Some Background

In a recent conversation, the idea of an analytics tool was discussed. As usual, Tableau is the clear leader in the space. However, it does pose a challenge for those not willing (or at least timid) to learn its vast capabilities. For some, the learning curve was just too steep. While that sounds crazy to most of us, it still remains that some will not make the effort to learn a new tool; rather, they just want to benefits of the tool presented to them without any serious cognitive dissonance.

Enter Tableau Working Wax.

The Basics

Imagine your elite Tableau developers create a set of template/standard workbooks. These can contain anything from time series charts to scatter plots (and everything between). They’re deep and elaborate and complex. They’re the essence of Tableau.

Not a problem, Tableau Working Wax is an automated platform which enables users to choose a report, chart type, filter (via url parameters), frequency of delivery and delivery method. That’s it. After that, the report is sent to them in seconds at an interval of their choosing (daily, weekly or monthly).

The Code

It does this

• Get metadata from Excel sheet, database (or whatever you choose. Basically, this is where your users select their desired chart, report, filters, etc.)
• separate the weekly & monthly & daily segments
• Process each segment and send (via Slack or email)
• Logs

I’ll start putting code segments here.

The key is to have your Tableau team create a template workbook(s) first. Once that’s done, you’re going to leverage all of the neat functionality in Tableau (tabcmd, rest api, url filtering, and visualizations).

A scenario

Bob the Builder thinks it would be really neat to have a report about his construction inventory sent to him. He knows what it looks like in his head; he wants a timeline and a cross-tab of inventory data. Suddenly, he remembers there is a document he can fill out that will simply let him choose a few configurations and then, viola, it will be sent to him. He didn’t need to learn all about Tableau (but he knows he should have).

The Catch

Nothing. We’ve literally scaled this to 100s of distinct reports and all users have to do is adjust some configurations on a file.

For a demo, please just let me know!