I'm Garrett Sauls. I'm a Content Manager at InterWorks. I am not a data professional by trade, but I have worked for a data consulting company, Innerworks, for the past twelve years. So I've had the great privilege of working with a lot of brilliant minds, a lot of multidiscipline people who worked with a bunch of different tools and have gotten to learn from their experience. And it's the same today with people like Annabelle and Sarah. So, Annabelle, I'll have you introduce yourself, and then we'll get to Sarah. Yes. Of course. So a warm welcome also from my side. My name is Annabelle Rincon. I'm living in Switzerland. I have more than fifteen years experience in data analytic, more more than ten years leading teams of data analysts from different size and location. And in my last role, I was leading a center of enablement, and I'm truly convinced that enablement is a key to success of a data analytic platform, implementation, or any digital transformation. That's why we come up with this webinar idea, around the neighborhood with Carrot in order to learn from the best, but also to create some awareness on this important topic. So it's a great honor today to receive Sarah. Sarah has worked in several analytic and consulting position over the past thirteen years. She's passionate about data focused user enablement, user expense, and enablement organization. Sarah is currently, I think, on her fifth term, Tableau visionary, seven years Tableau public ambassador, and she's also co leading the, one of the biggest and more active Tableau user group, the London Tableau user group. So, thank you very much, Sarah, for being our speaker today. I would like to introduce yourself a little bit deeper and maybe explain, to us what you do, like, as an enabler. Yeah. Thank you, Annabelle. Thank you, Garrett, for inviting me on today. I think Annabelle, I think you covered it for my intro. So I currently work at JLL as a BI enablement director for the EMEA region, we're global so I have counterparts in other major regions as well. Prior to that I ran a centre of excellence in another organisation and then prior to that I've worked about seven years in consulting, so mainly Tableau but other other BI tools as well, so all data related. But all in all I think I've been in data for about thirteen years, got my start in Excel, but my passion is really with enablement and really helping people succeed, so you'll see a lot of my more recent roles since I've done consulting have been based around enablement and excellence and training and all those kind of things that really help people be their best. I love that. I want to take a second too, I believe if I remember correctly, the Tableau ambassadors were just announced recently and both of you were on this list if I'm not mistaken, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So congratulations. I it's truthfully with all the I mean, you you all have so many awards and I think it's fantastic. Obviously, very well deserved, but, I love that you're still in there, that you're committed to the community, that it's like a very endearing thing. So I just wanted to real quick give some some kudos and some props for that for another year for both of you. Thank you. Yeah. I think it's been a while for both of us, and the community's changed so much over the years, but I think everyone finds their nation. You know what? Me and Annabelle, we we kind of run into each other a lot in between two similar things, run similar events. But it's really nice to be able to give back and and help people for all these years. And I forgot to mention, I think, also that you have another initiative called Iron Quest. Yes. I do. So I run a community project called Iron Quest, which is based on Iron Viz. So Iron Viz actually just launched yesterday. So that's the one of the biggest database competitions in the world run by Tableau. I think if the if you get it finished the final and you get the grand prize, I think it's fifteen thousand dollars US dollars. So not bad. Definitely it's Yeah. Definitely one to look for. So the way that that works is there's a qualifier competition, which is just launched, runs for the duration of October, and for that you need to build a visualization in Tableau on the topic of entertainment, so that could be something TV or movie related, music, whatever you consider entertainment to be, and then the three finalists then go to San Diego in April for the final. But the project I run helps people prepare to enter the competition, so my focus right now is getting people over the line. So we'll be doing a feedback initiative in the next couple of weeks to help people who are taking part and just give them feedback to help them along the way. So looking forward to that. Well, definitely, you are very busy. As for you, Annabelle. Yes. I don't quite so, maybe can you talk about which kind of, tool or skill, do you enable people with in different organization you work for? Yes. So currently, it's Tableau and Alteryx. So they're the primary tools that we use for BI. In prior roles, predominantly been Tableau, to be honest, but I think just data visualization in general. I think a lot of these principles could be applied to any tool. It's I know there's obviously the training element which is tool specific, but in terms of enablement in general, I think you'll find common themes that could be lifted and shifted to to other BI tools as well because it's not just about using the tool, it's about how do you gather stakeholder requirements effectively, how do you, build something that's fit for, like, a good user experience, how do you communicate with your stakeholders? There's all those kind of things that are relevant regardless of what tool that you're using. I suppose that you don't need to be very good at all this tool to enable people. Do you mean I'm sure that you are very good the strong external communities, and in the programs I currently run we lean heavily on community, so that's both utilizing what the community puts out, so in terms of challenges, things like Workout Wednesday and the Alteryx challenges you can find on their community forum, but also giving back to those communities as well, so how can we encourage our people to respond to help questions on the forums or speak at user groups. So those are all built into the programs that we run. So I think in terms of being an expert, if you didn't have that network of, like, community, I think you would you would struggle if you weren't an expert in these tools to run these programs right there. I think you need some kind of understanding, at least baseline. Or maybe just following your enablement program, you can just come and get an expert. Yeah. Hopefully. And so you have guys the same strategy, right, for this tool? It's like Similar. Yeah. So both of these frameworks were developed by Fee Gordon. So Fiona Gordon, she's based in Australia. Some of you will be familiar with her because she's she's very famous. But these are all her brainchild and which they've been adapted. I think I'm not sure which one was first. I think it was maybe Tableau, and then, it was then applied to Alteryx. The format's similar, and