Stephen Few for that?);
- Ability for extract engine to distribute extracts between different servers to allow to load them more quickly and support bigger datasets (I suggest additional ability to do it on workstations too, especially with Tableau Desktops installed and it means they have TABLEAU.COM executable installed anyway)
Suggestion from Mike Borner (see his comment below):
- ability to report metadata/calculated fields
Data Visualization 
February 15, 2014 at 11:05 am
Tableau 8.2 is expected around June 2014 (last info I’ve read).
I agree with your wish list.
I would add to this list (but it might be less of a game changer that your initial list):
– improvement on the formatting menu (which is still quite confusing at first for new user).
– adding extra visualization capability regarding hierarchical and graph representations of data (better treemap, dendrogram, graph, etc.)
– offline mode on the mobile (yeah, sometimes you just don’t have any network and still want your data on your tablet)
– Tableau Server for Linux
– Better scalability for the extract engine: being able to distribute extracts between different servers will allow to load them more quickly and support bigger datasets
I also expect some easy features that are missing currently.
For example, it would nice to be able to cancel a task on Tableau Server without the need to restart it.
And there are plenty of small improvements like this they can pick from their Ideas forum.
February 15, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Another great post. I just pray that Qlik still keeps QlikView desktop.
February 17, 2014 at 9:11 am
I’d add to this a metadata / calculated fields reporting function. Dubious task to go through each of the calculated fields to document them, and identify which workbook/chart/dashboards contain each field…
May 18, 2014 at 8:29 pm
Mike, I wholeheartedly agree with you and would go a step further…
I’ve been using Tableau in the corporate environment and one feature it is really missing is one to automatically document the contents of a workbook.
Any organization needs to keep versioning control, as well as being able to reuse proven code and data sets. Basic housekeeping that may consume tons of hours to do manually!
February 21, 2014 at 1:15 pm
– A Linux server version of Tableau Server.
– The display of graphs and integration with graph databases such as Titan.
March 27, 2014 at 10:42 am
Your wish list appeals to the technical users which are the Tableau minority. We have to keep in mind why Tableau has leapfrogged traditional enterprise focused BI competitors like Cognos and BO…they focused on the end users (i.e., business), not technical users (i.e., IT).
I deal with many Tableau end users daily and I can think of very few that would put these features on their wish list. These users found Tableau on their own, most have Excel skills but few have DB skills…nor are they interested in learning them. They want the tool to do things for them (e.g., the data blending feature in Tableau) and be free of having to call the IT guy.
Tableau needs to continue focusing on what put them on the map…allowing users to easily see and understand their data. The word “easily” is key.
April 26, 2014 at 11:08 am
Cheers to that 🙂 As easy as it is for users to create Tableau visualizations, it would be nice for Tableau to “data mine” and detect trends in the data for us.
Both our SSAS cube and Tableau would be more valuable if they could work better together. Right now, Tableau Online doesn’t support live cubes. It also doesn’t support data blending for cubes..
April 26, 2014 at 11:11 am
Forgot to mention, both our ssas cube and Tableau would be more valuable if they could work better together. Right now, Tableau Online doesn’t support live cubes. It also doesn’t support data blending for cubes..