0:00Hey, it's Tim here and in today's video I'm
0:02here to talk to you about Ask Data.
0:03Now, the feature I'm about to talk today, I
0:06'm actually quite impressed.
0:07I haven't used Ask Data in a while myself.
0:09I know I do these videos showing you all
0:10the features,
0:11but there's something different about Ask
0:13Data now.
0:14And I think it's actually quite interesting
0:15.
0:15Let me just show you how it works.
0:17If you're not aware, Ask Data is a new
0:18feature where you can essentially just
0:20type a question into Tableau and it gives
0:22you the answer.
0:23To show you that, I'm here on Tableau
0:24Online.
0:25I'm going to go to the Explore tab here,
0:26go to Samples and there's of course a
0:28sample Superstore dataset that you can use.
0:31Now, what's required here is when you
0:33upload a data source,
0:34Tableau will start analysing it.
0:36And this is a fairly sanitised dataset.
0:39Of course, it's a Superstore.
0:40Tableau have done some good work to make
0:42this nice and optimised.
0:43But when you upload your own dataset,
0:45you have to invest a little bit of time
0:47making this dataset sort of work in this
0:49platform.
0:50So things like synonyms, meanings, data
0:53roles all have to be applied to Ask Data.
0:56Check out my channel for features on Ask
0:59Data.
0:59I've covered pretty much everything since
1:012020.3.
1:03So let's go ahead and check out how this
1:05works.
1:06So the first thing I'm going to do is just
1:08type in a question.
1:08I want to see the profit by category.
1:11OK, I can't type so I have to make sure
1:14that I use the correct category.
1:18Here we go. And it will come up with a
1:20suggestion.
1:20I'll click the suggestion so that it cleans
1:22up my typos, as it were.
1:24And now it'll open up a new window and it
1:25'll actually go ahead and load that, which
1:27is great.
1:28This is kind of what I wanted, but it's not
1:30quite the question I had.
1:32What I'd recommend you do with Ask Data is
1:34you ask your question in stages
1:35because then you know it's actually getting
1:37the question correct each time.
1:39So the next thing we're going to do is
1:41actually make sure that we see this by
1:43month.
1:43I want to see this as a time series,
1:45essentially.
1:46So by month, let's just type that.
1:49And when we do that, it obviously breaks
1:50this down.
1:51Now, the thing I'd like to do is actually
1:53then choose a date range.
1:55OK, so I want to say between March 2015 and
2:00December 2019.
2:03OK, so that's my little window here.
2:05I've done a typo here, so let's go hit
2:07December there.
2:08Let's fix it. March.
2:10I'm going to give it the benefit of the
2:11doubt here and just enter.
2:13Now in an organization, you'd have typos.
2:15And so here we have it. We have this nice
2:17sort of timeline.
2:18Nice new feature here is you can actually
2:20tweak this date range a little bit better.
2:22So you can actually go in here just by
2:23clicking that and actually tweak it.
2:25So let's say you got the year wrong and you
2:26wanted to go to 2019.
2:28Hit accept and it changes the view. This is
2:30really, really cool.
2:31And of course, you can change this to
2:33whatever chart type you want.
2:35Just go over here on the right hand side
2:36and hit stacked bar.
2:38And you can see that it comes up actually
2:40is a nice option.
2:41You can actually type it in here.
2:42So let's just remove that.
2:44It goes back to the line chart and just
2:46type it ourselves as stacked,
2:48stacked bar chart.
2:52And you can see that comes up there.
2:54And of course, you basically typed and
2:56talked to Tableau.
2:56How cool is that?
2:58So that's a great little addition there.
2:59And of course, you can change any of these
3:01parameters once you've built this.
3:02And you can go back to any particular
3:04question and change the particular thing.
3:06Maybe you didn't want it by category.
3:08Maybe you wanted it by country instead.
3:10Hit accept. Boom. You've just got a new
3:12chart right there.
3:13And then, of course, this is all the United
3:14States.
3:15So country made no sense.
3:17We should have chosen state or something
3:18instead.
3:19Hit accept. And instead you get a very,
3:22very noisy chart.
3:23And of course, it's not colored it
3:24correctly because we've changed things.
3:25And then in the middle of the way, we're
3:27asking questions.
3:27But this just gives you a nice little
3:29glimpse of how this is working
3:31and how it's dynamic and how it really
3:33actually makes it easy
3:34to build a new visualization.
3:36If you want to pivot this, you can, of
3:37course, here
3:38you've got the option at the top just to
3:39change the orientation,
3:41which is really nice.
3:42You can then grab this, embed this
3:44somewhere else
3:45and let someone else ask their own
3:47questions.
3:48So you can actually take this
3:49ask data experience on this data source and
3:52put it somewhere
3:52in your organization where people can
3:54actually type these questions
3:55and ask them themselves.
3:57If you've invested a little bit of time
3:59into the metadata,
4:00that's going to be really, really good.
4:01So the actual feature here was this sort of
4:03relative date range slider.
4:05This is new. It makes it much easier to
4:07pick dates.
4:07But just check out how much this feature
4:09has come along
4:10in the time that Tableau has been building
4:12it.
4:12This is supposedly one of the new areas of
4:15analytics
4:15where essentially you're just going to be
4:17talking to a computer
4:18and it will be doing this for you.
4:19And there's actually, you know, I see a
4:21world where this is actually realistic,
4:23where you simply type something into a text
4:25line
4:25and you get a response back with a table or
4:28bar chart
4:28or pretty much any of these chart types
4:30that Tableau have already added.
4:31So that's pretty much the feature in a
4:32nutshell.
4:33If you've enjoyed this video, you know what
4:35to do.
4:35If you haven't hit the dislike button twice
4:37, I'll catch you in the next video.
Tableau | Data visualisation | AI & ML