We looked at our Google Analytics data to bring you our most popular blog posts from 2016 based on total hits. If you missed these popular posts, here’s another chance to read them.

Tableau 9.3: Smarter Version Control and Better Use of Color

Back in March 2016, Jasmin Ritchie published this summary of her favorite new features in Tableau Desktop 9.3. New features included the ability to have workbook versions stored on the server when a new one is published so that it can be reverted if necessary. Here are her other three favorite new features:

  1. Newly designed dialog for data source publishing
  2. Excluding grand totals from shading so the eye isn’t drawn directly to those obviously higher numbers
  3. Applying colors to sheets. This is very helpful for organization and communication. We’ve started using color on the sheet name to organize and identify which worksheets are not ready to be published.

Top 5 New Features in Tableau 10

Tableau 10 was released in the August 2016. Tamsen Haught provided a review of her favorite features in Tableau 10, including:

  • Revision history improvements and previews
  • Device specific dashboards which enable a single dashboard to target multiple device sizes automatically
  • Workbook formatting which is a glorious time saver that lets you apply a style to an entire workbook
  • Cross data source filtering which makes filtering across data sources much easier with an option called “all related data sources”
  • Clustering, which is essentially a simplified way to use segmented groups like exercise and diet and find which locations are similar to one another.

Also worth mentioning, that when you upgrade to Tableau 10, you get the new features from 9.3 as well as any other earlier version you’re missing.

Using Propensity Modeling to Drive Revenue and Increase Engagement

Propensity modeling lets you “look at past behaviors in order to make predictions about your customers.” Associations can use propensity modeling to drive revenue and increase engagement. Models are able to predict the likelihood that someone will buy, churn or lapse, or unsubscribe. There’s a lot of potential with this type of advanced analytics. We preict more associations will invest in advanced analytics like propensity modeling in the year to come.