Tableau Software, the analytics platform, has leveraged the power of natural language processing to enable people to ask questions in plain language and get a visual response right in Tableau. The technology determines the intent behind the question to provide more relevant answers.
This patent pending capability makes it easier for people, regardless of skillset, to engage with data and produce analytical insights they can share with others without any setup or programming. Ask Data is available as part Tableau’s newest release, Tableau 2019.1.
Users can type a question such as, “What were my sales this month?,” and Tableau will return an interactive visualisation that they can explore. There is no need to have a deep understanding of the data structure, no setup required and no programming skills necessary.
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"We believe data should be accessible to all and with Ask Data, we’re making it easier than ever for anyone, regardless of expertise to analyse data,” said Leslie Ong, Country Manager, Southeast Asia at Tableau.
“Ask Data is a new, integrated natural language capability that provides a more intuitive and natural way to interact with data, lowering the barrier to entry for analytics and allowing people to ask questions in plain language and get insights faster. First pioneered by Tableau with drag-and-drop functionality, Ask Data is the next stage in the evolution of self-service analytics.”
Ask Data uses sophisticated algorithms which help to understand a person’s question, anticipate needs, and allow for smart visualisations. For example, when someone types in “APAC furniture” for their sales data, they can narrow down entries for “Product Name” in a database to “Furniture,” and “Region” to “Asia Pacific”. Ask Data also has contextual knowledge about real-world concepts: “Furniture” is a common value for the “Product Name” field and “APAC” is an acronym of “Asia Pacific.”
Additionally, Ask Data’s parser automatically cuts through ambiguous language, making it easy for people to ask questions in a natural, colloquial way. This means, if a question could be interpreted multiple ways, Ask Data will combine knowledge about the data source with past user activity and present a number of valid options to choose from.
Tableau also announced the general availability of Prep Conductor, a new product that enables organisations to schedule and manage self-service data preparation at scale with no programming or complicated setup. Tableau Prep Conductor is part of a new subscription package called Tableau Data Management.
Prep Conductor automates flows created in Prep Builder, a renamed Tableau data prep product that is already in use by more than 11,000 customer accounts. According to Tableau, Prep Conductor will help organisations ensure that clean and analysis-ready data is always available. It also provides added visibility and detail behind cleaning history and data connections, as well as alerts when processes are not operating as scheduled.
Tableau Prep Conductor gives IT the ability to monitor and set up automatic cleaning processes (flows) for their data across the entire server. It also allows customers to build permissions specifically around data flows and data sources in order to maintain control and meet data compliance standards and policies.
Tableau will add more data management capabilities, such as data cataloguing, to the subscription package later this year. These capabilities will enhance data discoverability for end users. IT will be able to see the lineage between data and workbooks, so they can track the impact of any changes to the data.
The first release of 2019 also includes a Google Ads connector, which will help marketers analyse their website data more easily and blend it with other data sources across their organisation. This connector adds to the more than 65 native connectors available today like Google BigQuery, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, PDFs and SAP Hana. With the new Export to PowerPoint feature that resizes visualisations and dashboards to slides, customers can present their analysis with the click of a button.
Details:
The Data Management package is available today as an add-on to Tableau Server for US$5.50 per user per month. To purchase the Tableau Data Management package, customers will need to upgrade to Tableau 2019.1 and purchase it as a licensed add-on product.