the principles around that are similar, but obviously they've been we we've adapted them based on the tool. But, yeah, that's where they've came from. And and some of this is available publicly. So for the Alteryx, adventure, it's what we call it, you'll find on Tableau, public a example of what our leaderboard looks like, and then there's a workbook there that will actually tell you how you could implement that in your organization as well. It's really interesting. I'm interested to hear too just kind of the difference between, you know, do you find that often the Tableau users and the Alteryx users are the same people? Do you find there are, like, a different sort of analysts that kind of one gravitate towards one or the other? Is Is it that bifurcated or is it a little more kind of like kind of there's a Venn diagram and some people fall in this way and that way, you know, how do you like more specifics kind of tailor to each of those types of users? Yeah. So I think there's definitely some crossover, and that's given the nature of the work that we do. Our analysts need to have the skills in both because typically they're doing their data preparation work and then they're doing the visualization part as well. But you definitely get people that Ultrix, they don't like using Tableau, but they love the other one. Right? And I think that's natural. I think you get people that are naturally more, like, data engineering minded that may enjoy the the visualization side where you get the more creative folks that really want to focus on the front end. So I think that's to be expected. And I think in terms of our in our programs, ideally we would love everyone to go through all the stages, so all of them go from rookie to rock star. So when you start off, you're kind of at level zero. You're you're not a rookie yet. Then you you get that first badge, and then you progress through. And ideally, you get to rock star. But I don't think that that we would expect everyone to get that far. But we recognize that that not everyone's going to go all out and do everything that they need to do to get to the highest level, but we would expect them to get maybe halfway through and maybe get a certification. And then continuously then give to give back and you just by giving back maybe you're not getting the next badge, but you'll still be getting points and recognition for the for the work that you are doing, even if that's just taking part in challenges and submitting workout Wednesdays and things like that, you're still actively contributing and growing your skills, and that that's what it what's important. It's those the programs are already there for our employees to to level up and improve their abilities in those skills. Right? Yeah. I love that. I love the concept of badges too, and points. I feel like we might I've might've talked about that before as well. But it's interesting how just even little things can really can motivate people. Right. And kind of get that competitive drive going. And you throw a little swag at it too. People are crazy for swag. I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do, but I I love that. I mean, it doesn't take much, you know, to to have a a badge and a point system. So, I really love that you're implementing that for users of all different different types. Right? Yeah. People love shiny badges even if they're just digital. Right. And we see Tableau and Autorex. They do the same thing. They they offer out badges and particularly Autorex because they love badges. But it's nice because it gives people that ability to share a little bit of insight into what they're doing at work on LinkedIn. So maybe they've got that badge, they've got that recognition internally, and then they can share that on LinkedIn and say, hey, look at look at what I got. Right? This is evidence that I'm elevating and improving my skills and giving back, which is always really nice to see. Those those posts tend to go down well. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love when I see them, like, pop up in LinkedIn. Oh, I just got the the badge. Yeah. That's very, very nice. Personally, I could sell my soul for, like, some stickers, but Yeah. I agree. You know what it is for me though? And we we kinda saw this at the last Tableau conference. I'm a sucker for a tote. Like, I can't stop collecting a good tote. Right? Any sort of branded tote. So that's that's the key to my heart. I feel like t shirts were the thing, you know, like a a few years ago and and and all that. But, yeah, it's totes for me. They're useful, right? Yeah. They are. Yeah. Yeah. Take it to the beach, take your books to it, wherever you're going. A lot of uses. Yeah. I'm curious, Sarah, how do you we're talking about different users, right? And when you're in a large organization, you have users of all different skill levels. And sometimes you have new users who are who are coming in and they're new to a tool. Maybe they have experience in another tool and they're learning a new thing. But I'm specifically interested. How do you how do you challenge those rock stars? The people that are kind of like at the champion level who they know the tool. In fact, they probably know the tool better than most people at the at the organization. How do you continue to keep their interest and push them towards growth, whether that's in the tool or just growth outside of the tool? Yeah. Good question. So first of all, if you're coming into the if you let's say you're a new starter but you've already got a Tableau certification under your belt or Alteryx certification, you can jump a few levels. So we recognize anything you've done already that's evidence that you you know what you're talking about and chances are we, you know, we we may have recruited somebody who's got a Tableau public profile or some evidence out there that they've been actively using these tools, so we would take that into account so that there are different tracks that will help you elevate to the to the right level that you should be at, so we would never expect somebody to start the basics if they've already had a lot of experience behind them. So but in terms of the rock stars, so we of course we've got people that have reached that level, we've got people that have reached that level in both tools, and I think you naturally find those people that just want to go all out and it's don't think those people are of the mindset that when they get that badge, it's like, I can sit back and I'm done. Right? It's like it's like Annabelle and I, we've been on the programs of Tableau for so long and it's not like, once we reach that level, we just stop. Right? I think those people naturally are the kind of people that want to give back, they want to help their colleagues, they want to give back to the external community, they're the kind of people you find speaking at TUGS or Alteryx user groups, and so I think naturally they'll continue to to to work through these challenges and whatever else that may be. So with although they may have reached the top level, they can still get points. So we have a leaderboard like I mentioned, we have one publicly available on Tableau Public, so the