Could Tableau Public & Tableau Prep Be a Single Product? True to the Core

I stood undecided outside Tableau's True to the Core session. After a pep talk from Alison, I found myself in a queue for the mic. This was the first time Tableau Conference included an open mic Q&A session, and gave everyone access to ask any question for the heads of Tableau. A huge opportunity and one not to waste.?

Over the last 9 years, I've built a career around Tableau, it's allowed me to traverse different industries, from financial to broadcast media. But as a long-term user and advocate of Tableau, it’s been hard to ignore Microsoft’s growth in the business intelligence market over the last few years.?

“Will my Tableau skills still be relevant if businesses switch to using Power BI?” The thought had been gnawing away at me for some time and only got worse the longer I waited in line.??

"I'm concerned about the growth of Power BI. One thing I notice about the product is that it's free to start creating visualisations, and you get Power Query to clean datasets. I'd like to hear your thoughts on combining Tableau Public and Tableau Prep into one cohesive product?"

A ripple of applause from the audience reassured me I wasn't alone with this idea.?

Could you imagine it? One free tool that allowed you to see and understand your data whatever format it comes in, clean or dirty. That's what Power BI offers, and Tableau kinda does but split into Tableau Public and Tableau Prep, with Prep only free for a two-week trial.?

The suggestion was thankfully well received by the panel, I'll be following up with them soon to discuss this topic.?

Why? Analytics for Everyone

That's the goal. Allow everyone to discover insights using their data. However, this relies heavily on your data being in an easy-to-process format. Often it's not, and even a clean dataset will need to have some reformatting to create a particular visualisation with Tableau.?

That's where data prep can help but it comes with barriers.?

• Knowing how to code Python, R, dbt etc.?
• Or paying for an ETL tool like Alteryx
• Or, learning Tableau Prep and completing your project in the 2-week trial (or juggling multiple email addresses through the system)

But if you use Power BI you'll receive Power Query, a data prep tool included as standard.?

Bringing Tableau Public and Prep together plays into one of Tableau's core strengths, the community.

Tableau Public was the place where I mastered Tableau, by downloading and reworking Tableau visualisations, why couldn't be the same for Tableau Prep??

Imagine it, you see a compelling visualisation on Tableau Public, by downloading it you see how the charts were built. Typically the data prep stage is a mystery as we just see the resulting dataset in Tableau but often holds the secrets to how great vizzes are made. Take Iron Viz, for example, each contestant receives the same messy dataset and Tableau Prep is a lifesaver to help craft a data story, but those prep flows aren't available with the viz or on Tableau Public.

Tableau Prep would be a new skill for many but community projects like Preppin' Data have produced over 200+ challenges with solutions, and Jared Flores runs https://www.putsomeprepinyourstep.com/ full of guides for Tableau Prep to help enablement.?

Clean and transformable data should be achievable for everyone to see and understand their data.?

A big thank you to Alison Whitaker for giving me the nudge to get up there and ask a question, Sarah Bartlett for her photo from the session, and Tableau for hosting this session at Tableau Conference.

What do you think?

Has your role been impacted by Power BI? How should Tableau change to fix this? I'd appreciate it if you have any thoughts on the topic to drop me a comment below.?