Any tips on prying people away from Excel, and into something like metabase/Tableau/whatever?
That seems to be one of the biggest hurdles I think I'm going to have to figure out, rather than the technical side.
That seems to be one of the biggest hurdles I think I'm going to have to figure out, rather than the technical side.
Theres two directions you could be coming from though - if its a problem of the users producing data and storing it in excel instead of your database thats more of an application problem.
But if its a matter of excel being where your users want to look at and work with the data - I say embrace that. Use your metabase/tableau/redash to provide them with that data and let them get it out in excel and do whatever they want. Give them a little time and then let them show you what theyre doing with it.
IME about half the time theyre actually doing things with it that you cant really help them with unless you spent a ton of time. The other half you can take what theyre doing and either apply those changes into the query itself, saving them time and sharing that work with others - or teach them a better/easier/faster way of achieving whatever it is theyre after. I use it as a long-tail way of gathering requirements a lot of times - let me give you all the data you might need for this and you figure out how it can be useful for you.