leaderboard shows both what level you're at but also a number of points, and that can you could have more so someone could have a lot I think potentially you could have more points but it still be a lower badge level than someone that's a rock star. So there is particularly at the top of the tables. So, yeah, just doing these just being regular and taking part in activities and giving back your your accumulate points. So you can still progress even if you've reached that top level. And just to add as well another thing we did recently just last month was a level up month, so we recognize that these programs have been established for quite a while, we like I said we have some people that have reached rock star in both courses, so it's we're like what could we do to get give another badge or give another incentive or maybe there's somebody out there that's just one activity away from their next badge, wouldn't it be great if we if we offered some kind of incentive to help them get there? So what we did was for the month of September, if anyone gained a badge, they would get an additional bonus level up badge. Mhmm. So that just for the month of September. So it's almost like an exclusive. So that really encouraged people to have a look, myself included, to see, like, where they were at, and then tick off those last few remaining tasks that would get them to that next stage. So I didn't realize I was very close to Rockstar on Tableau, and I managed to cross off a few tasks that I'd already done. I just hadn't, like, submitted them. Yeah. And then I got my badge. So that that was really nice to see other people. I see that leap and maybe go for a certification that they've been putting off, and then get the next badge that they were entitled to. Mhmm. That's quite clever to make this back to school or level up. Yeah. And we did it in September because that's typically, like, back to school month. Right? So it seemed like the appropriate time, maybe not too busy, or the end of the year. But yeah. Yeah. I think that's really clever. I think, it's one thing to create a program. Right? It's one thing to create all the resources in the world and to create a great program for people to learn and they can do that on their own time. But I think the other part of that is kind of consistent communication and reminders. I feel like people it's it's very underrated no matter what you're in, whether it's data enablement or just general information sharing in an organization. People need multiple reminders that a thing still exists or this is still here. And sometimes it's that little nudge like you said in your case just to be like, oh, right. I've I've done these things. I just need to document and do it. And then you can kinda get those points and and do back up. And usually what happens, at least this is me, like, if I'm on an app like Strava, right, for like running or cycling or anything like that, The moment I open it back up and I check off the thing for the whatever month, I'm I'm back in it. Right? I'm I'm more liable to continue on that journey, for a little bit even beyond just that initial month. So that's really clever to just kind of be mindful of those communication points and remind people that a thing exists even if functionally it's not changed. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And we have other things as well. So we have a gamification hour every week, so that typically alternates between our different tools, and that is set aside for learning, so typically for Tableau we would do a workout Wednesday challenge, where one of our internal ambassadors would lead that and and walk you through kind of step by step what to do, so that could that's really going to help people that maybe aren't so skilled, and also the ones that are more talented or you know have have those skills can help the newer ones. We do the same thing with Alteryx as well, where we'd walk through a workflow for an Alteryx challenge, but then that means that if you take part in those sessions every week automatically you'll have something to submit, and get points for on both of those challenges. So even that means that you know there's no kind of thought process to it, someone else has picked the challenge, and it's not necessarily the most recent one, it could be that we've gone back into the archives and found something that's relevant to the what we're doing at work, and yeah it's just a great way to get everybody together, and learning. Mhmm. It was very difficult, I remember I still remember when I was doing this, For me, it was, like, you have you build resources. You have resources, and maybe it was for several years ago. And you constantly because the product evolve, you have constantly to improve yourself or do, like, some update. So when you have a big team, it's maybe easier. I don't know. But when you are a small team, like, my way to do some update was, like, just maybe, like, doing a webinar on a new feature that was going up. And that's where I could record and have it store or, but it's true that maybe you have other techniques that you want to share with. It's it's difficult. The magic wand. I don't I don't have the magic wand. But I mean it's difficult because these tools are always changing and they're always bringing in new functionality and you might have written some training and with some screenshots and then a couple of weeks down the line everything looks different because there's something's changed, right? Which is simply how these things work, you'll write something and then it would change. In previous roles we I've written training courses, you know, to help people and that content comes out of date very very quickly, so currently at JAILA we rely on external training to supplement these programs, so we don't we're not spending any of our resource on on writing out content because, just like I say, I think it's very time consuming to write content. If you think about recording videos and editing those videos it takes a lot of time, and it like I say it can become holiday very very quickly, so I personally think it's best to to outsource where you can if you've got the budget. Plus there's a lot of content out there for free, like there's we're blessed with people like Tableau Tim who with every Tableau release he's there, he's he's on it and currently that's someone I would refer people to at work, so if there's a new feature that's going to be relevant to us I would just have a look at his YouTube channel and, point people to his videos. Mhmm. That's fantastic. And that's what I love too about these communities. I feel like the Tableau community certainly is exemplary in this way of, yeah, there's there's going to be a new feature, a new release. There's there's gonna be no shortage of people covering it and willing to share it as well. And then, of course, Alteryx has a community in and of itself, right, of passionate users as well who who share those things. And that's that's super, super duper beneficial. I'm I'm curious, from both your perspectives, because I know you've both been in roles like these are actively in roles like these, right, of of what would you say the value is in having