# A vision for what Tableau Could be! A single product with many experiences.

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2023-03-19
- **Format:** Video · 20 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Tool strategy, Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, data modelling, prep, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/a-vision-for-what-tableau-could-be-a-single-product-with-many-experiences
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBz7fxOHvCE

I lay out a long-standing frustration with Tableau: the way it's sold, split into creator, explorer and viewer licences with a matrix of features and add-ons, is detached from how people actually use it. I argue for a single application called Tableau where your licence simply unlocks different parts of one cohesive workflow, drawing inspiration from how video editors like DaVinci Resolve guide you through stages.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau's licensing splits work across Desktop, Prep Builder, Server/Cloud and management add-ons, forcing a creator to juggle multiple disconnected interfaces for one workflow
- The creator journey of connect, prep, model, visualise, lay out and share currently means hopping between separate products and republishing data sources just to build a data model
- DaVinci Resolve's stage-based interface (media, cut, edit, effects) shows how one application can reshape itself around each step of a process
- A single Tableau application could save the entire analytical workflow as one file, capturing metadata and enabling GitHub-style forking and granular collaboration
- Reframed as one product with three experiences, creator unlocks the full workflow, explorer starts after data modelling, and viewer only consumes and queries reports

## Chapters

- 0:00 The problem with how Tableau is sold
- 0:40 Inside Tableau's licensing and pricing
- 2:16 Creator, explorer and viewer tiers
- 3:05 The feature matrix and add-on sprawl
- 5:15 The fragmented creator experience
- 9:24 Lessons from DaVinci Resolve
- 11:41 A single-application vision
- 16:53 One product, three experiences
- 18:40 Caveats and closing thoughts

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/a-vision-for-what-tableau-could-be-a-single-product-with-many-experiences

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena