Most Tableau developers have little or no interaction with Tableau’s technical support, but as a partner consultant dealing with lots of customers, I have opened dozens of cases over the years. Here is a short history of the experience, and some tips for newbies.
Back in the day, before the Salesforce acquisition in 2019, Tableau Support was quite good. Anyone could open a case, even without a Tableau login, and once you traversed the initial questions trying to direct you to existing answers – or if you had the direct link – there was a comprehensive form to fill in. This included lots of technical details: type of problem, version, operating system, and the like, plus space for a short description, a long one, the urgency of the case, and files to upload.
Responses were relatively quick, and they usually knew their stuff. Sometimes the first response was by email, and sometimes on the phone – I even had the local number through which the calls were routed saved on my mobile.
After the acquisition the quality of support dropped significantly – both in my opinion and what I heard in the community. Some cases got no response at all, others were left hanging, and there was pessimism all around.
During this period, support switched to Salesforce, and you could only open a case after logging in to Salesforce and connecting to your Tableau account through there. That made opening cases more difficult, because many small customers (and some large ones) don’t bother with all the configurations on their Customer Portal. Luckily we have a partner account, so in many cases I open a case through our account for a customer, especially if I have direct access to their Tableau environment (because the call will come in to me, of course).
However, the support experience started improving. A lot. Today Salesforce Support is, in my opinion (again), significantly better than it ever was, and better than the old Tableau support. Some parts of the process are different, but the responses are faster, and definitely very professional. Some examples:
- I opened a Severity 2 (urgent) case for a bug that was a show-stopper for my customer, and received a phone call within an hour. They already had a similar problem logged, and within a day we held a short session to confirm, and my report was added to the original. Unfortunately it hasn’t been fixed yet, but that’s a product issue, not support.
- Recently we had a total outage on a customer’s cloud site, where no-one could view any dashboard. I opened a Severity 1 (critical) case, and received a phone call even before I had added the technical details. The support rep stayed with us for 3 remote sessions over the next 24 hours, until we found the root of the problem (which was caused by a the customer’s network security).
- Another small but irritating bug that I opened with Severity 3 was easily reproduced, and fixed almost immediately, in the next patch: opened on 7 July, fixed in version 2025.2.1 (22 July).
The Process
So how does it work now?
First, you need to be logged in to your Salesforce account and linked to your organiztion, and then you can open Salesforce Help (https://help.salesforce.com/s/cases). There you see a window with the “Ask Agentforce” option:
Clicking opens a chat window, and I simply ask the agent to open a case, supplying as many details as possible. The agent asks some follow-up questions, and then creates a case.
In the chat you can’t supply a long a detailed description, add lots of technical details such as version, or upload any files. So immediately after the case is opened, open the case page (it opens automatically, or you have a link in the automatic email you receive) and add a comment and any files. You can also respond to the email, and that appears as a comment as well.
Responses are quick, by phone and email, and I have the current incoming number (from the UK) on my mobile. Obviously they don’t know everything, but there seems to be a good knowledge base – in a recent case they couldn’t find the answer, so I asked on the forums, and was assisted by Diego Martinez (Tableau Visionary) and his memory of a previous case. In such a scenario it’s important to ask Support to add the additional knowledge to their KB, so it will be easier for future customers, and they were responsive to my request to do so.
Feedback
I still have an issue with the feedback, after the case is closed. In the old system we received a detailed survey asking about various aspects of the support – response time, representative’s knowledge, general satisfaction, and more.
Now the survey focuses mostly on the AI agent, which is just for opening the case, and not on the support itself. There are just five questions:
How do you describe your overall satisfaction with Technical Support for this case?
What can Technical Support do to make it easier to resolve your issue?
Please select up to 3 areas that most impacted your experience.
(this appears only if you have selected anything less than “Satisfied” on the first question)
How would you rate your experience with Agent Astro (AI-powered Autonomous Support Agent)?
What could have improved your experience with Agent Astro (AI-powered Autonomous Support Agent) before escalating to a case?
What else should our support managers know about your technical support experience?
(comment box)
So 40% (or more) of the survey is about submitting the case, which is maybe 5% of the process. There’s no real option for rating and providing detailed feedback to the technical support, and it could be improved. I always leave comments about the fact that they’re only asking about Agent Astro and not the support itself, and I hope someone is reading them.
Summary
Tableau Support (through Salesforce) are very good, and probably still improving. Don’t overload them with questions about functionality that can be answered in the forums (just moved to Salesforce Trailhead), but don’t be shy about opening a case for real issues. And if you encounter something that looks like a bug, start by trying to find it in the open issues site, and if it’s there click on the report button so it gets more traction. Only open a case if it’s not there.
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