kind of a dedicated person who is dedicated to enablement, helping people along their journey with data and analytics. I mean, what's the difference between having that person and not having that person in terms of encouraging the overall growth of all your users in in a given organization or user group or whatever it may be? Yeah. Do you want me to go first, Annabelle? Sure. Oh, yes. Of course. I think, you know, it's it's invaluable. Right? I think if you don't have this person, two things could happen. Either somebody will be doing a side up desk and they'll be struggling to to, you know, to to get through everything they need to get through on top of their day job, or it won't happen at all. And then when it doesn't happen at all, what you'll see is that maybe somebody will have the bright idea of sending some, some people on the training course, and they'll go away on the training course. They'll come back, I taught Tableau for the first time. I came back to I wasn't surrounded by anybody that knew how to use Tableau. I had no support network. I didn't know the community existed so I kind of suffered in silence because I don't know how to use this, I have no one to ask, and then effectively just went back to to using Excel. I was like oh I know Excel, I'm comfortable here, you know I don't know how to do this thing so I'm therefore stuck, and and then what happens is that over time you forget what you learn in the training and then that the full value of that course never gets realized, so I think it's so so important that if you are going to be sending people on course is that you have that support network in place both in terms of enablement but also in terms of reference material that people can look at whether that be books, blog posts, anything like maybe on an internal intranet, anything that's gonna help them or point them to to where they can go for help. It's so so important. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, for me it's, like I said, it's like a a big part of any data analytic implementation or platform or tool. If you don't have this kind of person I mean, let's say that if you have it, you can see, like, much, the benefits because you will have someone that can either give training or orientate people like, hey, you should take this kind of training. You should have a look at this forum. You should have a look at this blog. You know? Like, someone that, know how you need to learn the tool and guide you to choose a different steps. But you have someone also that can motivate you, that can, maybe sometime monitor you and say, hey. Your dashboard is quite slow. You know, you have some technique to, improve, to improve it. So, yes, I mean, it's a central role. Sometime, this person is also in charge of monitoring the success story and, really can say what is the value. And, when you have, like, an environment for, you often, like, report all the biggest, success story and say, hey. Thanks to this dashboard or this implementation, we were capable of saving this amount of money, this amount of time. And, yeah. And for me, it's, very crucial. If you have invest so many a lot of money on, whatever platform, you need to have, return on investment. Mhmm. And for that, you need someone like this. Yeah. And I think what's interesting is most organizations that I've seen, at least more recently, they follow a hub and spoke model so the the enablement person will sit in the hub and then you'll have the individual business units set out on the the spokes, and what the enablement team or person can do is help connect those those teams. Typically it's quite siloed so you'll have kind of marketing off doing their own thing and finance off doing their own thing, right, or HR doing off doing their own thing, and they never talk to each other. And it might be that they're experiencing similar challenges or there's some synergies that they could they could take advantage of, but without that central person there's nothing to connect them together. So I've seen that work particularly well with with enablement in terms of bringing people together from different organizations and building those connections. And as you say Annabelle, like with the ROI, typically without that enablement team there's not really anyone to measure it, right? It's kind of maybe up to the spoke teams to try to figure it out, but they've got nothing to benchmark that against. You end up with a lot of people that are just lost and they're not really sure what they should be doing or where they can be going to for help. I've seen organizations when I was in consulting that one one team would buy Tableau on a credit card and another team would buy Tableau on a credit card And we ended up in a situation where they had lots of Tableau servers, and they nobody knew about the other one. Right? And it's it's not efficient. But another thing is, just around, I forgot what I was going to say, but like it's just in terms of, oh yeah, training. Like if you you've invested in this tool, you can't just expect people to use it, right? They need training and support to get going. And what I've seen in organizations perhaps where they have an enablement function, and they've invested in training for part of the organization, there may be people outside of that that want to get involved and don't know how. So they kind of go out on their own and try and figure it out, and they might go Google Tableau courses, and they they get pointed to a random course on on YouTube, let's say, that's that's not the greatest and or they go on maybe Udemy or any any of these sites where they've they've just kind of left their own devices and they're trying to find content, with the best intentions, but the courses they find may not be the best. Right? And at least if you have that enablement person, they you can guide those people, to the to the best content and the most relevant content that's gonna be relevant for them. Mhmm. Mhmm. Being the central person, what we forgot to say is that you can negotiate. You have much more power because you represent a a bigger or as a the entire organization, for instance. So you can negotiate or, like, also, like, manage, consultant for the entire company, like, etcetera etcetera. