Tableau is a leading data visualization provider whose mission has always been to make data beautiful. Salesforce acquired Tableau in 2019 to bolster its analytics offering – especially cater better to its enterprise-level customers.
The Tableau Exchange is the marketplace for dashboard extensions, connectors, and accelerators created by their talented Developer Community.
You’ll notice similarities between the Tableau Exchange and the Salesforce AppExchange, which offers a range of third-party applications and extensions to extend Salesforce. The overarching aim of these marketplaces is to plug functionality gaps in a way that outsources development (freeing up your internal team), leverages niche expert knowledge, and avoids heavy customization (which can result in headlines down the line, such as technical debt). In short – you avoid “reinventing the wheel” when there’s likely a solution already available.
What You’ll Find on the Tableau Exchange
On the Tableau Exchange marketplace, you’ll find:
- Dashboard Extensions: Add functionality to your dashboards using web applications. Categories include custom filters, custom viz actions, natural language generation, among others. Choose to filter between free and paid-for listings – and drill down further to find built by Tableau + Salesforce, sandboxed, and/or works with Tableau Public extensions.
- Connectors: Enable Tableau to access additional databases and application. Choose to filter between free and paid-for listings.
- Accelerators: Rapidly build robust dashboards tailored to industry or enterprise application, all using your data. Choose to filter between free and paid-for listings – and drill down further by connection type and/or industry.
Tableau Accelerators
Tableau Accelerators speed up time to value, containing templated workbooks, sheets, and more, to get you on your way to a powerful dashboard.
What’s more – I found there are interactive previews on the listings that you can test drive. The one below is the free “Salesforce Admin Insights” Tableau extension, generates three Admin Insight Dashboards “in a few clicks” to see the overall health and activity at the org level, user level, and a view into access.
Data is becoming a critical strategic differentiator, yet our developers are having a tough time keeping up with demand from business users. This was the central theme of Trailblazer ’22, the event where the Tableau Exchange was announced.
But we’re looking forward, and want to hear from everyone using Tableau – have you tapped into the Tableau Exchange, and if yes, which are your favorites?