Tableau has beefed up its data analytics software by combining it with artificial intelligence (AI). The Salesforce unit recently announced the release of Tableau 2021.2 with various new capabilities designed for making better and smart decisions for people based on the available data.

The Ask Data feature allows asking business questions by using natural language queries. One needs to enter questions, and the answers appear visually as a response.

The feature gives an intuitive and guided way to build your queries without complicated obstacles coming in one’s way, as per Tableau. The system makes use of synonyms and autocorrects recognition to help shape the correct type of questions.

Something new in Ask Data is that Lenses let analysts and authors create natural language queries so that various teams in an organization can tap on the same data sources. For example, a column can be known by one team as ‘sales,’ another team can be called as ‘revenue,’ and lastly, the team can be ‘invoices.’ However, the results still look into the same data sources and personalize them for each team.

It is possible to integrate Ask Data directly in dashboards to see the curated data and ask questions. Any licensed Tableau user – Creator, Viewer, or Explorer can deploy Ask Data to ask their questions.

Explain Data and Ask Data are available in Tableau 2021.2.

“Ask Data opens up an opportunity to close the gap between advanced analysts and a broader, general business audience, allowing anyone to connect and explore data,” said Ilya Kovalenko, ‎Data Analyst & Visualization Team Lead for Siemens, in a press release. “By leveraging Tableau’s modern and fast natural language processing technology, our colleagues are reaching insights faster than ever before. With Explain Data, our team is not only able to see data trends, but can easily identify and understand what’s driving them.”

Features and enhancements offered by Tableau 2021.2 are:

  • Connected desktops for web authoring – It allows creators to shift from web authoring to Tableau Desktop.
  • Area spatial calculations – It supports analysts to measure the square area of a selection on a map.
  • Quick start your Salesforce connection – It is about onboarding employees using Salesforce to Tableau by overloading the online site with relevant data sources and workbooks.
  • Amazon SageMaker for Tableau – Intends to help customers communicate and share machine learning with anyone within Tableau dashboards.
  • Canada Tableau Online Pod – It is designed to serve customers in Canada with high performance and stability.

And there are more features such as collections and containers.

“There’s a growing disconnect between business leaders expecting a data-driven organization, and employees who aren’t comfortable using data to make decisions,” Tableau Chief Product Officer Francois Ajenstat said in a press release. “Building truly data-first organizations requires unlocking the power of data for as many people as possible. AI-powered analytics will help more people use data to answer questions, make meaningful decisions and, ultimately, transform their business.”