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see where those gaps are. So as you said before about the new features, maybe something's come along and no one's ever got a clue how to use it. You can if that's the case, you can spin up a webinar quickly and help everybody at the same time. It avoids that duplication of effort. You you can put in standards as well, so we've not touched on it yet, but things like style guides can be so critical. And if you have someone centrally managing that, you can make sure there's not variations of that going on in in different teams. Mhmm. I'm curious. I mean, you mentioned style guides. What are what are some other, like, enablement pillars that you've seen be really successful in terms of resourcing or, even just tactics that again, regardless of the group that you're working with, regardless of of maybe even the tools that you're using, you know, what are what are those those things that just seem to stick? Yeah. So starguides would definitely be one. Mhmm. Another one would be, like, a a Tableau or data doctor program. So Mhmm. Somewhere where people can go for point in time support. So let's say they're stuck on a calculation and you know how it is, you once you get stuck you can't progress to the next stage until you you fix this calculation and it's the worst thing in the world. So having somewhere they can go for that support whether that be an hourly like drop in it could be something more on a bookable basis, just like you would book a doctor's appointment with a real doctor, just having that, for someone who's stuck with a data problem. Those kind of programs would be invaluable. Because sometimes it's difficult to articulate the the problem that you're having, right, especially if you're newer you might not be able to put that into words and ask a question on a forum that's going to get you the right answer. What we've seen more recently actually is being able to leverage like chat g p t for things like that. So, but again, I think that still requires some level of expertise to interpret the result and figure out is it gonna work, or maybe you can copy and paste what chat g p t says, but there's no guarantee it's gonna help. Right? It's so you still need that in any one person, but there's certainly some value I think in in having ChatGPT as a as a backup. Other things could include just having a central point, where everything can live, so that whether that be on an intranet site, on something like confluence, but having some, and this is separate to like Teams or Slack, but somewhere where you can just have a central hub, where all of the content will live, all the links that everyone needs will live, and in addition to that having somewhere where people can chat, so whether that be like I say Slack Teams, Google chat, whatever that may be, and within there having different channels for different topics, I've seen that work really well. And then I think also having a robust onboarding process. So when someone new comes into the organization, making sure that that you're taking the time to whether that be an automated process or physically meeting with them, but taking the time to introduce them to, like, how things are set up at the organization, getting them connected, getting them you know, the the toughest thing being there is how do I install Tableau? And that so simple question like that can be more difficult than it needs to be. So helping them with that, pointing them to IT or wherever that may be, but also making them aware of all of the enablement practice you have in place as well because if they don't know, they they won't take advantage of it. Do you have some mandatory training, for the first intellations, for instance, or whatever software? Training on Yeah. Mandatory. So for instance, a user, like, to download whatever software. But to keep the software, it should, like, perform at least one training or start a skill deck. So we have a capstone project, so that's tied to our style guide. So we have training on the style guide, so there's a couple of videos, it's probably an hour long, you can walk through all the things like colors, formatting, things like that, and then after that you'd be expected to complete a capstone project which is effectively where you build a dashboard and put those, those that learning into practice and align the dashboard to the guidelines, and so it's not until you've done that are you kind of set free and can go off and build stuff for yourself. And I think that's really important because what I've seen by doing that is you've and it's quite difficult, like for myself I did we all go through the training, I did it myself when I joined, and I think you you go through the training and think oh yeah this is great, I understand, and then when you actually come to put it into practice it's quite difficult because you're faced with a blank screen, you don't know what colors to pick, so having that in in places is great because not only do you get to practice, but you get the support of somebody that can talk you through it. And I think by doing that we see where maybe there's somebody that clearly needs some more support with the Tableau skills. So having if we can identify that in somebody then we can help them. I think otherwise, if you didn't have that in place and just gonna set everyone free, people would struggle. You'd see varying levels of, design kind of competence in in your outputs, but it just ensures everyone's on the same page, and we can give support where it's needed. Mhmm. I love what you said about onboarding. This is something this is from a totally different frame of reference. So my my role as a content manager, and I work with a lot of, you know, consultants and stuff like that on getting tips, dash whatever something that's helpful out into the community out there. That's that's a big a big part of of my team's job. And one thing we had a few years ago was this onboarding process kind of to this point for any analytics consultants who came on is, yes, of course, you know, you're gonna be well versed in Tableau. Yes. You know, do the advanced training, all that, you know, go through the official things. But we would have them essentially just build a dashboard, a creative fun dashboard, not anything pertaining to networks, just kind of like a passion project thing and post it to Tableau public, which would then be reviewed by a senior resource. Right? And we would kind of like help guide them along the way of saying like, okay. Here's how we would tweak it. Here's this and that. They would go post it out and do that. And I think to your point, that direct application beyond just doing the training course, beyond just checking the boxes different chart types and you know the tables in the east and all that. Right? That's great stuff. But, I think that direct application was probably the biggest the biggest thing they did. And when they did that especially in the community sense, when they after they did it once they were far more likely to do it again than if they hadn't done any of that that onboarding direct application skill. And a lot of those people who did that for many years went on to be people who have become ambassadors and and and visionaries and and people on the forums who are very helpful. So, definitely just wanna underline what you said there on, like, having that onboarding process and some direct application because we've seen it we've seen it work wonders. And as a content person who manages a blog, I'm like, yes, please more of this. We will take all your dashboards and all your tips and all the things that are that are helpful because, that just extends, you know, our knowledge base out there. So that's that's really cool. And another thing I just wanted to point out too that having, all the knowledge resources kind of in a central hub is, is so valuable too because any organization you're at, some people communicate more directly in email. Some people communicate more directly in Slack. And if you're too committed to one of those communication chat lanes, you know, rather than having your resources hosted