Tableau will enable local file-saving for the free version of its data visualization software, no longer requiring Tableau Public users to publish their work online to the community if they prefer to keep their projects under wraps.
The new capability, addressing a longstanding request from Tableau Public users, is one of the announcements expected Tuesday morning at the annual Tableau Conference in San Diego, Calif., where Tableau is expecting more than 8,000 in-person attendees, in addition to a virtual audience.
Local file-saving is part of a broader effort by Tableau CEO Ryan Aytay to appeal to loyal Tableau users — the “DataFam,” as they’re known — seeking to address concerns about Tableau’s direction since Salesforce acquired the Seattle-based company for $15.9 billion five years ago.
“They want to be able to do some local file saving, so they can have a sandbox environment. So they can, let’s say, look at their private data, or their personal data, financial information, etc.,” said Aytay in a media briefing prior to the event. “And so we’re bringing this now to the community. It’s a big thing they’ve asked for.”
The new feature is part of an expansion of Tableau Desktop Public Edition. Separately, users of Tableau’s paid desktop software have long been able to save files locally and privately. However, Tableau Public users have previously needed to adopt workarounds to save their work online in a way that wasn’t visible to others.
Also as part of the event this week, Tableau is expected to outline its long-term vision for AI on its platform, including the use of automation to access data sources, cleanse and analyze data, and automatically suggest visualizations.
The vision also includes the possibility of giving users the ability to reuse, share, and potentially monetize data visualizations and other assets they create through a marketplace, as described during the media briefing.
Earlier this month, Tableau released its beta of Salesforce’s AI technology, Einstein Copilot for Tableau, letting users ask questions about their data in natural language and get answers in the form of data visualizations and text.
Also at the conference, Tableau will announce an expanded partnership with Databricks, the cloud-based data and AI company, to enable easier sharing of data between their platforms.
The event this week follows reports of an effort by Salesforce to further expand its data capabilities. The San Francisco-based company was in talks to acquire Informatica, the data-management software company, but the negotiations fell apart after they weren’t able to come to terms, the Wall Street Journal reported April 21.
