Tableau Lifeline

 

People commonly reach out directly to Ken and me for help with challenging Tableau problems. In many cases, Ken and I provide the help they need and are happy to do so—we love the challenge. However, one of the biggest hurdles we face when dealing with these questions is confidential business data. I'd say about 75% of the time, someone asks a very specific question that we can't answer without seeing the data. Unfortunately, since the data is for their business (and confidential), that person is unable to share the actual workbook or data sources with us. So we ask them to mock it up in Superstore, then they kick it back to us a few days later.  We get a solution, but then the user must take the solution (which could be quite complicated) from the Superstore workbook and implement that solution in their actual workbook. And we know that isn't always easy. All of this makes answering the question and implementing a solution very time-consuming, difficult, and even impossible in some scenarios.

Another major challenge is our availability. As I mentioned, we would love to help every single person that contacts us, but sometimes it takes us a couple weeks to respond. We wish that wasn't the case, but with jobs, families, and other responsibilities, sometimes it's difficult to find time to help someone with an issue, especially if it's complicated. Unfortunately, the person asking the question might have an impending deadline where an answer in a couple of weeks just won't work. Honestly, it has always been a tricky problem since all of this is done in our personal time. As mentioned, we truly want to help and want to help as quickly as we can, but sometimes it just isn't possible.

A third concern we often see is that people don't want to "bother" us. They understand that we are busy, have jobs and families, and feel guilty about asking us for "free consulting". Often this prevents people from even asking us questions in the first place.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could find a way to solve this problem? The good news is that we have!!  Through Moxy Analytics, we are offering the Tableau Lifeline service. Assume you have a deadline at the end of the week and have a tricky problem that you are struggling with. You can book an hour with Ken or me and we'll help you work through the issue. This is a paid service, which is scheduled ahead of time and includes non-disclosure language as part of the terms of service agreement. This means that you can share your workbook and data with us with no fear, you can get your problem solved in a timely manner, and you certainly don't have to worry about "bugging" us—because it's part of our job! You can check out the full details of the Tableau Lifeline service here.

Does this mean we are going to stop answering people's questions on the forums and via direct messages anymore...HECK NO! We don't intend for anything to change. We will still be helping people like we always have, still posting blogs, still answering forums questions, and still responding to DMs and emails. But, this service will allow us to address that huge hunk of problems that we were unable to address previously because of all the reasons I detailed above. 

Okay, that's all for now. And if you need some help or know someone that needs some help, we hope you will check out Tableau Lifeline. Thanks!

Kevin & Ken Flerlage, April 20, 2023