in a centralized hub that you can promote across all those different channels, you could get in trouble. So I really like that idea of keeping it centralized because it's just it's gonna make it more likely that people are gonna access your resources regardless of how they get there, whether that's Slack or email or they come over to your desk and talk to you, Sarah. So Yeah. I think it's best you over communicate because I found, you know, you like you say, Garrett, you get people that maybe live in Slack and never check email or or the opposite. So just just cover all bases and and promote if you're an upcoming webinar, whatever it may be, promote that in in all those channels. So nobody misses out because what always happens is you'll run something and then someone will say, oh, I had no idea this was happening. It's like I did post it everywhere. Right? And this this happens at work. It happens outside of work with other community stuff. So, yeah, just over communicate. You know, they they maybe they're off one day and they they miss the announcement. Just so there's no harm in sharing it twice. Mhmm. Yeah. Like, on that, it's true that to simplify my life, at the beginning when I I took as a job, we had, like each time someone would like to have a Tableau license, we had an onboarding call. Mhmm. So imagine each time, at the end, we said, okay. No. Let's have, like, everything on our intranet. We had a beautiful page with onboarding, videos, with everything is the steps. After, of course, when we had, like, some people, we give them, like, one month to make the mandatory, training. And if they haven't done it, we were like, hey. You receive an email with the the key, but there there were, like, some links. Right? You haven't touched them. You haven't done it. So that's that's way we could, like, monitor and also simplify our our life a little, better. The same with, Tableau Doctor before people could call, call us anytime during the day. Mhmm. So we change, optic, and we say, okay. Now it's not possible anymore. You need, like, to, have, a meeting with us on this slot. So one slot was, Tuesday afternoons, the other one Thursday afternoon. And there, you have to explain us why what is the question, why we did that. Because if it's very really a a blocker, that's fine. They will, like, raise the meeting and explain what was the problem. If it's, like, easier to Google it, send to call us, we say something. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. Absolutely. Two points on that. So on the onboarding piece, I think there's there's a ton of value in in meeting people, face to face, whether that's in person or or virtually. But, in a previous role we did that in group sessions, so anyone that's come on in the the last week, let's say we would have a call with them. Because I think in doing that you find out a lot more about their use case, you know, how they found you, but how did they this these aren't new starters, these are suddenly people that have been told they need to use Tableau for instance, what they're trying to achieve and it just helps you connect them and and set them up for success because oftentimes these people are a little bit lost. Someone's told them to go and do something, they don't quite know where everything is or what they're supposed to be doing, they may need some hand holding, so just being able to have that conversation can be so beneficial and doing it in a group setting just avoids those otherwise you'll be doing that all day long right just having meetings with people. And then on the on the Tableau Doctor piece, what we did in my previous role is we all of the doctors when they signed up they had to fill in a form and indicate what their key skills or not so much key skills, the skills they wanted to help people with were. So maybe we had some people that were very strong in in calculations, maybe had some people that were very strong in design. So then when we were looking when people would book up an appointment, they could pick a doctor that had the right skills aligned to the problem. So if they if they wanted some dashboard feedback, they would go to the design person, not the person that wanted to help out with tricky calcs. Right? Mhmm. Because it's a different skill set. And and we we found that worked really, really well in just filtering, that. And we had a we had a calendar so people on the doctor's side could they could book in, but block out time when they will be available. So typically we had coverage that around the globe. We have a global organization, and so there was always going to be a slot not too far in the future that you could use. I love that. That's, that's really cool. You see that in things, there was there were a group of people at InnoWorks who were doing a, kind of like a professional coaching thing as just like an added benefit. And they had a similar thing set up. It's just like, here's this type of coach who uses these types of techniques or has this type of personality, which allows you to pick someone who you think you're going to gel with, you know, or depending on what your goals are, push you potentially. If there's someone totally different than you push you because they, you know, fulfill something that that you're uncomfortable or is a growth area for you. So I think that's really smart to apply that to the Tableau doctor thing. We do have a question in the chat and I'm curious. You might neither you may not know it offhand, but we have someone who's asking for a good example of like a sample style guide. Do you all know of any online resources or anything like that? Or even just, people who kind of create such things that are publicly available? Yeah, I know of a few. So there's actually a JLR one out there on Tableau Public but it's pretty old so it's not it's not guidelines we currently use but it gives you a good sense of what to include. There's also one on Tableau Public by the BBC I believe, it's quite old now but it's it's a pretty good one. And there's also one by the, I think they're called the London, it might be london dot gov or london org, but if you Google it I'm sure you'll find them, they have an amazing cell guide. I don't think it's specific to a biz tool but it's it's a really, really good one, I took a lot of inspiration from. Awesome. Those are those are great resources. I'm glad you knew those offhand because I was like Yeah. Maybe. You can't ready. Need of so GLL one. I have seen, eight on the public version, obviously. Yeah. And I feel like that you have, like, several, icons of different color for depending of as action related to Yeah. The worksheet. That I thought that when I saw that, I said, oh, it's very, very clever. Yeah. I think on that one, we have, like, purple triangles. So if there's a, something is, it's a filter, for instance, it will pre click a bar and it'll filter the rest of the page. It will have an icon, so rather than you saying click on the bar to filter you can just use the icon and it creates that like visual language that your stakeholders over time will become to understand, so they'll be like okay, yep, purple triangle I know that that means it's a filter. So we used to