Tableau Conference 2020 – All the highlights of Day 2

Tableau Conference 2020 is taking place in a different format than what we’re used to. It’s a “Tableau Conference-ish”. It’s not what we’re used to, but what is great about it is that if you’re connecting from your home office, your bedroom or your couch you’re still able to join the data event of the year. Oh…and we’re all sitting first row!

TC20 is taking place fully online and for free, allowing many more of us to join. However, it’s possible that if you’re working from home, you’re not able to take time off for the event. For this reason we want to get you up to speed quickly with this blog – so you won’t miss stuff out!

In this blog: Devs on Desk / That one thing – Analytics for Everyone / Iron Viz


Devs on Desk at Tableau Conference 2020

Devs on Desk has been one of the best sessions of Tableau Conference 2020

As many other things, also “Devs on Stage” has been brought to us with a twist at Tableau Conference 2020. Connecting from their homes, Tableau Devs showcased and demoed the new features coming soon during the “Devs on Desk” session. We’re enthusiastic about them already!

  • Map Layers: this will allow you to add endless amount of measures to your map. With this feature, when using a map, you will be able to add additional layers of marks to the same map visualisation. There are no limits to the number of marks layers that can be added. Yes, that is definitely going to change our use of maps. This feature will be called “Mark Layers” and expanded to be available for other graphs at a later stage.
  • Easy LOD’s: often many users find LOD’s something complicated, or simply would like to be more efficient with them. For this reason Tableau will introduce easy LOD’s, with this feature Tableau will be able to automatically write your LODs.
  • Tableau Prep: spatial calculations will be available soon in Tableau Prep Builder.
  • Ask Data: this function has been revolutionary since the beginning, and now it’s received a “makeover”. Tableau has improved Ask Data visual cues and added better interaction from your question to the actual query. Very impressive!
  • Tableau Server: the platform can now automatically assign a role plus get recommendation straight from the get-go. Next to that, you will be able to access an overview of all the things ‘shared with me’ and collections. This will make makes browsing insights and sharing so much easier.
  • Tableau Server: get ready for custom schedules to refresh extracts! You will be able to decide exactly when your refresh should take place, adapting it to your needs. That is going to save a lot of time…instead of bugging the Server Admin to create new schedules. We like when Tableau gives power to the end-users!

That One Thing – Analytics for Everyone

One of Tableau’s key strength is to enable everybody to deep dive into their data. This is possible thanks to the company’s strong self-service analytics approach. One of the ways this translates to reality is through the strong and vibrant Tableau Community. In this session it’s been interesting to hear Rob Long (Deutsche Bank) talk about how they created a great data-community. This has been made possible with gamification, hosting their own TUG and internal contests to create great vizzes. So the most important lesson we got from this session is: if you want to have a strong internal data culture, be in contact with your internal community!


Iron Viz – Tableau Conference 2020

Once again, no stage and no crowd this year. But something that hasn’t change is the excitement for Iron Viz! This year the finalists were:

  • Alex Jones from London and former colleague from The Information Lab UK
  • Christian Felix from Tuscon, Arizona
  • Simon Beaumont, also from the UK

The famous 20 min data-battle revolved about the environment and ended with three insightful dashboards. As for the regular Iron Viz, the pubblic expressed its opinion through online voting, and the winner was…

..we’re not going to tell you the winner here! We don’t like spoilers! 🙂 If you cannot wait you can find the answer in this tweet from Tableau. Or you can wait a couple of days for the release of TC20 videos online.


Want to live to live back also Day 1? Check out this blog: Tableau Conference 2020 – Day 1

Want to live to live back also Day 3? Check out this blog: Tableau Conference 2020 – Day 3