At the core of every data-driven organization is the ability to make data easy to access, share, discuss and act on. This data democratization improves the decision-making ability across every function of the organization. No longer is the data needed to make informed decisions buried in email chains or multiple versions of Excel workbooks or long slide decks. It is readily accessible — in a single version — and visualized to make insights easy to grasp. Elements for Tableau enables Tableau users to comment on the data directly from the dashboards. This further accelerates communication around the data and leads to faster and more informed decisions.
System Administrators can assign different levels of permissions to users and groups, precisely controlling who can annotate data, approve a comment or even configure the system. Multitenancy is ensured by workspaces, which encapsulate database configurations, users and annotations, perfectly isolating the work and data of the different departments in the company. Additionally, Elements for Tableau can be configured to record and store a complete audit trail of user activity so you can always see who did what. Thanks to these features, Elements readily meets compliance requirements in the most demanding industries
Either way, data annotations are always stored in a separate auditable database and can be reverted anytime. By default, Elements for Tableau supports connecting to MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL and Snowflake databases, but the generic architecture allows us to extend the system with other types of databases. Using your own database gives you full storage control and ensures that no data — even annotations and comments — leaves your premises.
Using the extension's handy form builder, administrators can create custom UIs from atomic building blocks — text fields, checkboxes, drop-down lists, etc. — and set defaults, minimum or maximum values, enable autocomplete, set validation criteria and order the elements on the form. For added data accuracy and security, an approval workflow can be integrated into the commenting process that ensures that new comments are reviewed by one or more approvers before they are published to the dashboard.
Tags can include individual users or groups, and you can control who can be tagged on a particular dashboard to promote effective workspace separation. Notifications readily support email, Teams and Slack, and their channel and content can be customized for each data point, e.g. with a link to the relevant dashboard. In addition to tags, notifications also support instances where annotations under a data point require approval before going live to automatically notify users when a request is made, approved or rejected.
Whether you’d like to integrate a new type of database or authentication method, apply custom branding and localization, add new input methods or even add a completely new feature, our Tableau developers and software engineers will deliver fast effective solutions.
