Tableau is gearing up for version 10. The general availability of version 10 of its analytics platform will come sometime in the next few weeks, and today the company detailed the expected improvements and changes to it.
For those generating reports with charts and graphs, Tableau has redone a lot of the basic visualization foundations. This includes the introduction of a new specifically designed font, a new color palette chosen for high contrast between chart items, and a range of new default settings that will make reports look better right from the get go.
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Tableau 10 will also include more support for mobile users. When creating dashboards, for example, users can now customize those views to fit mobile screens on phones and tablets. Each set of data can have multiple device-specific views, enabling the same dashboard to be viewed across devices.
These mobile capabilities extend to security as well. Mobile devices can be centrally controlled so that access to critical dashboards can be revoked in a central location. Dashboards can also be used offline, and are automatically updated when online again.
Chris Stolte, chief development officer and cofounder of Tableau Software, said, “Tableau 10 includes new capabilities that deliver more analytical power than ever before. The new design makes data the hero. Data integration helps maximize time spent on analysis. Data analytics innovations, like the drag-and-drop clusters, help people do more advanced analysis of their data without needing to program. And enterprise advancements continue to up the standard for delivering a governed, trusted self-service environment.”
Also in this version are new handlers for data. Cross-database joins allow developers to unify data sources at the row level. This is supplemented with cross-database filtering, which allows a single filter to be applied to multiple data sources.
Tableau 10 also includes new APIs for accessing the data and business intelligence created and used by the platform. Using these APIs, developers can embed business intelligence into their applications. Tableau is also now suitable for multi-tenant deployments, thanks to more extensive access controls.