How Tableau Enriches Agentforce—and the Future of Digital Labor

It’s no secret—the world is experiencing a fundamental shift in how work is done. Automation, powered by AI, is ushering in a new era of digital labor. Intelligent agents capable of reasoning through complex tasks with unprecedented speed and efficiency. But speed isn’t everything—if an agent’s response is wrong or too complex to consume, it’s of little use. 

And I see first-hand from speaking with our customers, to truly unlock the potential of humans and agents working together, we need to ensure agents and their insights are accurate, trustworthy, and helpful. And that's where Tableau Next comes in—Tableau Next (formerly Tableau Einstein) is the new Tableau built on the Salesforce Platform and deeply integrated with Agentforce.

Tableau has been a game changer in the world of data and analytics for over two decades. Now, we’re equipping Agentforce with analytics skills that give Salesforce an unfair advantage in the agentic AI market.

Agentforce’s unfair advantage: Agents enriched with Tableau skills

Tableau has spent years proving that people make better decisions when they can see and understand their data. Now, we’re bringing the same visual analytics to agentic experiences, offering richness and depth beyond AI-generated text alone.

With agents backed by Tableau skills, Agentforce has a significant edge in agentic AI: Agents don’t just tell—they show. Responses aren’t just words, but data visualizations, giving you the ability to quickly get insights from the information.

Tableau Next also plays a crucial role by bringing powerful semantic capabilities to Agentforce. By locking in business knowledge, defining key metrics, and keeping data consistent, Tableau Semantics ensures that AI has the context—your unique business knowledge—it needs to produce accurate responses.

AI doesn’t inherently understand your business jargon, industry-specific terms, or if a KPI moving up or down is “good” or “bad.” One person’s definition of “weighted pipeline” or “customer churn” might differ from another’s. However, with Tableau Semantics, agents are able to understand what people mean when they chat with their data using conversational language. 

Everybody can get personalized insights without building their own dashboards or navigating through filters to find the information relevant to their business. They can simply describe what they need in natural language, and the AI agent has the semantic understanding to respond accordingly.

When a quick answer isn’t enough, agents can direct users to governed, trusted Tableau dashboards. This eliminates redundant reporting and ensures that decisions are based on a single source of truth. With Tableau and Agentforce working together, businesses can trust the insights they receive and act on them with confidence.

This isn’t just about making AI experiences more engaging (though that’s a bonus). It’s about making decisions faster and easier. When insights are visual, trends become clear, outliers jump off the screen, and decision makers don’t waste time decoding text-based responses.

Tableau helps you optimize—and trust—digital labor

With Tableau Next, organizations can finally measure the impact of their digital labor workforce with visibility into agent performance and adoption. Instead of guessing, leaders get clear insights into:

• How agents are being used—tracking adoption across teams.
• Where agents are falling short—identifying common failure points.
• What’s next for automation—finding new opportunities for agents to add value.

Just like human employees, agents should evolve based on real performance data. If an agent customer support is resolving 80% of cases but struggling with complex issues, that’s a signal to refine how it escalates tickets, possible through refining instructions in Agentforce. If a sales agent is generating leads but they aren’t converting, that’s a sign to adjust qualification criteria.

AI isn’t something you set and forget. With Tableau Next, businesses can track, refine, and optimize their digital workforce, ensuring Agentforce is delivering real, measurable impact.

Empowering our Community to succeed with AI

We're not just building these tools for businesses; we're building them for you, our vibrant DataFam. Your feedback, creativity, and expertise not only drive our innovation, but the innovative solutions you bring into your own workplaces. By providing you with powerful AI analytics tools and actionable insights, we strive to empower you to become changemakers in your roles and to evolve the data-driven cultures within your organizations.

We believe that the future of work is collaborative, with humans and digital agents working side by side to achieve shared goals. And Tableau is committed to providing the platform that makes this collaboration possible.

Get smarter agents, make better decisions

AI agents aren’t just cool tech—they’re reshaping how work gets done. From automating tasks to elevating every customer interaction, agents are becoming an essential member of your team.

Agentforce makes it easy to build and deploy autonomous agents. Tableau Next makes agents more trusted, more visual, and more measurable. Together, we’re changing how businesses think about data, decision-making, and automation itself. And this is just the beginning. 

See the power of Tableau Next in action at TDX 2025 and join us at the data and analytics event of the year, Tableau Conference in San Diego, April 15-17, 2025.