Idea of the Day — spotlighting community driven product ideas.
If you’re lucky enough to be a Viz of the Day (#VOTD) recipient, you know firsthand the increased traffic that spotlight brings. If you’re a Viz of the Day follower, you know it’s the best way to get innovative Tableau visualizations (that you might not see through your usual channels) delivered straight to your inbox. Discovering what others create in Tableau for fun or for business is exciting; #VOTD serves as a flywheel for inspiration and innovation.
What if as a community, we gave the same attention to lifting up product ideas as we do visualizations?
One reason I love Tableau is when someone asks “can I do [xyz]?” the answer is almost always technically yes. But many features aren’t native in the platform yet or require hacky solutions.
You might find yourself saying “I wish Tableau could…” but did you know you have the power to drive change? You can through the Tableau Ideas forum.
In the Tableau Ideas forum, users submit feature requests directly to Tableau and the community votes on them. You can read out more about it here.
There are hundreds of brilliant ideas out there, but many don’t receive attention. As a community we have the power to rally around others’ ideas, helping Tableau prioritize small (or large!) changes. These changes will improve the day to day lives of data practitioners, and further Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand data. And that’s why…
I’m going to see what happens when we feature a community Idea of the Day on Twitter.
My hope: sharing ideas from the forums to Twitter will surface them to a different audience and increase votes. Viz of the Day drives massive traffic to vizzes, we can use that same format to drive traffic to Ideas. Who knows, someday Idea of the Day could become an Official Thing™!
I’ve picked 25+ ideas from the last year to start, we’ll see where it goes from there. In the mix are ideas with 100+ points and ideas with 10 — as long as they are ‘open’ on the forums they are fair game. I’ll be sharing under my handle at @brrosenau — I’d love to see you not only vote on ideas that resonate with you but also share them out to your network.
Some ideas may seem niche — that’s okay. The goal is to drive attention and momentum so the developer teams at Tableau can identify quick wins and/or gaps in current product offerings. The enthusiastic community is a large part of Tableau’s continued success; I believe it is important for us to use the available feedback options.
What’s in it for you?
Tableau releases arrive quarterly if you’re an Online user, twice a year if you’re on Server — that’s several times a year to realize your data dreams! When something resonates with you: tell your data friends, vote, retweet — anything you’d like to spotlight the next great idea.
Inspiration:
Adam Mico shared a call for Tableau wishlist items on Twitter and LinkedIn; there were varied responses as well as lively discussion. Check it out for yourself!
The usual items appeared (*cough cough* spellcheck anyone?) but also many I’d never considered. Change won’t happen without collective action — encourage everyone to get involved! If there is something you want Tableau to implement, vote on an existing idea or submit your own. I look forward to seeing your community ideas in the next Tableau release.
Update 4/21: If you’d like this to be official, please give it a thumbs up over on the Tableau Ideas forum here: https://community.tableau.com/s/idea/0878b000000EgfiAAC/detail Thanks!