make similar to that now, but it's it's not the purple triangle anymore. It's update. I'm curious. You had mentioned, and this is so true of of so many things of of siloed groups, you know, like HR not talking to marketing, marketing not talking to accounting and and so on and so forth. In your in your experience, what are what are some things that you do to either get those people to talk or are there like cross functional groups that you put them in as part of an enablement strategy? Or do you lean more towards, well, yes, we're all using this tool and the same resources, but we're gonna kinda custom tailor enablement plans depending on your department. Is it a mix of both? I mean, how do you get how do you get people going in the same direction, I guess, is the broader question. I think this is where things like stair codes that can come in really handy or even Tableau or data champion programs where you get a representative or two from each organization and and bring them together into forums where they regularly meet, talk about roadmaps and direction or whatever that the topic of that steer code may be, but it it's a way of bringing people together that wouldn't ordinarily talk to each other and just getting them more familiar and connected with what other departments are doing. What what I found in previous organizations is, and even at JLL, is we're just getting people talking and, sharing what they're doing. So we have something at JLL called a show and share session, so we every month we have an hour session where people can book a slot in advance if they want to talk and maybe they want to present a project they've worked on or a dashboard they've built, whatever that may be, that anyone can come and watch, and and just learn what somebody else may be doing because chances are they're probably doing something very similar or they they may have a another use case for that solution. So just getting people into the same room and talking, really helps break down those silos. No. You can learn definitely from each other so that I really love that. I have a question for you. What you will say to someone that want to start an enablement program that has very little or no budget? Which is often the case. Right? This goes back to Garrett's person that's going to do it on the side, right? They can't afford the necessary person, I think, there's a ton of resources out there that you can use for free. I think wherever possible, leveraging what is out in the communities already, is the communities already is so so important. That doesn't mean that you don't necessarily need a full blown singing or singing or dancing training program, you can leverage some content that's already out there. So people like Tableau Tim have got some great content, I think there's Alex the analyst as well, he has some great content that covers all different kinds of tools, including things like SQL as well, so just leaning on the free content that you can find online, and but making it easy for people so maybe not saying hey go and do this whole course but just picking out the elements that are going to be most useful to them. Things like newsletters you know cost next to nothing to do and just keeps everybody connected. A lot of these things are free, right, so that the Tableau Doctor session apart from time is effectively free. Anything that you can do really to and this is the core of our programs really is encouraging people to give back because the enablement can only do so much. I've worked in teams of like three people covering the entire globe and that's just not enough people, right? So I think what you need to what you need to do is upskill people that are out there in the teams to be able to help take some of that effort off. So it might be that those people then start leading internal user groups, or they they, you know, become champions and they can support Tableau Doctor sessions, whatever it may be, but just getting them to take some of that weight off, and supporting these initiatives. Now most of this can be run effectively for free, the only cost would be time. I don't think budget should be a blocker, like yes you might not get the swag and the cool stuff but maybe you could ask your vendor like some of that for free but, even I know people like small little gifts if you it could even be a pen, right, it's whatever it may be, it's it's something that you can give them recognition for but I I think ultimately these these activities help people advance in their careers, just showing someone that's going above and beyond. I would like to think they would get recognition in their role for that, and they'll be advancing their careers, so should they leave that organization they would leave with more skills than when they started. So that, I I would like to think, is an incentive in itself. I have a question that's kind of for both of you, since you both have extensive experience in managing Tableau user groups specifically. What what do you think the role and benefit is in terms of enablement of of these Tableau user groups that are often most often external to kind of an enablement program within an organization? What are some things that you find interesting or different about those, settings in that context that helps users kind of grow along their journey? I think it's similar to some of the things we've touched on before. So it's a forum where people would come together. So you could have that breaking down silos and maybe meeting people that you wouldn't ordinarily get to speak to. It also helps a bit, you may get because typically these these groups are open, anyone can join, of course the external groups are open to everyone, but you may get people that are inquisitive or or they're brand new and they don't really know what it's all about, and I think those attending a tug can really be quite open eye opening for them. They may just seeing the art of the possible and maybe you you have a guest that's talking about something cool they've done on Tableau Public, just showing them what it's not just all about business dashboards, and you can actually do some really cool stuff, I think can be really beneficial. I I've worked in organizations where I've tried to get in external speakers into the the TUG, so it might be that we've got a big famous name in the tableau world right coming in which drives a lot of excitement but that person will also bring in some flair that you might not have internally, right, and no doubt they're going to be very passionate which always helps, but I think myself included you leave those sessions feeling very inspired, so every time you're on a London tug I leave thinking I need to get into Tableau, I need to build something, right, which is how you want people to leave, and it's great for networking, so again, whether that be internal externally, just helping connect people, and and build out their networks, professionally, I think is so so important. Yeah. Definitely. I think that let's bring you a different perspective. If you can have internal to your internal user group or you push, people, your colleagues to go to an external user group, it's the same. They will, learn from different