Improvements to Tableau for Slack focus on sharing, finding, and insights with automated workflows for tools like Accelerator. The goal: to enable decision-makers and CRM teams to put Big Data to work.
“Data-driven” is a mantra for countless organizations, but it is a secondary factor, useful only insofar as decision-makers can analyze and interpret it and understand its implications.
Indeed, a study based on a 2022 survey from strategy firm NewVantage found organizations continue to struggle to become data-drivenwith only 26.5% saying they have achieved this goal, and only 19.3% saying they have established a data culture.
Enterprise software titan Salesforce said a series of enhancements to its Tableau project management platform will help decision-makers live up to the phrase “data-driven” by making big data more user-friendly. The company said the changes include process automation and new integration features to make it easier to view, manipulate and share data on Slack, its center for communication, collaboration and customer engagement.
The changes also portend what is to come: the integration of recently announced generative AI model Einstein GPTthe fruit of Salesforce’s collaboration with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, with natural language-enabled interfaces to make tackling Big Data a low-code/no-code operation.
SEE: In anticipation of the introduction of Einstein GPT, Salesforce offered guidelines to reduce AI bias
Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Tableau, said the guiding principle of getting to market is to help people see and understand data.
“I say this because with each release, we’re always trying to find new ways to help analysts answer questions, help reach people, and make data easier to understand and use,” he said. Ajenstat told TechRepublic.
Salesforce has a busy schedule for rolling out product enhancements on a quarterly cycle. “Last year we added over 120 to 130 features, and this, for Q1, is the first big release of the year,” he said.
Integrate data hunting, visualization into collaboration
View Tableau in Slack
Salesforce, which table integrated in Slack in December 2022, improves integration by allowing users to view Tableau content in Slack and creating portals within the communication platform that allow users to search databases through Tableau in a collaborative UX . A sales team can, for example, post their fourth quarter sales numbers in Tableau and, using a link, share data visualizations directly in their Slack channels so they can view and discuss within of the app (Figure A).
Figure A
“What we understood from clients is that people don’t want to go where they are to do analyses; they want analysis to come to them, to answer questions where they work. That’s why we’re integrating Tableau into Slack,” Ajenstat said.
He explained that in the past, Tableau only appeared in Slack through alerts and notifications. “Now you can query Tableau inventory directly from Slack,” Ajenstat said. Salesforce announced the continuation of its TrailblazerDX developer conference last week, where he presented a version of Tableau powered by Einstein GTP, which allows users to query Tableau directly from Slack using a natural language interface.
Data Stories for Tableau
Can data tell a story? With this product enhancement, no-code AI-powered tools translate charts, tables, and spreadsheets into natural-language insights that even data-analytics novices can easily understand and share, according to Salesforce. It is AI-based but does not yet use Einstein GPT.
User attribute functions
Salesforce said Tableau’s new features allow users to customize analytics visualization to do things like show only the most relevant information. It also allows users to manage access to data and apply security policies based on attributes such as role, department and location, according to the company.
Data mapping for accelerators
Salesforce Accelerators are customizable, out-of-the-box dashboards for gaining insight into the data available in Exchange boarda sort of app store for analytics tools that the company launched last year (Figure B).
Figure B
Salesforce said it incorporates automation so that setting up accelerators to match any data source is easier and doesn’t require third-party apps. For example, a user can pull information from external applications and integrate it with Tableau’s “Sales & Margin” accelerator to monitor and improve KPIs such as financial results, lifetime value, and sales rates. unsubscribe, without having to leave Tableau Desktop.
“So, instead of a blank canvas, you start with a predefined solution,” Ajenstat said. “Accelerators, of which there are now hundreds in Exchange, are built from sample data. In the previous release, you used a static version of an accelerator model and then manually connected it to a data source; then work on field mapping and replacement. With this improvement, we remove manual steps. The whole point is the time to value – helping people get data into models is a huge time saver. »
Long-term vision: Automation and AI make data meaningful for decision makers
Salesforce said its large Einstein GPT language model currently delivers more than 200 billion AI-powered predictions per day into its Customer 360 CRM framework, integrating its cloud-based products and services.
Ajenstat said that for products like Tableau, the big picture is data accessibility through automation.
“As we move forward, this is where the capabilities of Einstein GPT will pay off. We take fundamental innovations and use GPT to build them into bigger, more powerful products,” he said.