sector. They will say, okay. In this industry, your company, we are doing like this, oh, that's was interesting, maybe I can apply the same technique for my financial dashboard. You know, it's like, it's very interesting, often like like Sarah say, like, enlightening and inspiring. And, for me, it was also, like, a way to, to have free resource. So each time we had an, TikTok, I put all the resource on the link on our Internet Internet page so people could have access because they will probably not have register themselves. So at least there, they were like, hey. Do you want to learn more about parameter? Yesterday, we had a session on that on the analytic tag on the new big tag, you know, like, something like that. That was very good. And sometimes I still remember I had someone so we had an internal, user group, with external people coming in. Some of our user, like, came to them and asked them question, and they said, come on. Why did you didn't ask me? But maybe they feel more comfortable asking to, someone else, so that's also good. Yes. I've seen that firsthand as well. We've had the pleasure of having some, so we had like Sean Miller for instance who runs Workout Wednesday come and deliver a Workout Wednesday session for us at JLL, which was super cool, to just have that person there. I think it gives it a different perspective. But I remember I was working at a client once and they had a tableau day And so they I was not involved in running this tag. It was all them. I was just in the audience and somebody was showing some business by Sam Parsons, and I just remember the whole room was just like, wow, like, you can do this with Tableau? The minds are blown. So I think it's so important that, you show them different perspectives and, you know, it's it's not all the same things that they might be doing day in, day out. Mhmm. Well, we are approaching five minutes on the hour. So is there before we kind of open up to questions, are there any other odds and ends? Anything you want to touch on that maybe we didn't, we didn't touch on that's generally enablement focus? Things people need to know. Things that you're thinking about right now. I think the question is for you, so No one wants the answer. That's great. It's open ended. When is too complicated, you know? Can you repeat the question? I was trying to read it while you was I was I was reading the q and a. So No. That's okay. I know we have a question sitting there for sure. Yeah. I was just gonna say if there's any other odds and ends, anything that's on your mind recently that you wanna cover before we kinda open it up generally to questions. Yeah. I I think, just if if you're in an organization and you don't have an enablement function, I think there's still some things that you can do to to support fellow users. So maybe it's just as simple as if you've seen something cool online, like maybe it's Annabelle's analytics tag and you attended and there was a really cool talk that's relevant to your users, just sharing links out to that, sharing links out to blog posts, I know like the Flourish twins often do some great stuff that's very applicable to how you use Tableau at work, so just pointing people to resources and help get getting them connected with that external community is so beneficial and it doesn't need to take a ton of your time, but just just making maybe ten minutes every week to set aside to share content can be can be really helpful if you have nothing else in place. And even if you do, just supporting your your enablement team. They're not gonna mind, I'm sure. So yeah. Yeah. And you need diverse resources for because some people will need, like, to have blocks because they learn better when they read. Some people will have to have hands on training, and so you need to have, like, diverse resources for everyone to be able to learn. Yeah. Yeah. That's so important. That's that's why we built that into our gamification program. So there's a bit of everything, because we recognize that everyone learns in different ways as you say. Mhmm. Absolutely. Well, here's the first question in the chat. Chad, if you are still here, feel free to ask your questions. We got a few minutes. We answered this one that Caitlin had posted in. So, she was asking, do you have any good resources or style guides that, specifically make sure Tableau dashboards are, accessible? So she had mentioned things like WCAG two point one, screen reader compatibility, high contrast mode, keyboard navigation, anything accessibility oriented. Yeah. So hi, Caitlin. The only one I know of is Chartability, which, I'm sure you can find it if you Google. That goes through specific accessibility checks. It's not a style guide as such. I think the the London style guide that I mentioned before, I'm pretty sure they've maybe got some some of those things built in, but I think a lot of the times those style guides you find online as examples, they they will have already done their checks, right, they would have checked that their colours are accessible, but they have some cool stuff that shows you know if you're using this colour then don't use it with this colour because it's not going to be accessible, but I I don't know of anything specific, unfortunately. No. That's great. That's good insight too. I think that is I think the Tableau community is very mindful, inherently not to say that there can't be things that we check and and look at, more in-depth, but I I feel like usability and accessibility has always been pretty forefront of of the Tableau community mind. So it's a good point that most of those style guides are gonna have a lot of that baked in. Maybe one day we have to speak about that. That's the thing. Yeah, right? That's a whole episode in and of itself, I can imagine. Yeah. And it's way more common than people think, for sure. Those accessibility things. Yeah. Well, it's looking like we are out of questions, but I'll put this up here. Just a reminder for everyone that you'll be able to find this recording in about one to two days. We'll be sending it via email. And again, it will be posted on YouTube probably within the next week. If you miss something, if you had to drop for whatever reason or you just wanna share this with someone, you'll be able to find it there. But with that, I just wanted to say, like, a big thank you, Sarah for joining and, of course, Annabelle for always being here, being a great co host. But thanks for sharing all this wisdom. There's a lot I feel like there are a lot of nuggets in here that, I certainly wouldn't wouldn't have thought about. So I just really appreciate you sharing your enablement expertise and for coming on and chatting. Yeah. Of course. Thank you for having me. It's it's been great talking to you both. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And, see you next time, everyone. Next month. Yeah. Next month. Next month. Yep. First Wednesday of next month, we'll have another episode of Dataform. So we hope to see you there. If you're on this registration list, you'll already get the emails. But again, if you, if you wanna pass it along to whoever we we'd love to have more, more attendees. So thanks for joining.